Did you hear? Pres­i­dent Trump is going to be run­ning for a third term in office. No, that’s not an April Fools joke. He’s not jok­ing. Or at least insists he’s not. Who knows how seri­ous he is, but it’s a sign of the times to hear such bla­tant­ly uncon­sti­tu­tion­al actions just being casu­al­ly and open­ly dis­cussed.

Although, as we’re going to see, the con­sti­tu­tion­al­i­ty of third pres­i­den­tial term may not be as set in stone as many sus­pect. Along with the rest of the US Con­sti­tu­tion. A con­sti­tu­tion­al con­ven­tion could be just around the cor­ner. Just a law­suit away. And we can thank the DC aus­ter­i­ty lob­by and for this omi­nous poten­tial under­tak­ing.

Yes, the DC aus­ter­i­ty lob­by is back, with VERY big plans. Because it nev­er real­ly went away. We’re talk­ing about the same aus­ter­i­ty lob­by that has spent years try­ing to roll back Oba­macare, evis­cer­ate Medicare and Med­ic­aid through block-grants, and gen­er­al­ly erode what’s left of the US’s social safe­ty-nets as more and more Amer­i­cans are forced to take any work avail­able just to qual­i­fy for increas­ing­ly mea­ger gov­ern­ment assis­tance. That aus­ter­i­ty lob­by. It’s not just back. It’s big­ger and stronger than ever. Or at least sneaki­er than ever.

A lob­by ded­i­cat­ed to life-destroy­ing, soul-crush­ing poli­cies. Financed by bil­lion­aires. One bil­lion­aire in par­tic­u­lar: Pete Peter­son, the Wall Street bil­lion­aire who served as Richard Nixon’s Sec­re­tary of Com­merce before going on to form the pri­vate-equi­ty giant Black­stone Group. The same Black­stone Group that has been man­ag­ing a grow­ing por­tion of pub­lic and pri­vate pen­sions ques­tion­able com­mer­cial real estate invest­ments as the pri­vate-equi­ty sec­tor has increas­ing­ly attract­ed hun­dreds of bil­lions of dol­lars in pen­sion fund assets under man­age­ment. Yes, the Pete Peter­son — the aus­ter­i­ty lob­by’s long-time sug­ar dad­dy — also hap­pens to be a bil­lion­aire from the sec­tor of Wall Street that has made a for­tune in recent years off the mis­man­age­ment of pen­sions. It’s very on theme.

So is this a sto­ry about the aus­ter­i­ty lob­by tak­ing advan­tage of the Repub­li­can DC pow­er tri­fec­ta? It is a his­toric oppor­tu­ni­ty. The GOP does­n’t just con­trol all three branch­es of gov­ern­ment. Pres­i­dent Trump is look­ing increas­ing­ly law­less by the day as his admin­is­tra­tion embraces not just the DOGE-led Project 2025 agen­da with a zeal few expect­ed it’s hard to imag­ine but is simul­ta­ne­ous­ly attempt­ing to put in place the Uni­tary Exec­u­tive the­o­ry that will trans­form the office of pres­i­den­cy into some­thing clos­er to a nation­al CEO. A trans­for­ma­tion of the US gov­ern­ment very much in keep­ing with the long-stand­ing ambi­tions of a fig­ure who has emerged as a kind of philoso­pher king for the con­tem­po­rary polit­i­cal right: Cur­tis “Men­cius Mold­bug” Yarvin, whose Sil­i­con Val­ley “Dark Enlight­en­ment” writ­ings even­tu­al­ly came to life as Project 2025 play­book now play­ing out. The pro-monar­chy Yarvin has long called for an unelect­ed Amer­i­can ‘CEO’ to replace the office of the pres­i­den­cy. We aren’t there yet. But we’re get­ting there. One law­less action at a time.

But this sto­ry about the aus­ter­i­ty lob­by’s big new plans aren’t about tak­ing advan­tage of the GOP’s lock on the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment. It’s about some­thing much big­ger. Some­thing we real­ly should have seen com­ing: Arti­cle V con­sti­tu­tion­al con­ven­tion plans. Yes, the aus­ter­i­ty lob­by — which has long advo­cat­ed for a Bal­anced Bud­get con­sti­tu­tion­al amend­ment — has ful­ly embraced the con­sti­tu­tion­al con­ven­tion path­way to vic­to­ry. The kind of path­way that could eas­i­ly turn into a ‘run­away con­ven­tion’ and poten­tial com­plete over­haul of the US Con­sti­tu­tion. Because, as we’ve seen, when we are talk­ing about an Arti­cle V con­sti­tu­tion­al con­ven­tion, we are talk­ing about an over­haul tech­ni­cal­ly man­aged by del­e­ga­tions of state rep­re­sen­ta­tives but ulti­mate­ly man­aged by the aus­ter­i­ty lob­by and its fel­low trav­el­ers in the Repub­li­can mega-donor com­plex who cur­rent­ly have an over­whelm­ing­ly dom­i­nant grip on the levers of pow­er across the US gov­ern­ment. A cor­po­ratist mega-donor class with a dom­i­nant grip on fed­er­al and state gov­ern­ments, which are both going to come into play should a con­sti­tu­tion­al con­ven­tion.

An Arti­cle V con­sti­tu­tion­al con­ven­tion is not going to be some sort of grass root affair. Not in 2025. Or any time soon. A con­sti­tu­tion­al con­ven­tion will be an orgy of oli­garchic spe­cial inter­ests more empow­ered than ever. A dis­til­la­tion of pow­er enshrined in con­sti­tu­tion­al law. And now the aus­ter­i­ty lob­by that has long pushed for a Bal­anced Bud­get amend­ment has set its sights on some­thing far grander. An Arti­cle V con­sti­tu­tion­al con­ven­tion that could eas­i­ly go WAY beyond just impos­ing a bal­anced bud­get amend­ment. Which is not to say that a bal­anced bud­get amend­ment would­n’t be dis­as­trous on its own. It would be a his­toric deba­cle. But we are talk­ing about con­sti­tu­tion­al con­ven­tions that could poten­tial­ly be empow­ered to dis­solve Con­gress, at least that’s what some of the schemers are sug­gest­ing. If Con­gress does­n’t abide by the results of an Arti­cle V con­ven­tion, a new con­ven­tion can be con­vened that will dis­solve Con­gress and cre­ate a new leg­is­la­ture. We’re in crazy talk ter­ri­to­ry. Crazy talk come alive.

But as we’ve also seen, when we’re talk­ing about schemes for trig­ger­ing an Arti­cle V Con­ven­tion of States, we have to men­tion the Con­ven­tion of States Project found­ed by the Cit­i­zens for Self-Gov­er­nance orga­ni­za­tion — found­ed by Tea Par­ty Patri­ots co-founder and Par­ler CEO Mark Meck­ler — which has long been work­ing towards the goal of trig­ger­ing an Arti­cle V con­sti­tu­tion­al con­ven­tion with its own Con­ven­tion of States (CoS) Project. Meck­ler also hap­pens to be a mem­ber of the pow­er­ful theo­crat­ic Coun­cil for Nation­al Pol­i­cy (CNP). The same group that had large­ly got­ten away with orga­niz­ing the elec­tion denial efforts that led up to the Jan­u­ary 6 Capi­tol insur­rec­tion.

Meck­ler isn’t just run­ning some sort of par­al­lel Arti­cle V oper­a­tion sep­a­rate from Peter­son Foun­da­tion aus­ter­i­ty-lob­by’s plans. In fact, the whole premise of this new Arti­cle V push is pred­i­cat­ed on the legal the­o­ry that the states that have already backed a Bal­anced Bud­get Amend­ment can be com­bined with all the states that have called for a more gen­er­al Arti­cle V Con­sti­tu­tion­al Con­ven­tion, net putting the total num­ber of states beyond the 34 state thresh­old. The the­o­ry also declares that states can ‘undo’ their calls for a con­sti­tu­tion­al con­ven­tion, which is con­ve­nient since a num­ber of states of for­mal­ly rescind­ed past approvals.

It’s that legal the­o­ry that is now being pushed by the Fed­er­al Fis­cal Sus­tain­abil­i­ty Foun­da­tion, a rel­a­tive­ly obscure enti­ty head­ed by some­one who has long been one of the chief aus­ter­i­ty advo­cates in recent decades: David M. Walk­er, the for­mer US Comp­trol­ler for both Bill Clin­ton and George W. Bush. As we’re going to see, Walk­er has long served as one of Pete Peter­son­’s top lieu­tenants and played a lead­ing role in the last major round of DC aus­ter­i­ty bat­tles. Bat­tles that erupt­ed just as the 2008 finan­cial cri­sis was unfold­ing as the Peter­son lob­by swung into action demand­ing some sort of enti­tle­ment-shred­ding “grand bar­gain” from the incom­ing Oba­ma admin­is­tra­tion. The Great Reces­sion was an oppor­tu­ni­ty too great to pass up.

As we’re also going to see, while the Oba­ma admin­is­tra­tion did come close to accept­ing a hor­ri­ble “grand bar­gain”, by the fall of 2013 those nego­ti­a­tions even­tu­al­ly failed large­ly as a result of Tea Par­ty refusal to accept some mea­ger tax hikes in exchange for tril­lions of dol­lars in cuts. A “sequester” deal did still end up dra­mat­i­cal­ly cur­tail­ing fed­er­al spend­ing over the fol­low­ing decade and lim­it­ing the eco­nom­ic rebound at the time, but the win­dow to impose the kind of “grand bar­gain” that would ‘reform’ (gut) Social Secu­ri­ty, Medicare, and Med­ic­aid had closed. It was in the fall of 2013 when the aus­ter­i­ty lob­by arrived at a new plan: the con­sti­tu­tion­al con­ven­tion. They knew it would take years, per­haps decades, to imple­ment this plan. But they had it. And here we are, less than 12 years lat­er, with that plan seem­ing­ly in some sort of legal strik­ing dis­tance. At least assum­ing the Fed­er­al Fis­cal Sus­tain­abil­i­ty Foun­da­tion’s law­suit pans out.

What are the prospects that David Walk­er’s law­suit suc­ceeds? Well, for starters, it’s impor­tant to, again, rec­og­nize that Walk­er isn’t some inde­pen­dent actor here. He’s one of Pete Peter­son­’s top orga­niz­er and he’s got a lot of pow­er­ful allies. Allies like the Amer­i­can Leg­isla­tive Exchange Coun­cil (ALEC), which has long been sup­port­ing of the con­sti­tu­tion­al con­ven­tion idea. In fact, when the idea was ini­tial­ly hatched dur­ing a secre­tive gath­er­ing at Mount Ver­non in Decem­ber of 2013, the gath­er­ing just hap­pened to be a 30 dri­ve from the annu­al ALEC con­fer­ence and also near­by a Con­ven­tion of States gath­er­ing by Mark Meck­ler. Flash for­ward to today, and we learn that the whole idea for the law­suit report­ed­ly emerged dur­ing a 2020 ALEC gath­er­ing by a bal­anced bud­get activist named David Bid­dulph who pro­posed the idea of com­bin­ing old state res­o­lu­tions that called for a gen­er­al con­sti­tu­tion­al con­ven­tion with ones specif­i­cal­ly call­ing for for a bal­anced bud­get amend­ment. Beyond that, ALEC CEO Lisa B. Nel­son has report­ed­ly been shop­ping around try­ing to find state attor­neys gen­er­al who would be will­ing to wage their pro-Arti­cle V law­suit in the court. This is a good time to recall how Nel­son was at a CNP event in Feb­ru­ary of 2020 — right as the COVID pan­dem­ic was get­ting start­ed — when she informed the group she was already work­ing with GOP attor­neys on meth­ods for over­turn­ing the pop­u­lar vote in the upcom­ing pres­i­den­tial elec­tion. One of the GOP lawyers she told them she was work­ing with was key CNP elec­tion-denier Cle­ta Mitchell. Also recall how Nel­son and Mitchell were already strate­giz­ing on how to over­turn a 2020 Trump loss as far back as August of 2019. The new con­sti­tu­tion is going to be ALEC-designed.

Anoth­er fig­ure of note involved with the devis­ing of this new legal strat­e­gy is Charles “Chuck” Coop­er, an influ­en­tial con­ser­v­a­tive lawyer who has endorsed the draft law­suit. Recall how Coop­er — for­mer lawyer for the NRA and CNP mem­ber who has worked close­ly with Mark Meck­ler’s Con­ven­tion of States Project — wrote in a 2019 email to Con­ven­tion of States activists how, “the real threat to our con­sti­tu­tion­al rights today is posed not by an Arti­cle V Con­ven­tion of States, but by an out-of-con­trol fed­er­al gov­ern­ment, exer­cis­ing pow­ers that it does not have and abus­ing pow­ers that it does.” Coop­er’s endorse­ment of the law­suit is a big sign that Meck­ler’s Con­ven­tion of States Project is going to be ful­ly on board with this law­suit.

It’s that long-stand­ing oli­garchic scheme — a scheme almost ready to come to fruition — that we’re going to be exam­in­ing in this post. A scheme root­ing in the failed efforts to use the tur­moil of the Great Reces­sion as a pre­text for gut­ting enti­tle­ment pro­grams, with ambi­tions that now go far beyond shred­ding enti­tle­ments and now include shred­ding the whole US Con­sti­tu­tion. Cut­ting deficits and debt obvi­ous­ly isn’t the goal. It’s about ‘fix­ing’ the sys­tem with­out fix­ing the real under­ly­ing prob­lems like grow­ing sys­temic inequal­i­ty, reck­less tax cuts, and out of con­trol health care costs that seem to be large­ly unique to the US. Aus­ter­i­ty is a plan to ‘fix’ the prob­lem while keep­ing the US stuck on stu­pid. And now that ‘fix’ is slat­ed to enshrined in the con­sti­tu­tion. Indef­i­nite­ly.

Ok, here’s a quick review of the arti­cles we’re going to cov­er in this post:

1. Decem­ber 10, 2013 Give Me Amend­ments or Give Me Death

A Decem­ber 2013 piece in Slate about a secre­tive gath­er­ing of state Repub­li­can leg­is­la­tors at Mount Ver­non to dis­cuss plans for a mas­sive new endeav­or: trig­ger a con­sti­tu­tion­al con­ven­tion. This also hap­pened to be not long after it became clear the Oba­ma admin­is­tra­tion was not going to ulti­mate­ly suc­cumb to some sort of “grand bar­gain” on enti­tle­ments, some­thing the Pete Peter­son-backed aus­ter­i­ty lob­by has been the pri­or four years aggres­sive­ly lob­by­ing for. Telling­ly, this gath­er­ing just hap­pened to be a 30 minute dri­ve from the annu­al ALEC con­fer­ence and also not far from a gath­er­ing of Mark Meck­ler’s Con­ven­tion of States Project, which is a reminder that what was are see­ing unfold today has been a joint ALEC/CoS effort from the begin­ning. Meck­ler was report­ed­ly pro­mot­ing the CoS Project.

2. March 17, 2025 How a Push to Amend the Con­sti­tu­tion Could Help Trump Expand Pres­i­den­tial Pow­er

A vital new report from ProP­ub­li­ca describ­ing the new legal the­o­ry behind the Arti­cle V con­sti­tu­tion­al con­ven­tion push that, if suc­cess­ful, could trig­ger­ing a con­sti­tu­tion­al con­ven­tion any day now. All they need to do is win a law­suit. And giv­en the resources of the forces behind this effort, it’s hard to rule out the pos­si­bil­i­ty that they just might suc­ceed. Forces like David Walk­er’s Fed­er­al Fis­cal Sus­tain­abil­i­ty Foun­da­tion, which is craft­ing the law­suit, or ALEC, which has been shop­ping around try­ing to find states will­ing to take their argu­ment into the courts. An argu­ment pred­i­cat­ed on the legal the­o­ry that all of the var­i­ous calls for con­sti­tu­tion­al con­ven­tion — whether specif­i­cal­ly for a bal­anced bud­get for for a gen­er­al open con­ven­tion — should all be pooled and can nev­er be rescind­ed. An idea that was report­ed­ly first raised by bal­anced bud­get activist named David Bid­dulph dur­ing a 2020 ALEC gath­er­ing. For­mer NRA lawyer — and CNP mem­ber — Charles “Chuck” Coop­er has also endorsed the legal the­o­ry. Coop­er has worked exten­sive­ly with Mark Meck­ler’s Con­ven­tion of States Project.

3. Octo­ber 16, 2017 Will Cor­po­ra­tions, The Chris­t­ian Right, and the Tea Par­ty Get to Rewrite the Con­sti­tu­tion?

A Polit­i­cal Research Asso­ciates report from back in Octo­ber of 2017 giv­ing us more back­ground on the forces behind this move­ment. As the report describes, it was 2010 when David Bid­dulph co-found­ed the Bal­anced Bud­get Amend­ment Task Force, which has been work­ing with ALEC ever since to make a bal­anced bud­get con­sti­tu­tion­al amend­ment hap­pen. Anoth­er impor­tant gath­er­ing took place in Sep­tem­ber of 2014 when a Con­ven­tion of States gath­er­ing issued the “Jef­fer­son State­ment” declar­ing an Arti­cle V con­sti­tu­tion­al con­ven­tion was the only viable means of fix­ing the nation’s prob­lems. The group of con­ser­v­a­tive lawyers and law pro­fes­sors who issued this state­ment includ­ed , includ­ing attor­neys John East­man and Charles Coop­er. Yes, the same John East­man who played a key role in con­coct­ing the legal ratio­nale for Jan­u­ary 6. Oth­er atten­dees includ­ed CoS co-founder Michael Far­ris, who also found­ed the pow­er­ful Alliance Defend­ing Free­dom (ADF), an orga­ni­za­tion that shows up on the SPLC’s list of hate groups. Along with Mat Staver. Recall how Staver — who serves on the advi­so­ry board of the domin­ion­ist Nation­al Asso­ci­a­tion of Chris­t­ian Law­mak­ers (NACL) — showed up on the leaked 2014 CNP mem­ber­ship list that had Staver a CNP board mem­ber, along­side fel­low CNP board mem­bers like the League of the South’s Mike Per­out­ka who is an open advo­cate of the theo­crat­ic impo­si­tion of the Old Tes­ta­ment. Also recall how House Speak­er Mike John­son gave the CNP keynote address in 2019 and repeat­ed­ly Staver as big influ­ence. Chuck Coop­er was also in atten­dance. The CoS is very much a CNP affair. So when we see CoS back­ing for the cur­rent Arti­cle V law­suit, keep in mind that how that trans­lates into CNP back­ing.

4. Feb­ru­ary 11, 2009 Loot­ing Social Secu­ri­ty

The first of a series of arti­cles from The Nation look­ing back at the fever­ish lob­by­ing that was get­ting under­way right as the 2008 finan­cial cri­sis was unfold­ing. A pro-aus­ter­i­ty lob­by­ing cam­paign large­ly financed by pri­vate-equi­ty bil­lion­aire Pete Peter­son, in search of a “grand bar­gain” with the Oba­ma admin­is­tra­tion. The kind of “grand bar­gain” that pairs mas­sive enti­tle­ment cuts with mod­er­ate tax increas­es. The kind of ‘grand bar­gain’ only a bil­lion­aire could love. And who do we find serv­ing as the pub­lic face for this pro-aus­ter­i­ty lob­by­ing effort? David Walk­er, long por­trayed as one of the “seri­ous peo­ple” by DC’s chat­ter­ing class­es.

5. Feb­ru­ary 13, 2009 The Peter­son Foun­da­tion Responds

David Walk­er responds. Yes, Walk­er — then the Pres­i­dent of CEO of new Pete Peter­son Foun­da­tion — clear­ly took issue with how the pre­vi­ous Nation piece por­trayed his efforts. Specif­i­cal­ly, asser­tion that Walk­er and his fel­low trav­el­ers were work­ing to raid the Social Secu­ri­ty Trust Fund in order to pay for all the Repub­li­can-led tax cuts. As Walk­er put it, the Social Secu­ri­ty Trust Fund had already been raid­ed. Now, it’s tech­ni­cal­ly true that the Trust Fund is filled with gov­ern­ment bonds, and not cash. But unless we’re talk­ing about default on the US debt, it does­n’t real­ly make sense to treat that Trust Fund as just a bunch of worth­less IOUs. And yet that’s the fram­ing Walk­er was deploy­ing, back in Feb­ru­ary of 2009, as part of his argu­ment for why that was time for a major ‘grand bar­gain’. As the econ­o­my was still in a state of shock. Beyond that, Walk­er threw around num­bers like a $56 tril­lion on long-term deficit. A num­ber that ignores the dis­as­trous fis­cal impact of the tax cuts for the wealthy and big busi­ness­es the US has been indulging in since Ronald Rea­gan or the out-of-con­trol prof­i­teer­ing still ram­pant in the US health care sec­tor. It was the aus­ter­i­ty-lob­by’s open­ing argu­ment in antic­i­pa­tion of a ‘grand bar­gain’ that almost hap­pened.

6. Feb­ru­ary 13, 2009 William Grei­der Responds

The Nation jour­nal­ist William Grei­der responds to David Walk­er’s response. It’s a brief response that observes how Walk­er’s “the trust fund has already been raid­ed!” is not actu­al­ly in con­flict with Grei­der’s obser­va­tions. The Peter­son-fund­ed aus­ter­i­ty lob­by was effec­tive­ly argu­ing that the Social Secu­ri­ty Trust Fund should be treat­ed as non-exis­tent and cuts must be made as a result. Walk­er did­n’t exact­ly refute that.

7. Octo­ber 19, 2011 How the Aus­ter­i­ty Class Rules Wash­ing­ton

An Octo­ber 2011 update on what was, at that point, three years into what had been large­ly suc­cess­ful pro-aus­ter­i­ty lob­by­ing by the Peter­son Foun­da­tion. Suc­cess­es that includ­ed get­ting the Oba­ma admin­is­tra­tion to agree to the 2010 for­ma­tion of the “Bowles-Simp­son Com­mis­sion” ded­i­cate to devel­op­ing exact­ly the kind of ‘grand bar­gain’ the aus­ter­i­ty lob­by was demand­ing. Now, again, the Bowles-Simp­son com­mis­sion did­n’t actu­al­ly suc­ceed in the end. But it was still a remark­able string of suc­cess­es. The aus­ter­i­ty lob­by was feel­ing so embold­ened that, in Sep­tem­ber of 2011, a Peter­son-financed group called the Com­mit­tee for a Respon­si­ble Fed­er­al Bud­get (CRFB) held a high-pro­file sym­po­sium call­ing on the Bowles-Simp­sons com­mis­sion to “go big” and shoot for a $4 tril­lion deficit reduc­tion plan over the next decade. The pre­sen­ta­tion includ­ed a video where the nation­al debt was por­trayed as “the most seri­ous threat that this coun­try has ever had” and “a threat to the whole idea of self-gov­ern­ment”. So what killed the ‘grand bar­gain’? Well, the Oba­ma admin­is­tra­tion did almost agree to a deal that was char­ac­ter­ized as “the deal of the cen­tu­ry” for the GOP by New York Times colum­nist David Brooks. A deal for $3 tril­lion in spend­ing cuts in exchange for $800 bil­lion in tax increas­es. But when the Oba­ma admin­is­tra­tion asked for anoth­er $400 bil­lion in tax increas­es to bal­ance out the deal, the Tea Par­ty balked and the House GOP walked from the agree­ment. In the end, with no ‘grand bar­gain’, a default ‘plan B’ kicked in, aka “the sequester”, con­sist­ing of rough­ly $2.1 tril­lion in spend­ing cuts over the next decade. It was­n’t the ‘grand bar­gain’, but it was still aus­ter­i­ty, imposed as the US econ­o­my was still try­ing to claw its way out of the Great Reces­sion.

8. Octo­ber 9, 2013 The demise of the Come­back Amer­i­ca Ini­tia­tive

Anoth­er update on the aus­ter­i­ty lob­by’s wins and loss­es, this time from Octo­ber 2013. With fed­er­al deficits plum­met­ing and the prospects of a “grand bar­gain” with Oba­ma admin­is­tra­tion hav­ing evap­o­rat­ed, one of the many arms of the aus­ter­i­ty lob­by decid­ed to close up shop: David Walk­er’s Come­back Amer­i­can Ini­tia­tive (CAI). But as the piece also notes, there were still plen­ty of oth­er Peter­son-backed ini­tia­tives play­ing the same role. Like Cam­paign to Fix the Debt, cre­at­ed in 2012 by Ersk­ine Bowles and Alan Simp­son (the heads of the Bowles-Simp­son Com­mis­sion). That group nev­er closed and is still in oper­a­tion. And just one of the many Peter­son-fund­ed arms of this ongo­ing move­ment. Keep in mind that it was just two months after this arti­cle when the Decem­ber 2013 Mount Ver­non gath­er­ing took place and this move­ment start­ed set­ting its sights on a con­sti­tu­tion­al con­ven­tion.

9. Feb­ru­ary 20, 2014 How Pro-Aus­ter­i­ty Groups Lost the Deficit Wars

By Feb­ru­ary 2014, the Peter­son lob­by had lost. Or at least had­n’t won the big ‘grand bar­gain’ prize it had been work­ing towards since 2008. A clean vote to raise the US debt ceil­ing had just passed and it was clear aus­ter­i­ty lob­by’s lever­age had dis­si­pat­ed. The fis­cal crises that had gripped DC for years had abat­ed. The win­dow of oppor­tu­ni­ty had closed. And yet, new Peter­son-financed front groups were still being spawned, like “The Can Kicks Back” a ‘youth group’ focused on pro­mot­ing the mes­sage that enti­tle­ment cuts need to be made for the sake of Amer­i­can’s youth. But the piece also make a point that is going to be very impor­tant to keep in mind when it comes to ensur­ing the aus­ter­i­ty lob­by fails again: grass roots counter-orga­niz­ing real­ly did play a key role in the aus­ter­i­ty lob­by’s ulti­mate defeat. Numer­ous pro­gres­sive groups engaged in the pub­lic debate and effec­tive­ly mocked and coun­tered much of what the aus­ter­i­ty lob­by was ped­dling. Pub­lic per­sua­sion real­ly did work. At least it did back when these aus­ter­i­ty bat­tles were being fought over in the halls of Con­gress and the White House. It’s an impor­tant ele­ment of this sto­ry to keep in mind because it’s not actu­al­ly clear the same oppor­tu­ni­ty for pub­lic per­sua­sion will apply for a con­sti­tu­tion­al con­ven­tion.

10. March 19, 2025 Manchin, Rom­ney join board of direc­tors for top bud­get watch­dog

It’s 2025 and the aus­ter­i­ty lob­by isn’t just still kick­ing. It’s grow­ing, with for­mer Sen­a­tors Joe Manchin and Mitt Rom­ney join­ing the board for a group char­ac­ter­ized as a “top bud­get watch­dog”. That group hap­pens to be the Peter­son-financed Com­mit­tee for a Respon­si­ble Fed­er­al Bud­get (CRFB). The same group encour­ag­ing Con­gress to “go big” with its cuts back in 2011. It nev­er ends. Well, ok, it can end. With a new con­sti­tu­tion. Be patient. They’re work­ing on it!

December 2013: The Austerity Lobby Quietly Pivots from “Grand Bargains” to Constitution Conventions

Ok, let’s start off with the fol­low­ing Slate arti­cle from back in Decem­ber of 2013 about a secre­tive gath­er­ing by a group of state leg­is­la­tors with very big ambi­tions: a con­sti­tu­tion­al con­ven­tion was now their goal. And as we’ll see, the gath­er­ing hap­pened to be just a 30 minute dri­ve from the annu­al ALEC con­ven­tion and also includ­ed a Con­ven­tion of States founder Mark Meck­ler. In oth­er words, it was the begin­ning of the plan that is cur­rent­ly on the cusp of being ful­filled:

Slate

Give Me Amend­ments or Give Me Death

Inside the secre­tive cam­paign by state leg­is­la­tors to pass con­ser­v­a­tive amend­ments in 34 states and rewrite the Con­sti­tu­tion.

By Emma Roller and David Weigel
Dec 10, 2013 6:34 PM

The newest move­ment to save the repub­lic began this past Sat­ur­day on the grounds of George Washington’s old estate. Short­ly before 9 a.m., near­ly 100 state leg­is­la­tors from 32 states filed into the library that sits above the muse­ums of Mount Ver­non. It was state leg­is­la­tors only; sup­port­ers (and reporters) learned that the hard way, as they called for details or were stopped at the secu­ri­ty gates.

Inside, the leg­is­la­tors said a prayer, recit­ed the Pledge of Alle­giance, and got to work talk­ing about how to form a con­ven­tion of states that could amend the Constitution–without inter­fer­ence from Con­gress. They’d been brought to Mount Ver­non by a team of five Repub­li­can leg­is­la­tors, who’d cir­cu­lat­ed the invi­ta­tion back on Oct. 22. “Arti­cle V of the U.S. Con­sti­tu­tion gives states equal stand­ing with Con­gress to pro­pose con­sti­tu­tion­al amend­ments,” they wrote. “In light of the fed­er­al government’s strug­gle to effec­tive­ly exe­cute the will of the peo­ple,” they’d cre­ate a bipar­ti­san and “polit­i­cal­ly pure” envi­ron­ment to fig­ure this out.

“I start­ed the meet­ing with a dis­cus­sion about what author­i­ty the con­ven­tion would have,” recalled Wis­con­sin Rep. Chris Kapen­ga, a CPA who was swept into office in the 2010 Tea Par­ty wave. He was one of the five orga­niz­ers of the meet­ing, and he empha­sized sev­er­al times that Democ­rats were in the room. This wasn’t about any par­ti­san goal. It was about states reclaim­ing the pow­er they’d ced­ed, through sta­sis and lack of strat­e­gy, to the feds, by get­ting 34 states to call for a con­ven­tion.

...

The meet­ing last­ed four hours, end­ing when leg­is­la­tors agreed to meet again in the spring of 2014. That’s the most progress anyone’s made in decades toward a states-first con­sti­tu­tion­al amend­ment cam­paign. A few lib­er­als have glommed onto the idea, but right now all of the enthu­si­asm for Arti­cle V is com­ing from the right.

How do we know? Well, most of the leg­is­la­tors who trekked to Mount Ver­non were in town—Washington, D.C. is 30 min­utes up the road—for the annu­al meet­ing of the Amer­i­can Leg­isla­tive Exchange Coun­cil (ALEC). Some of them hit up a pan­el orga­nized by Con­ven­tion of States, a project of Tea Par­ty Patri­ots co-founder Mark Meck­ler. His new orga­ni­za­tion, Cit­i­zens for Self-Gov­ern­ments, schlepped 24-page brief­ing books that laid out the plan: “viable polit­i­cal oper­a­tions,” with dis­trict cap­tains, in at least 3,000 state leg­isla­tive dis­tricts in 40 states.

Meck­ler and his col­leagues would make it easy. In the book, CFSG list­ed a few “exam­ples of amend­ment top­ics” that were stalled in Wash­ing­ton but doable at a con­ven­tion: a bal­anced bud­get amend­ment, term lim­its for the Supreme Court, “a pro­hi­bi­tion of using inter­na­tion­al treaties and law to gov­ern the domes­tic law of the Unit­ed States,” and a “lim­it” on tax­es. The con­ven­tion would be cen­tered not on any one of these ideas, but “for the pur­pose of lim­it­ing the pow­er and juris­dic­tion of the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment.” The chance of suc­cess? “Almost cer­tain.”

...

How did so many con­ser­v­a­tives come around to this idea, so quick­ly? It hap­pened naturally—states’ rights are hard­ly new to Repub­li­can activists—but it gained trac­tion thanks to radio host and author Mark Levin. Every year or so, Levin writes a tract of doom­say­ing, orig­i­nal­ist con­sti­tu­tion­al argu­ments that sells like mad but gets com­plete­ly ignored on the left. It hap­pened again this year, when his book The Lib­er­ty Amend­ments topped the New York Times best-sell­er list. While lib­er­als were nap­ping, Levin was sell­ing a pock­et his­to­ry of state tyran­ny and a pack­age of amend­ments that could thwart it.

“Upon ascend­ing to the pres­i­den­cy,” wrote Levin, “[Franklin] Roo­sevelt erect­ed an auto­crat­ic pro­gram to over­come the tran­sience of Sta­tist elec­toral vic­to­ries and inter­rupt­ed rule.” Con­ser­v­a­tives could win elec­tions, but they could nev­er roll back the state that FDR, then LBJ, then Barack Oba­ma had expand­ed. “The reper­cus­sions were nev­er in doubt and are now ever more tan­gi­ble, with a def­i­nite upshot—devouring the civ­il soci­ety and sub­sum­ing indi­vid­ual sov­er­eign­ty. This is pre­cise­ly why the Framers pro­vid­ed in Arti­cle V a back­stop to restore con­sti­tu­tion­al repub­li­can­ism.”

And Levin knew what the Framers would have want­ed. He pro­posed 10 amend­ments, start­ing with 12-year term lim­its for mem­bers of Con­gress and Supreme Court judges. Unpop­u­lar Supreme Court deci­sions could be over­rid­den by a three-fifths con­gres­sion­al vote, “not sub­ject to a pres­i­den­tial veto.” The 17^th Amend­ment would be abol­ished, let­ting state leg­is­la­tures once again elect the Sen­ate. (If that hap­pened today, the Sen­ate would be snapped up imme­di­ate­ly by Repub­li­cans.) If 34 states chose to, they could over­ride any fed­er­al statutes or reg­u­la­tions “exceed­ing an eco­nom­ic bur­den of $100 mil­lion.”

None of this could pass the 113^th Con­gress. None of this had real­ly been pro­posed when Repub­li­cans ran the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment. That was Levin’s whole point. “Amer­i­ca is blue state right now,” he told the crowd of social con­ser­v­a­tives who gath­ered for this year’s Val­ues Vot­er Sum­mit. “The only way to address this is to find 34 state leg­is­la­tures, and to take the time to do it. It took us a cen­tu­ry to get here and so it may take us 20 or 30 years to get out of this. But we have no options. This is the only option. I don’t care if no sen­a­tor or no mem­ber of Con­gress sup­ports this. We bypass them.”

With­out Levin, far few­er con­ser­v­a­tives would be tin­gling at the men­tion of “Arti­cle V.” The leg­is­la­tors who met in Mount Ver­non had their qualms with giv­ing Levin cred­it. “He called me up to have me on his show,” said Kapen­ga. “That was a lit­tle frus­trat­ing, because I saw a cou­ple of peo­ple say­ing this was inspired by Levin’s book. This was planned before the book! All of a sud­den, peo­ple say, ‘Oh, these guys must have read The Lib­er­ty Amend­ments.’ But this is a non­par­ti­san idea. Prof. Lawrence Lessig, who def­i­nite­ly doesn’t agree with Mark Levin, has said that we’re doing some­thing that makes sense.”

That’s true. There are pro­gres­sive-mind­ed legal thinkers who like the idea of states blow­ing past the unman­age­able Con­gress. “Rely­ing on ALEC will assure that the spe­cif­ic pro­pos­als will be unten­ably right-wing,” said Uni­ver­si­ty of Texas law pro­fes­sor Sandy Levin­son. “But, of course, that doesn’t guar­an­tee they’ll get to the mag­ic num­ber of 34, let alone the fur­ther mag­ic num­ber of 38 actu­al­ly to amend the Con­sti­tu­tion.” Some good-gov­ern­ment reform, like mul­ti­ple-mem­ber House dis­tricts, would com­bat ger­ry­man­der­ing in a way that cut against Repub­li­cans.

“It’s impos­si­ble to imag­ine that the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives would adopt such a pro­pos­al,” said Levin­son, refer­ring to the notion of mul­ti­ple-mem­ber seats. “But one can imag­ine that it could get to 38. There would be no rea­son for the 19 states with four or few­er rep­re­sen­ta­tives par­tic­u­lar­ly to care, and one could imag­ine that anoth­er 19 states would see this as a way to dimin­ish the reap­por­tion­ment wars.”

But con­ser­v­a­tives wouldn’t be clam­or­ing for Arti­cle V if they thought a con­ven­tion would pro­duce vic­to­ries for the left. They’ve got a head start on this; they’re think­ing of how to build a move­ment that runs around Con­gress to restore the “Con­sti­tu­tion in exile.” The con­ven­tion, if it hap­pened some years from now, needs to hap­pen on their terms. Not that they’re going to shout that from the moun­tain­top.

“This is some­thing that our mem­bers were inter­est­ed in,” ALEC spokes­woman Mol­ly Fuhs explained when asked about the Arti­cle V pan­el. “We do not advo­cate for any­thing.”

——————-

“Give Me Amend­ments or Give Me Death” By Emma Roller and David Weigel; Slate; 12/10/2013

“Inside, the leg­is­la­tors said a prayer, recit­ed the Pledge of Alle­giance, and got to work talk­ing about how to form a con­ven­tion of states that could amend the Constitution–without inter­fer­ence from Con­gress. They’d been brought to Mount Ver­non by a team of five Repub­li­can leg­is­la­tors, who’d cir­cu­lat­ed the invi­ta­tion back on Oct. 22. “Arti­cle V of the U.S. Con­sti­tu­tion gives states equal stand­ing with Con­gress to pro­pose con­sti­tu­tion­al amend­ments,” they wrote. “In light of the fed­er­al government’s strug­gle to effec­tive­ly exe­cute the will of the peo­ple,” they’d cre­ate a bipar­ti­san and “polit­i­cal­ly pure” envi­ron­ment to fig­ure this out.”

A secre­tive gath­er­ing of con­ser­v­a­tive leg­is­la­tor back in Decem­ber of 2013. A peri­od of time that, as we’ll see below, is quite sig­nif­i­cant. Because it was by the fall of 2013 when it had become clear that the aus­ter­i­ty lob­by’s years-long aggres­sive lob­by­ing efforts that began in earnest as the 2008 finan­cial cri­sis was unfold­ing had ulti­mate failed. The Oba­ma admin­is­tra­tion was not going to agree to a “grand bar­gain” deal to address the US’s long-term deficits through mas­sive enti­tle­ment cuts. A ‘grand bar­gain’ almost hap­pened, and prob­a­bly would have had the Tea Par­ty not balked as some rel­a­tive­ly mild tax increas­es in exchange for pledges of tril­lions of dol­lars in spend­ing cuts. But those ‘grand bar­gain’ nego­ti­a­tions had con­clu­sive­ly failed by the fall of 2013. That’s the cru­cial con­text to keep in mind when read­ing about this mys­te­ri­ous Decem­ber 2013 gath­er­ing: it was the start of the plan­ning for the next round of ‘grand bar­gain’ nego­ti­at­ing. Nego­ti­a­tions that, if the plan works, won’t hap­pen between mem­bers of con­gress. The nego­ti­a­tions will be done by the del­e­gates run­ning a con­sti­tu­tion­al con­ven­tion, when much more than just a bal­anced bud­get amend­ment could be under con­sid­er­a­tion.

And note the remark­able con­ve­nience in the tim­ing and loca­tion of this gath­er­ing: it just hap­pened to be 30 min­utes up road from the annu­al ALEC meet­ing. And look who else was there to pro­mote the Arti­cle V scheme: CNP mem­ber and Tea Par­ty Patri­ots co-found Mark Meck­ler, who had just launched his Cit­i­zens for Self-Gov­er­nance, the group that launched the Con­ven­tion of States Project which has since cham­pi­oned the Arti­cle V plans. ALEC and the Con­ven­tion of States Project have been work­ing togeth­er on this from the begin­ning. For over a decade now:

...
The meet­ing last­ed four hours, end­ing when leg­is­la­tors agreed to meet again in the spring of 2014. That’s the most progress anyone’s made in decades toward a states-first con­sti­tu­tion­al amend­ment cam­paign. A few lib­er­als have glommed onto the idea, but right now all of the enthu­si­asm for Arti­cle V is com­ing from the right.

How do we know? Well, most of the leg­is­la­tors who trekked to Mount Ver­non were in town—Washington, D.C. is 30 min­utes up the road—for the annu­al meet­ing of the Amer­i­can Leg­isla­tive Exchange Coun­cil (ALEC). Some of them hit up a pan­el orga­nized by Con­ven­tion of States, a project of Tea Par­ty Patri­ots co-founder Mark Meck­ler. His new orga­ni­za­tion, Cit­i­zens for Self-Gov­ern­ments, schlepped 24-page brief­ing books that laid out the plan: “viable polit­i­cal oper­a­tions,” with dis­trict cap­tains, in at least 3,000 state leg­isla­tive dis­tricts in 40 states.

Meck­ler and his col­leagues would make it easy. In the book, CFSG list­ed a few “exam­ples of amend­ment top­ics” that were stalled in Wash­ing­ton but doable at a con­ven­tion: a bal­anced bud­get amend­ment, term lim­its for the Supreme Court, “a pro­hi­bi­tion of using inter­na­tion­al treaties and law to gov­ern the domes­tic law of the Unit­ed States,” and a “lim­it” on tax­es. The con­ven­tion would be cen­tered not on any one of these ideas, but “for the pur­pose of lim­it­ing the pow­er and juris­dic­tion of the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment.” The chance of suc­cess? “Almost cer­tain.”

...

“This is some­thing that our mem­bers were inter­est­ed in,” ALEC spokes­woman Mol­ly Fuhs explained when asked about the Arti­cle V pan­el. “We do not advo­cate for any­thing.”
...

And as we can see, the per­son who is attrib­uted with pop­u­lar­iz­ing the Arti­cle V scheme — right-wing talk radio host Mark Levin — is very explic­it about how such a scheme would allow for out­comes that sim­ply aren’t pos­si­ble aren’t nor­mal demo­c­ra­t­ic mech­a­nisms. Like the repeal of the 17th amend­ment that allowed for the direct elec­tion of sen­a­tors. Levine wants to see that over­turned, an idea that’s gained a lot of trac­tion with the con­ser­v­a­tive mega-donor class in recent years. As Levin put it, “Amer­i­ca is blue state right now...The only way to address this is to find 34 state leg­is­la­tures, and to take the time to do it. It took us a cen­tu­ry to get here and so it may take us 20 or 30 years to get out of this. But we have no options. This is the only option. I don’t care if no sen­a­tor or no mem­ber of Con­gress sup­ports this. We bypass them.” A mega-donor plan to bypass con­gress and just impose a rad­i­cal vision they know the pub­lic would nev­er will­ing­ly accept. That’s the plan that was get­ting hatched in Decem­ber of 2013, with the full expec­ta­tion that it would take years or decades to accom­plish:

...
“I start­ed the meet­ing with a dis­cus­sion about what author­i­ty the con­ven­tion would have,” recalled Wis­con­sin Rep. Chris Kapen­ga, a CPA who was swept into office in the 2010 Tea Par­ty wave. He was one of the five orga­niz­ers of the meet­ing, and he empha­sized sev­er­al times that Democ­rats were in the room. This wasn’t about any par­ti­san goal. It was about states reclaim­ing the pow­er they’d ced­ed, through sta­sis and lack of strat­e­gy, to the feds, by get­ting 34 states to call for a con­ven­tion.

...

How did so many con­ser­v­a­tives come around to this idea, so quick­ly? It hap­pened naturally—states’ rights are hard­ly new to Repub­li­can activists—but it gained trac­tion thanks to radio host and author Mark Levin. Every year or so, Levin writes a tract of doom­say­ing, orig­i­nal­ist con­sti­tu­tion­al argu­ments that sells like mad but gets com­plete­ly ignored on the left. It hap­pened again this year, when his book The Lib­er­ty Amend­ments topped the New York Times best-sell­er list. While lib­er­als were nap­ping, Levin was sell­ing a pock­et his­to­ry of state tyran­ny and a pack­age of amend­ments that could thwart it.

“Upon ascend­ing to the pres­i­den­cy,” wrote Levin, “[Franklin] Roo­sevelt erect­ed an auto­crat­ic pro­gram to over­come the tran­sience of Sta­tist elec­toral vic­to­ries and inter­rupt­ed rule.” Con­ser­v­a­tives could win elec­tions, but they could nev­er roll back the state that FDR, then LBJ, then Barack Oba­ma had expand­ed. “The reper­cus­sions were nev­er in doubt and are now ever more tan­gi­ble, with a def­i­nite upshot—devouring the civ­il soci­ety and sub­sum­ing indi­vid­ual sov­er­eign­ty. This is pre­cise­ly why the Framers pro­vid­ed in Arti­cle V a back­stop to restore con­sti­tu­tion­al repub­li­can­ism.”

And Levin knew what the Framers would have want­ed. He pro­posed 10 amend­ments, start­ing with 12-year term lim­its for mem­bers of Con­gress and Supreme Court judges. Unpop­u­lar Supreme Court deci­sions could be over­rid­den by a three-fifths con­gres­sion­al vote, “not sub­ject to a pres­i­den­tial veto.” The 17^th Amend­ment would be abol­ished, let­ting state leg­is­la­tures once again elect the Sen­ate. (If that hap­pened today, the Sen­ate would be snapped up imme­di­ate­ly by Repub­li­cans.) If 34 states chose to, they could over­ride any fed­er­al statutes or reg­u­la­tions “exceed­ing an eco­nom­ic bur­den of $100 mil­lion.”

None of this could pass the 113^th Con­gress. None of this had real­ly been pro­posed when Repub­li­cans ran the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment. That was Levin’s whole point. “Amer­i­ca is blue state right now,” he told the crowd of social con­ser­v­a­tives who gath­ered for this year’s Val­ues Vot­er Sum­mit. “The only way to address this is to find 34 state leg­is­la­tures, and to take the time to do it. It took us a cen­tu­ry to get here and so it may take us 20 or 30 years to get out of this. But we have no options. This is the only option. I don’t care if no sen­a­tor or no mem­ber of Con­gress sup­ports this. We bypass them.”

With­out Levin, far few­er con­ser­v­a­tives would be tin­gling at the men­tion of “Arti­cle V.” The leg­is­la­tors who met in Mount Ver­non had their qualms with giv­ing Levin cred­it. “He called me up to have me on his show,” said Kapen­ga. “That was a lit­tle frus­trat­ing, because I saw a cou­ple of peo­ple say­ing this was inspired by Levin’s book. This was planned before the book! All of a sud­den, peo­ple say, ‘Oh, these guys must have read The Lib­er­ty Amend­ments.’ But this is a non­par­ti­san idea. Prof. Lawrence Lessig, who def­i­nite­ly doesn’t agree with Mark Levin, has said that we’re doing some­thing that makes sense.”
...

And as Texas law pro­fes­sor Sandy Levin­son warned at the time, while it’s tech­ni­cal­ly pos­si­ble pro­gres­sive goals could be achieved once a con­sti­tu­tion­al con­ven­tion gets under­way, the forces behind this effort would be doing this if they felt like that was a seri­ous dan­ger. Which is a very impor­tant warn­ing to keep in mind today as this same net­work now sues to put the Arti­cle V sce­nario into play:

...
That’s true. There are pro­gres­sive-mind­ed legal thinkers who like the idea of states blow­ing past the unman­age­able Con­gress. “Rely­ing on ALEC will assure that the spe­cif­ic pro­pos­als will be unten­ably right-wing,” said Uni­ver­si­ty of Texas law pro­fes­sor Sandy Levin­son. “But, of course, that doesn’t guar­an­tee they’ll get to the mag­ic num­ber of 34, let alone the fur­ther mag­ic num­ber of 38 actu­al­ly to amend the Con­sti­tu­tion.” Some good-gov­ern­ment reform, like mul­ti­ple-mem­ber House dis­tricts, would com­bat ger­ry­man­der­ing in a way that cut against Repub­li­cans.

“It’s impos­si­ble to imag­ine that the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives would adopt such a pro­pos­al,” said Levin­son, refer­ring to the notion of mul­ti­ple-mem­ber seats. “But one can imag­ine that it could get to 38. There would be no rea­son for the 19 states with four or few­er rep­re­sen­ta­tives par­tic­u­lar­ly to care, and one could imag­ine that anoth­er 19 states would see this as a way to dimin­ish the reap­por­tion­ment wars.”

But con­ser­v­a­tives wouldn’t be clam­or­ing for Arti­cle V if they thought a con­ven­tion would pro­duce vic­to­ries for the left. They’ve got a head start on this; they’re think­ing of how to build a move­ment that runs around Con­gress to restore the “Con­sti­tu­tion in exile.” The con­ven­tion, if it hap­pened some years from now, needs to hap­pen on their terms. Not that they’re going to shout that from the moun­tain­top.

...

Again, this was Decem­ber of 2013, short­ly after it had become clear the Oba­ma admin­is­tra­tion was­n’t going to agree to a “grand bar­gain” that destroyed and pri­va­tized enti­tle­ments. And as we saw, they were prep­ping for a long-haul effort. Decades of work were ahead of them, poten­tial­ly. But they were com­mit­ted.

The Lawsuit that Could End the Constitution: Federal Fiscal Sustainability Foundation’s ALEC-Endorsed Special Math

That was less than a dozen years ago. Flash for­ward to 2025 and what do we find but a new law­suit that, if suc­cess­ful, would trig­ger an Arti­cle V con­ven­tion and, like­ly, ush­er in the end of the US as a for­mal democ­ra­cy. Sure, some sort of warped oli­garchic ver­sion of democ­ra­cy might emerge. But when you have ALEC writ­ing your new con­sti­tu­tion you real­ly should­n’t have high demo­c­ra­t­ic expec­ta­tions. And yes, ALEC is very much part of this lat­est effort, although it’s tech­ni­cal­ly led by by a lit­tle known out­fit called the Fed­er­al Fis­cal Sus­tain­abil­i­ty Foun­da­tion. The group pur­ports to have found a legal argu­ment — or series of ten­u­ous argu­ments, real­ly — that would prove that the thresh­old to enact a con­sti­tu­tion­al con­ven­tion — 34 states agree­ing — has already been met. Let the con­sti­tu­tion­al re-write begin!

As we’re going to see, the group’s chair­man, David Walk­er, is a top lieu­tenant in Pete Peter­son­’s pro-aus­ter­i­ty lob­by­ing efforts and served as one of the lead­ing fig­ures in the aus­ter­i­ty-lob­by’s failed efforts to con­vince the Oba­ma admin­is­tra­tion to impose an enti­tle­ment-shred­ding ‘grand bar­gain’ from 2009–2013. Efforts that ulti­mate­ly failed, cul­mi­nat­ing in the above Decem­ber 2013 Mount Ver­non gath­er­ing when the con­sti­tu­tion­al con­ven­tion schem­ing for­mal­ly got under­way.

But this law­suit isn’t a joint prod­uct of Peter­son aus­ter­i­ty-lob­by and ALEC. Charles “Chuck” Coop­er — an NRA lawyer and CNP mem­ber who has worked close­ly with Mark Meck­ler’s Con­ven­tion of States — has endorse the draft law­suit. Recall how back in 2019, Coop­er wrote in an email to Con­ven­tion of States activists how, “the real threat to our con­sti­tu­tion­al rights today is posed not by an Arti­cle V Con­ven­tion of States, but by an out-of-con­trol fed­er­al gov­ern­ment, exer­cis­ing pow­ers that it does not have and abus­ing pow­ers that it does.” That’s the phi­los­o­phy guid­ing this effort.

This scheme is also more than just the draft for a law­suit. We are told that Walk­er, along with ALEC’s CEO — Lisa Nel­son — have already been shop­ping around try­ing to find state attor­neys gen­er­al who would be will­ing to wage their law­suit in the courts. This is a good time to recall how Nel­son was at a CNP event in Feb­ru­ary of 2020 — right as the COVID pan­dem­ic was get­ting start­ed — when she informed the group she was already work­ing with GOP attor­neys on meth­ods for over­turn­ing the pop­u­lar vote in the upcom­ing pres­i­den­tial elec­tion. One of the GOP lawyers she told them she was work­ing with was key CNP elec­tion-denier Cle­ta Mitchell. Also recall how Nel­son and Mitchell were already strate­giz­ing on how to over­turn a 2020 Trump loss as far back as August of 2019. Yes, the same ALEC CEO who is now shop­ping around with draft law­suit to trig­ger an Arti­cle V con­sti­tu­tion­al con­ven­tion is the same per­son who was lead­ing the devel­op­ment of schemes to over­turn a 2020 Trump loss. Because of course.

It sounds like law­mak­ers in Utah, Ari­zona, South Car­oli­na and West Vir­ginia have already start­ed work­ing towards get­ting their states to back the suit. In fact, the whole idea for the law­suit report­ed­ly emerged dur­ing a 2020 ALEC pre­sen­ta­tion by a bal­anced bud­get activist named David Bid­dulph who pro­posed the idea of com­bin­ing old state res­o­lu­tions that called for a gen­er­al con­sti­tu­tion­al con­ven­tion with ones specif­i­cal­ly call­ing for for a bal­anced bud­get amend­ment. That’s part of how they get to their 34 state thresh­old, along with claims that the states that have for­mal­ly with­drawn their con­sti­tu­tion­al con­ven­tion calls could­n’t do that because “once the Arti­cle V bell has been rung, it can­not be unrung.” It’s a legal gim­mick. But a gim­mick of the mega-donor class, which makes it the kind of legal gim­mick that just might work. And, in turn, make that mega-donor class more pow­er­ful than ever. For­ev­er:

ProP­ub­li­ca

How a Push to Amend the Con­sti­tu­tion Could Help Trump Expand Pres­i­den­tial Pow­er

by Phoebe Petro­vic, Wis­con­sin Watch
March 17, 2025, 5 a.m. EDT

A behind-the-scenes legal effort to force Con­gress to call a con­ven­tion to amend the Con­sti­tu­tion could end up help­ing Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump in his push to expand pres­i­den­tial pow­er.

While the con­ven­tion effort is focused on the nation­al debt, legal experts say it could open the door to oth­er changes, such as lim­it­ing who can be a U.S. cit­i­zen, allow­ing the pres­i­dent to over­rule Con­gress’ spend­ing deci­sions or even mak­ing it legal for Trump to run for a third term.

Wis­con­sin Watch and ProP­ub­li­ca have obtained a draft ver­sion of a pro­posed law­suit being float­ed to attor­neys gen­er­al in sev­er­al states, reveal­ing new details about who’s involved and their efforts to advance legal argu­ments that lib­er­al and con­ser­v­a­tive legal schol­ars alike have crit­i­cized, call­ing them “wild,” “com­plete­ly ille­git­i­mate” and “deeply flawed.”

The endeav­or pre­dates Trump’s sec­ond term but car­ries new weight as sev­er­al mem­bers of Trump’s inner cir­cle and House Speak­er Mike John­son have pre­vi­ous­ly expressed sup­port for a con­ven­tion to lim­it fed­er­al gov­ern­ment spend­ing and pow­er.

Arti­cle V of the Con­sti­tu­tion requires Con­gress to call a con­ven­tion to pro­pose and pass amend­ments if two-thirds of states, or 34, request one. This type of con­ven­tion has nev­er hap­pened in U.S. his­to­ry, and a decades­long effort to advance a so-called bal­anced bud­get amend­ment, which would pro­hib­it the gov­ern­ment from run­ning a deficit, has stalled at 28.

Despite that, the law­suit being cir­cu­lat­ed claims that Con­gress must hold a con­ven­tion now because the states reached the two-thirds thresh­old in 1979. To get there, these activists count var­i­ous calls for a con­ven­tion dat­ing back to the late 1700s. Wisconsin’s peti­tion, for exam­ple, was writ­ten in 1929 and was an effort to repeal Pro­hi­bi­tion. The old­est peti­tion they cite, from New York, pre­dates the Bill of Rights. Some oth­ers came on the eve of the Civ­il War.

“It is absurd, on the face of it, that they could count some­thing that had to do with Pro­hi­bi­tion as a call for a con­sti­tu­tion­al con­ven­tion in 2025,” said Russ Fein­gold, a for­mer Demo­c­ra­t­ic sen­a­tor from Wis­con­sin who co-wrote a book crit­i­cal of con­ven­tion efforts like this one. “They’re just play­ing games to try to pre­tend that the founders of this coun­try want­ed you to be able to mix and match res­o­lu­tions from all dif­fer­ent times in Amer­i­can his­to­ry.”

To avoid the threat of a con­ven­tion, the leg­is­la­tures in some states like Col­orado and Illi­nois have passed res­o­lu­tions with­draw­ing their peti­tions. The draft law­suit says those actions don’t count because “once the Arti­cle V bell has been rung, it can­not be unrung.” Near­ly half the states the draft counts have rescind­ed their peti­tions.

The draft law­suit is the work of the Fed­er­al Fis­cal Sus­tain­abil­i­ty Foun­da­tion, a low-pro­file non­prof­it that has drawn sup­port from bal­anced bud­get advo­cates and the con­ser­v­a­tive Amer­i­can Leg­isla­tive Exchange Coun­cil. The group’s chair, David M. Walk­er, over­saw gov­ern­ment account­abil­i­ty as U.S. comp­trol­ler gen­er­al dur­ing both the Clin­ton and Bush admin­is­tra­tions. The draft law­suit is signed by Charles “Chuck” Coop­er, a high-pow­ered con­ser­v­a­tive lawyer in Wash­ing­ton, D.C., who rep­re­sent­ed Trump’s pre­vi­ous attor­ney gen­er­al dur­ing the spe­cial counsel’s inves­ti­ga­tion into Russ­ian inter­fer­ence in the 2016 elec­tion.

Walk­er and his team have shopped the law­suit to over a dozen state attor­neys gen­er­al and Repub­li­can-con­trolled leg­is­la­tures seek­ing to find states to serve as plain­tiffs, accord­ing to emails obtained through records requests, pub­lic tes­ti­mo­ny and inter­views. Along­side ALEC’s CEO, they met with mem­bers of the Utah attor­ney general’s office in 2023, try­ing to recruit the state to take the lead, and planned to meet with Texas Attor­ney Gen­er­al Ken Pax­ton, emails show. Law­mak­ers in Utah, Ari­zona, South Car­oli­na and West Vir­ginia have sought to get their states to join the law­suit.

Walk­er declined to con­firm the authen­tic­i­ty of the draft com­plaint and wouldn’t say which states have signed onto the law­suit. But it mir­rors the legal argu­ments Walk­er and his group have made, and the document’s meta­da­ta shows Cooper’s firm authored it. Nei­ther Coop­er nor his firm returned repeat­ed requests for com­ment. An ALEC spokesper­son said the group has mere­ly pro­vid­ed a “forum” to “exchange ideas.”

Walk­er said an attor­ney general’s office has writ­ten its own ver­sion with “mod­i­fi­ca­tions.” He said he hopes the states will announce their intent to sue with­in the next two months and file short­ly after.

Walk­er and the draft com­plaint say the con­ven­tion is nec­es­sary to con­front the nation­al debt and would be lim­it­ed to dis­cussing fis­cal respon­si­bil­i­ty.

“Some peo­ple think that the con­ven­tion would get togeth­er to basi­cal­ly rewrite the Con­sti­tu­tion. That’s total­ly false,” Walk­er said. “That has noth­ing to do with what we’re propos­ing. Under Arti­cle V, it’s just a sep­a­rate way to get an amend­ment to the exist­ing con­sti­tu­tion.”

Dozens of legal schol­ars and hun­dreds of civ­il soci­ety groups, orga­nized by the gov­ern­ment watch­dog Com­mon Cause, have warned that it would be exceed­ing­ly dif­fi­cult to con­strain a con­ven­tion to just one idea and that call­ing one would expose the entire Con­sti­tu­tion to revi­sion. Some of them say the risk has grown under Trump.

“Nobody is observ­ing any restraints on their pow­er,” George­town law pro­fes­sor and con­ven­tion crit­ic David Super said. “If he con­tin­ues to lose in the courts, one can imag­ine he will be try­ing to get a con­ven­tion to adopt his view of pres­i­den­tial pow­ers.”

Asked to respond, White House spokesper­son Anna Kel­ly accused Wis­con­sin Watch of hav­ing “TDS” (Trump derange­ment syn­drome) and being a “dark mon­ey” group. (Wis­con­sin Watch makes its donors pub­lic here.)

Sam Field­man, of the cam­paign finance reform group Wolf-PAC, has indi­vid­u­al­ly worked with the foun­da­tion on the law­suit. He said the process empow­ers states to check the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment and change the Con­sti­tu­tion if Con­gress fails to act.

“Peo­ple who are claim­ing that this process will lead to tyran­ny are sit­ting here twid­dling their thumbs while we are head­ing toward tyran­ny like a rock­et right now,” Field­man said.

“Fuzzy Math” and a “Time Machine”

Through­out his­to­ry, the Con­sti­tu­tion has been amend­ed 27 times, includ­ing to abol­ish slav­ery and pro­vide women with the right to vote. An amend­ment must be approved by two-thirds of both hous­es of Con­gress. It then must be rat­i­fied by three-quar­ters of the states to become law.

The Con­sti­tu­tion also offers anoth­er way: Con­gress can call a con­ven­tion after two-thirds of state leg­is­la­tures request one.

But Arti­cle V pro­vides few oth­er details. It does not say what con­sti­tutes a valid appli­ca­tion or how to add them togeth­er to reach 34. Nor does it say how a con­ven­tion should run. It does not enu­mer­ate specifics on del­e­gates, such as who can serve and how states should select them, nor whether each state gets one vote or votes rel­a­tive to pop­u­la­tion. And it does not spec­i­fy whether a con­ven­tion can be lim­it­ed to spe­cif­ic issues.

As of now, the three-fourths rat­i­fi­ca­tion require­ment still stands. Crit­ics fear del­e­gates could take the extreme step of low­er­ing the thresh­old to make it eas­i­er for the amend­ments to pass, a sce­nario that pro­po­nents dis­miss as “fear mon­ger­ing.”

Few­er than half the states have laws or poli­cies gov­ern­ing con­ven­tion pro­ce­dures. The major­i­ty of those would give state leg­is­la­tors, rather than vot­ers, the abil­i­ty to select del­e­gates. They’d also per­mit each state one vote, accord­ing to a 2025 review by the Cen­ter for Media and Democ­ra­cy, a pro­gres­sive gov­ern­ment watch­dog.

The cen­ter obtained audio of for­mer Repub­li­can Sen. Rick San­to­rum of Penn­syl­va­nia at a pri­vate ALEC work­shop say­ing that because “most states are going to be con­trolled by Repub­li­cans,” rur­al and Repub­li­can vot­ers will have “an out­size grant­ed pow­er” in a con­ven­tion.

“We have the oppor­tu­ni­ty as a result of that to have a super­ma­jor­i­ty,” he said, even though “we may not even be in an absolute major­i­ty when it comes to the peo­ple who agree with us.”

...

Over the years, peo­ple from across the polit­i­cal spec­trum have attempt­ed to call con­ven­tions for var­i­ous top­ics, such as cam­paign finance reform and con­gres­sion­al term lim­its. None of the advo­cates have tried to use states’ old calls that didn’t spec­i­fy a top­ic to reach the required 34.

But dur­ing a 2020 ALEC pre­sen­ta­tion, a bal­anced bud­get activist named David Bid­dulph debuted a new the­o­ry: By com­bin­ing old res­o­lu­tions that gen­er­al­ly called for a con­ven­tion with ones for a bal­anced bud­get amend­ment, the nation already sur­passed the thresh­old.

Bid­dulph said he based his the­o­ry on a paper authored by Robert Natel­son, a for­mer law pro­fes­sor who focus­es on Arti­cle V, and pub­lished by the Fed­er­al­ist Soci­ety in 2018. But Natelson’s paper did not claim the thresh­old had been reached, and in an inter­view, he said he dis­agrees with activists claim­ing oth­er­wise.

Dur­ing the pre­sen­ta­tion, mod­er­at­ed by for­mer Wis­con­sin Gov. Scott Walk­er, Bid­dulph announced that his orga­ni­za­tion, which became the Fed­er­al Fis­cal Sus­tain­abil­i­ty Foun­da­tion, was encour­ag­ing attor­neys gen­er­al to file suit against Con­gress.

...

That same the­o­ry forms the basis of the draft law­suit, which counts six peti­tions that called for a con­ven­tion with­out stat­ing a spe­cif­ic pur­pose along­side bal­anced bud­get ones to sup­port their claim for a con­ven­tion.

“They real­ize they will nev­er get to 34 hon­est­ly now, so they are talk­ing about a new math,” said Nan­cy MacLean, a his­to­ri­an whose book “Democ­ra­cy in Chains” dis­cuss­es the dan­gers of a con­ven­tion. Some con­ven­tion oppo­nents, like Super, refer to this as the “fuzzy math” the­o­ry.

Dur­ing a leg­isla­tive hear­ing in Utah, Sharon Ander­son, a con­ser­v­a­tive oppo­nent of a con­ven­tion, used a metaphor to crit­i­cize the count­ing method.

“A cer­tain team, dis­cour­aged that they hadn’t scored the win­ning touch­down yet, devised a way to win the game,” Ander­son said. “Instead of actu­al­ly get­ting the ball into the end zone, they would basi­cal­ly add up all the yards they had gained until they totaled a dis­tance need­ed to cross the goal line.”

But Natel­son, a mem­ber of ALEC’s board of schol­ars who is cit­ed repeat­ed­ly in the law­suit, said if law­mak­ers had want­ed to lim­it their calls to spe­cif­ic top­ics, they could have done so.

The sec­ond key part of the foundation’s legal argu­ment is tim­ing, which oppo­nents like Super refer to as the “time machine” the­o­ry. Wis­con­sin passed a bal­anced bud­get amend­ment res­o­lu­tion in 2017, yet the draft instead includes the state’s Pro­hi­bi­tion-era peti­tion because it’s count­ing appli­ca­tions on the books between 1979 and 1998 — a peri­od when the draft argues at least 34 exist­ed.

Unmen­tioned, how­ev­er, is that almost nobody dur­ing that peri­od claimed that the nation had sur­passed the thresh­old.

This is unlike recent debates over the Equal Rights Amend­ment, which would pro­hib­it dis­crim­i­na­tion based on sex. Some argue that enough states have now approved the amend­ment, but the U.S. archivist declined to cer­ti­fy it because Con­gress explic­it­ly set a dead­line for rat­i­fi­ca­tion that states did not meet.

Get­ting States on Board

Bid­dulph and oth­ers began to enlist state sup­port in 2022 with an email that announced: “The his­toric mile­stone of 34 Arti­cle V state res­o­lu­tions call­ing for an amend­ment con­ven­tion to pro­pose a Bal­anced Bud­get Amend­ment (BBA) has final­ly been achieved, and sur­pris­ing­ly it hap­pened over 40 years ago.”

The mes­sage, obtained by the Cen­ter for Media and Democ­ra­cy and pro­vid­ed to Wis­con­sin Watch and ProP­ub­li­ca, asked states to pass a res­o­lu­tion demand­ing Con­gress call a con­ven­tion and direct­ing the state’s leg­is­la­ture and attor­ney gen­er­al to “take such actions as will require Congress’s com­pli­ance.”

Repub­li­can state law­mak­ers in Utah and South Car­oli­na respond­ed with­in days, intro­duc­ing mea­sures incor­po­rat­ing some of the pro­posed lan­guage.

“We have a tremen­dous oppor­tu­ni­ty as a state to deal with an issue that is a very seri­ous and grave moment in our nation,” Utah state Rep. Ken Ivory, a Repub­li­can who intro­duced the mea­sure, said at a leg­isla­tive hear­ing in Feb­ru­ary 2022. “It’s the pow­er of the state to be able to deal with the exces­sive debt and the finan­cial explo­sion and the swin­dling, as Thomas Jef­fer­son said, the swin­dling of the future on a mas­sive scale.”

Since the Utah hear­ing, Ari­zona and West Vir­ginia have also intro­duced mea­sures demand­ing Con­gress call a con­ven­tion. West Virginia’s was the most explic­it, resolv­ing to “com­mence fed­er­al court action” against Con­gress, and advanced the fur­thest, pass­ing the state House of Del­e­gates before stalling in its Sen­ate. So far, none of the res­o­lu­tions has been adopt­ed. West Virginia’s was rein­tro­duced last month.

In Feb­ru­ary 2024, activists believed they were close to fil­ing the law­suit, emails obtained through a pub­lic records request show. The Sen­ate pres­i­dents and House speak­ers in Utah and Ari­zona signed let­ters express­ing their inter­est in join­ing a fed­er­al law­suit against Con­gress to force a con­ven­tion on fis­cal issues.

In an email that was cc’d to the Ari­zona law­mak­er who spon­sored the state’s res­o­lu­tion, con­ven­tion sup­port­er Mike Kapic cel­e­brat­ed Utah’s and Arizona’s inter­est as a “win.”

“One more and UT says they’ll lead the fil­ing in fed­er­al court,” Kapic wrote. “Then watch oth­er states rush to file.”

It still hasn’t hap­pened. The Ari­zona Leg­is­la­ture does not have stand­ing to file a law­suit on its own, a spokesper­son for the state attor­ney gen­er­al said, and the Demo­c­ra­t­ic attor­ney gen­er­al has not agreed to take the case.

...

Ivory said by email that he is unaware whether Utah has any cur­rent plans to sue Con­gress. “New AG, New Con­gress, New Pres­i­dent,” he wrote, adding that he believes “nego­ti­a­tions” may be tak­ing place with Con­gress “with poten­tial promis­ing results,” but that he is not involved.

Alas­ka is the only state list­ed on the draft com­plaint, but the state attor­ney general’s office would not con­firm whether it has joined.

In Con­gress, Texas Repub­li­can Rep. Jodey Arring­ton has also intro­duced res­o­lu­tions to trig­ger a con­ven­tion, includ­ing one he put for­ward last month. His office did not agree to an inter­view.

If Con­gress does call a con­ven­tion, it would like­ly be up to del­e­gates to keep it from creep­ing into oth­er parts of the Con­sti­tu­tion.

His­to­ri­ans gen­er­al­ly agree that the 1787 con­sti­tu­tion­al con­ven­tion itself was a run­away con­ven­tion. Del­e­gates met in Philadel­phia to amend the Arti­cles of Con­fed­er­a­tion, a process that required una­nim­i­ty among states. Instead, they scrapped the entire doc­u­ment and draft­ed the Con­sti­tu­tion, propos­ing a low­er thresh­old for states to rat­i­fy amend­ments.

—————————-

“How a Push to Amend the Con­sti­tu­tion Could Help Trump Expand Pres­i­den­tial Pow­er” by Phoebe Petro­vic; ProP­ub­li­ca; 03/17/2025

“While the con­ven­tion effort is focused on the nation­al debt, legal experts say it could open the door to oth­er changes, such as lim­it­ing who can be a U.S. cit­i­zen, allow­ing the pres­i­dent to over­rule Con­gress’ spend­ing deci­sions or even mak­ing it legal for Trump to run for a third term.”

It’s not just a draft law­suit that threat­ens a con­sti­tu­tion­al con­ven­tion that could impose and indi­ot­ic bal­anced bud­get amend­ment. It’s the much larg­er threat of a run­away con­ven­tion that could eas­i­ly devolve into an over­haul of the entire US Con­sti­tu­tion. Includ­ing the kind of com­plete over­haul that took place in 1787. Are Amer­i­can’s keen on a com­plete­ly new con­sti­tu­tion? Because that’s what the forces behind this move­ment clear­ly has in mind. A con­sti­tu­tion­al­ly-allowed third Trump term will be the least of the US’s con­cerns. At least he’s going to die soon­er or lat­er. This new con­sti­tu­tion will be the law of land indef­i­nite­ly should this law­suit pre­vail:

...
Wis­con­sin Watch and ProP­ub­li­ca have obtained a draft ver­sion of a pro­posed law­suit being float­ed to attor­neys gen­er­al in sev­er­al states, reveal­ing new details about who’s involved and their efforts to advance legal argu­ments that lib­er­al and con­ser­v­a­tive legal schol­ars alike have crit­i­cized, call­ing them “wild,” “com­plete­ly ille­git­i­mate” and “deeply flawed.”

The endeav­or pre­dates Trump’s sec­ond term but car­ries new weight as sev­er­al mem­bers of Trump’s inner cir­cle and House Speak­er Mike John­son have pre­vi­ous­ly expressed sup­port for a con­ven­tion to lim­it fed­er­al gov­ern­ment spend­ing and pow­er.

Arti­cle V of the Con­sti­tu­tion requires Con­gress to call a con­ven­tion to pro­pose and pass amend­ments if two-thirds of states, or 34, request one. This type of con­ven­tion has nev­er hap­pened in U.S. his­to­ry, and a decades­long effort to advance a so-called bal­anced bud­get amend­ment, which would pro­hib­it the gov­ern­ment from run­ning a deficit, has stalled at 28.

Despite that, the law­suit being cir­cu­lat­ed claims that Con­gress must hold a con­ven­tion now because the states reached the two-thirds thresh­old in 1979. To get there, these activists count var­i­ous calls for a con­ven­tion dat­ing back to the late 1700s. Wisconsin’s peti­tion, for exam­ple, was writ­ten in 1929 and was an effort to repeal Pro­hi­bi­tion. The old­est peti­tion they cite, from New York, pre­dates the Bill of Rights. Some oth­ers came on the eve of the Civ­il War.

...

If Con­gress does call a con­ven­tion, it would like­ly be up to del­e­gates to keep it from creep­ing into oth­er parts of the Con­sti­tu­tion.

His­to­ri­ans gen­er­al­ly agree that the 1787 con­sti­tu­tion­al con­ven­tion itself was a run­away con­ven­tion. Del­e­gates met in Philadel­phia to amend the Arti­cles of Con­fed­er­a­tion, a process that required una­nim­i­ty among states. Instead, they scrapped the entire doc­u­ment and draft­ed the Con­sti­tu­tion, propos­ing a low­er thresh­old for states to rat­i­fy amend­ments.
...

And as we can see from the com­ments of for­mer Sen­a­tor (and CNP mem­ber) Rick San­to­rum dur­ing a pri­vate ALEC work­shop, the fact that “most states are going to be con­trolled by Repub­li­can”, rur­al and Repub­li­can vot­ers will have “an out­size grant­ed pow­er” in a con­ven­tion. Which is basi­caly an acknowl­edg­ment that the forces behind this real­ly do see a his­toric oppor­tu­ni­ty for impos­ing a new con­sti­tu­tion that would only be backed by a minor­i­ty of the pop­u­la­tion. “We have the oppor­tu­ni­ty as a result of that to have a super­ma­jor­i­ty [even though] we may not even be in an absolute major­i­ty when it comes to the peo­ple who agree with us.” That’s the plan:

...
Few­er than half the states have laws or poli­cies gov­ern­ing con­ven­tion pro­ce­dures. The major­i­ty of those would give state leg­is­la­tors, rather than vot­ers, the abil­i­ty to select del­e­gates. They’d also per­mit each state one vote, accord­ing to a 2025 review by the Cen­ter for Media and Democ­ra­cy, a pro­gres­sive gov­ern­ment watch­dog.

The cen­ter obtained audio of for­mer Repub­li­can Sen. Rick San­to­rum of Penn­syl­va­nia at a pri­vate ALEC work­shop say­ing that because “most states are going to be con­trolled by Repub­li­cans,” rur­al and Repub­li­can vot­ers will have “an out­size grant­ed pow­er” in a con­ven­tion.

“We have the oppor­tu­ni­ty as a result of that to have a super­ma­jor­i­ty,” he said, even though “we may not even be in an absolute major­i­ty when it comes to the peo­ple who agree with us.”
...

And as we can see, ALEC has been quite active with this effort. In fact, it was at a 2020 ALEC pre­sen­ta­tion when bal­anced bud­get activist David Bid­dulph pushed his new the­o­ry that the US nation had already sur­passed the con­sti­tu­tion­al con­ven­tion thresh­old. A new the­o­ry based on an arti­cle pub­lished by the Fed­er­al­ist soci­ety in 2018...a paper that did­n’t actu­al­ly sup­port Bid­dulph’s claims that the 34 state thresh­old had already been reached. For­mer Wis­con­sin Gov­er­nor — and CNP Mem­ber — Scott Walk­er was mod­er­at­ing Bid­dulph’s pre­sen­ta­tion. A pre­sen­ta­tion where Bid­dulph encour­aged attor­neys gen­er­al to file a suit against Con­gress to force a con­ven­tion. Bid­dulph went on to rename his orga­ni­za­tion the Fed­er­al Fis­cal Sus­tain­abil­i­ty Foun­da­tion:

...
Over the years, peo­ple from across the polit­i­cal spec­trum have attempt­ed to call con­ven­tions for var­i­ous top­ics, such as cam­paign finance reform and con­gres­sion­al term lim­its. None of the advo­cates have tried to use states’ old calls that didn’t spec­i­fy a top­ic to reach the required 34.

But dur­ing a 2020 ALEC pre­sen­ta­tion, a bal­anced bud­get activist named David Bid­dulph debuted a new the­o­ry: By com­bin­ing old res­o­lu­tions that gen­er­al­ly called for a con­ven­tion with ones for a bal­anced bud­get amend­ment, the nation already sur­passed the thresh­old.

Bid­dulph said he based his the­o­ry on a paper authored by Robert Natel­son, a for­mer law pro­fes­sor who focus­es on Arti­cle V, and pub­lished by the Fed­er­al­ist Soci­ety in 2018. But Natelson’s paper did not claim the thresh­old had been reached, and in an inter­view, he said he dis­agrees with activists claim­ing oth­er­wise.

Dur­ing the pre­sen­ta­tion, mod­er­at­ed by for­mer Wis­con­sin Gov. Scott Walk­er, Bid­dulph announced that his orga­ni­za­tion, which became the Fed­er­al Fis­cal Sus­tain­abil­i­ty Foun­da­tion, was encour­ag­ing attor­neys gen­er­al to file suit against Con­gress.

...

That same the­o­ry forms the basis of the draft law­suit, which counts six peti­tions that called for a con­ven­tion with­out stat­ing a spe­cif­ic pur­pose along­side bal­anced bud­get ones to sup­port their claim for a con­ven­tion.
...

And as we can see, by 2022, state law­mak­ers in Utah and Ari­zona were tak­ing up Bid­dulph’s call to force a con­ven­tion. These weren’t just ran­dom state law­mak­ers. The Pres­i­dents of the Sen­ate and House Speak­ers for Utah and Ari­zona all signed up in sup­port of the pro­posed law­suit to force a con­sti­tu­tion­al con­ven­tion:

...
Bid­dulph and oth­ers began to enlist state sup­port in 2022 with an email that announced: “The his­toric mile­stone of 34 Arti­cle V state res­o­lu­tions call­ing for an amend­ment con­ven­tion to pro­pose a Bal­anced Bud­get Amend­ment (BBA) has final­ly been achieved, and sur­pris­ing­ly it hap­pened over 40 years ago.”

The mes­sage, obtained by the Cen­ter for Media and Democ­ra­cy and pro­vid­ed to Wis­con­sin Watch and ProP­ub­li­ca, asked states to pass a res­o­lu­tion demand­ing Con­gress call a con­ven­tion and direct­ing the state’s leg­is­la­ture and attor­ney gen­er­al to “take such actions as will require Congress’s com­pli­ance.”

Repub­li­can state law­mak­ers in Utah and South Car­oli­na respond­ed with­in days, intro­duc­ing mea­sures incor­po­rat­ing some of the pro­posed lan­guage.

“We have a tremen­dous oppor­tu­ni­ty as a state to deal with an issue that is a very seri­ous and grave moment in our nation,” Utah state Rep. Ken Ivory, a Repub­li­can who intro­duced the mea­sure, said at a leg­isla­tive hear­ing in Feb­ru­ary 2022. “It’s the pow­er of the state to be able to deal with the exces­sive debt and the finan­cial explo­sion and the swin­dling, as Thomas Jef­fer­son said, the swin­dling of the future on a mas­sive scale.”

Since the Utah hear­ing, Ari­zona and West Vir­ginia have also intro­duced mea­sures demand­ing Con­gress call a con­ven­tion. West Virginia’s was the most explic­it, resolv­ing to “com­mence fed­er­al court action” against Con­gress, and advanced the fur­thest, pass­ing the state House of Del­e­gates before stalling in its Sen­ate. So far, none of the res­o­lu­tions has been adopt­ed. West Virginia’s was rein­tro­duced last month.

In Feb­ru­ary 2024, activists believed they were close to fil­ing the law­suit, emails obtained through a pub­lic records request show. The Sen­ate pres­i­dents and House speak­ers in Utah and Ari­zona signed let­ters express­ing their inter­est in join­ing a fed­er­al law­suit against Con­gress to force a con­ven­tion on fis­cal issues.
...

As we should expect, the argu­ments behind Bid­dulph’s con­sti­tu­tion­al the­o­ries include the asser­tion that states can’t rescind res­o­lu­tions call­ing for a res­o­lu­tion after one has been passed, based on the idea that “once the Arti­cle V bell has been rung, it can­not be unrung.” As crit­ics put it, “They real­ize they will nev­er get to 34 hon­est­ly now, so they are talk­ing about a new math”:

...
“It is absurd, on the face of it, that they could count some­thing that had to do with Pro­hi­bi­tion as a call for a con­sti­tu­tion­al con­ven­tion in 2025,” said Russ Fein­gold, a for­mer Demo­c­ra­t­ic sen­a­tor from Wis­con­sin who co-wrote a book crit­i­cal of con­ven­tion efforts like this one. “They’re just play­ing games to try to pre­tend that the founders of this coun­try want­ed you to be able to mix and match res­o­lu­tions from all dif­fer­ent times in Amer­i­can his­to­ry.”

To avoid the threat of a con­ven­tion, the leg­is­la­tures in some states like Col­orado and Illi­nois have passed res­o­lu­tions with­draw­ing their peti­tions. The draft law­suit says those actions don’t count because “once the Arti­cle V bell has been rung, it can­not be unrung.” Near­ly half the states the draft counts have rescind­ed their peti­tions.

...

“They real­ize they will nev­er get to 34 hon­est­ly now, so they are talk­ing about a new math,” said Nan­cy MacLean, a his­to­ri­an whose book “Democ­ra­cy in Chains” dis­cuss­es the dan­gers of a con­ven­tion. Some con­ven­tion oppo­nents, like Super, refer to this as the “fuzzy math” the­o­ry.

Dur­ing a leg­isla­tive hear­ing in Utah, Sharon Ander­son, a con­ser­v­a­tive oppo­nent of a con­ven­tion, used a metaphor to crit­i­cize the count­ing method.

“A cer­tain team, dis­cour­aged that they hadn’t scored the win­ning touch­down yet, devised a way to win the game,” Ander­son said. “Instead of actu­al­ly get­ting the ball into the end zone, they would basi­cal­ly add up all the yards they had gained until they totaled a dis­tance need­ed to cross the goal line.”

But Natel­son, a mem­ber of ALEC’s board of schol­ars who is cit­ed repeat­ed­ly in the law­suit, said if law­mak­ers had want­ed to lim­it their calls to spe­cif­ic top­ics, they could have done so.

The sec­ond key part of the foundation’s legal argu­ment is tim­ing, which oppo­nents like Super refer to as the “time machine” the­o­ry. Wis­con­sin passed a bal­anced bud­get amend­ment res­o­lu­tion in 2017, yet the draft instead includes the state’s Pro­hi­bi­tion-era peti­tion because it’s count­ing appli­ca­tions on the books between 1979 and 1998 — a peri­od when the draft argues at least 34 exist­ed.

Unmen­tioned, how­ev­er, is that almost nobody dur­ing that peri­od claimed that the nation had sur­passed the thresh­old.
...

But Bid­dulph’s Fed­er­al Fis­cal Sus­tain­abil­i­ty Foun­da­tion isn’t the only orga­ni­za­tion behind this move­ment. Beyond ALEC’s obvi­ous role, we find oth­er enti­ties like Sam Field­man’s Wolf-PAC. And while Wolf-PAC’s ambi­tions — over­turn­ing the dis­as­trous Cit­i­zens Unit­ed Supreme Court rul­ing with a con­sti­tu­tion­al amend­ment — are much more laud­able than those of the Con­ven­tion of States Project, it’s also a warn­ing about the dan­ger of pro­gres­sive cam­paigns lend­ing a bipar­ti­san pati­na of legit­i­ma­cy to the upcom­ing con­sti­tu­tion­al slaugh­ter:

...
Asked to respond, White House spokesper­son Anna Kel­ly accused Wis­con­sin Watch of hav­ing “TDS” (Trump derange­ment syn­drome) and being a “dark mon­ey” group. (Wis­con­sin Watch makes its donors pub­lic here.)

Sam Field­man, of the cam­paign finance reform group Wolf-PAC, has indi­vid­u­al­ly worked with the foun­da­tion on the law­suit. He said the process empow­ers states to check the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment and change the Con­sti­tu­tion if Con­gress fails to act.

“Peo­ple who are claim­ing that this process will lead to tyran­ny are sit­ting here twid­dling their thumbs while we are head­ing toward tyran­ny like a rock­et right now,” Field­man said.
...

And then we get to some of the ‘usu­al sus­pects’ behind this draft law­suit: it chair of the Fed­er­al Fis­cal Sus­tain­abil­i­ty Foun­da­tion hap­pens to be by David M. Walk­er, the for­mer comp­trol­ler gen­er­al for both Bill Clin­ton and George W. Bush. As we’re going to see, Walk­er has gone on to play a major role in the aus­ter­i­ty cau­cus’s efforts over the years, so in one sense it’s not at all sur­pris­ing to find that Walk­er is lead­ing this Arti­cle V effort giv­en the prospects of an Con­sti­tu­tion­al Con­ven­tion serv­ing as the vehi­cle for the mas­sive enti­tle­ment cuts Walk­er has been long advo­cat­ing. But it’s still very notable giv­en that Walk­er very much fits the mold of the kind of ‘non-par­ti­san’ move­ments that have long pushed for dra­con­ian cuts to enti­tle­ments in the name of ‘fis­cal respon­si­bil­i­ty’. Move­ments that sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly avoid any real exam­i­na­tion of the US’s ever-grow­ing wealth gaps and the mas­sive tax cuts tar­get­ing the super-rich in recent decades. Walk­er is very much an estab­lish­ment fig­ure much like how ALEC is a thor­ough­ly estab­lish­ment orga­ni­za­tion. And then we see who actu­al­ly authored the draft law­suit: CNP mem­ber Charles “Chuck” Coop­er. Yep, a CNP mem­ber authored the law­suit, as we should expect. And as we can see, while Walk­er is quick to offer assur­ances that his group’s law­suit is exclu­sive­ly focused on a bal­anced bud­get amend­ment and isn’t inter­est­ed in a run­away con­ven­tion, those are assur­ances he can’t actu­al­ly make. Once a con­ven­tion is start­ed, it’s up to the del­e­gates run­ning it to deter­mine whether or not it becomes a run­away con­ven­tion:

...
The draft law­suit is the work of the Fed­er­al Fis­cal Sus­tain­abil­i­ty Foun­da­tion, a low-pro­file non­prof­it that has drawn sup­port from bal­anced bud­get advo­cates and the con­ser­v­a­tive Amer­i­can Leg­isla­tive Exchange Coun­cil. The group’s chair, David M. Walk­er, over­saw gov­ern­ment account­abil­i­ty as U.S. comp­trol­ler gen­er­al dur­ing both the Clin­ton and Bush admin­is­tra­tions. The draft law­suit is signed by Charles “Chuck” Coop­er, a high-pow­ered con­ser­v­a­tive lawyer in Wash­ing­ton, D.C., who rep­re­sent­ed Trump’s pre­vi­ous attor­ney gen­er­al dur­ing the spe­cial counsel’s inves­ti­ga­tion into Russ­ian inter­fer­ence in the 2016 elec­tion.

Walk­er and his team have shopped the law­suit to over a dozen state attor­neys gen­er­al and Repub­li­can-con­trolled leg­is­la­tures seek­ing to find states to serve as plain­tiffs, accord­ing to emails obtained through records requests, pub­lic tes­ti­mo­ny and inter­views. Along­side ALEC’s CEO, they met with mem­bers of the Utah attor­ney general’s office in 2023, try­ing to recruit the state to take the lead, and planned to meet with Texas Attor­ney Gen­er­al Ken Pax­ton, emails show. Law­mak­ers in Utah, Ari­zona, South Car­oli­na and West Vir­ginia have sought to get their states to join the law­suit.

Walk­er declined to con­firm the authen­tic­i­ty of the draft com­plaint and wouldn’t say which states have signed onto the law­suit. But it mir­rors the legal argu­ments Walk­er and his group have made, and the document’s meta­da­ta shows Cooper’s firm authored it. Nei­ther Coop­er nor his firm returned repeat­ed requests for com­ment. An ALEC spokesper­son said the group has mere­ly pro­vid­ed a “forum” to “exchange ideas.”

Walk­er said an attor­ney general’s office has writ­ten its own ver­sion with “mod­i­fi­ca­tions.” He said he hopes the states will announce their intent to sue with­in the next two months and file short­ly after.

Walk­er and the draft com­plaint say the con­ven­tion is nec­es­sary to con­front the nation­al debt and would be lim­it­ed to dis­cussing fis­cal respon­si­bil­i­ty.

“Some peo­ple think that the con­ven­tion would get togeth­er to basi­cal­ly rewrite the Con­sti­tu­tion. That’s total­ly false,” Walk­er said. “That has noth­ing to do with what we’re propos­ing. Under Arti­cle V, it’s just a sep­a­rate way to get an amend­ment to the exist­ing con­sti­tu­tion.”

Dozens of legal schol­ars and hun­dreds of civ­il soci­ety groups, orga­nized by the gov­ern­ment watch­dog Com­mon Cause, have warned that it would be exceed­ing­ly dif­fi­cult to con­strain a con­ven­tion to just one idea and that call­ing one would expose the entire Con­sti­tu­tion to revi­sion. Some of them say the risk has grown under Trump.

“Nobody is observ­ing any restraints on their pow­er,” George­town law pro­fes­sor and con­ven­tion crit­ic David Super said. “If he con­tin­ues to lose in the courts, one can imag­ine he will be try­ing to get a con­ven­tion to adopt his view of pres­i­den­tial pow­ers.”

...

Through­out his­to­ry, the Con­sti­tu­tion has been amend­ed 27 times, includ­ing to abol­ish slav­ery and pro­vide women with the right to vote. An amend­ment must be approved by two-thirds of both hous­es of Con­gress. It then must be rat­i­fied by three-quar­ters of the states to become law.

The Con­sti­tu­tion also offers anoth­er way: Con­gress can call a con­ven­tion after two-thirds of state leg­is­la­tures request one.

But Arti­cle V pro­vides few oth­er details. It does not say what con­sti­tutes a valid appli­ca­tion or how to add them togeth­er to reach 34. Nor does it say how a con­ven­tion should run. It does not enu­mer­ate specifics on del­e­gates, such as who can serve and how states should select them, nor whether each state gets one vote or votes rel­a­tive to pop­u­la­tion. And it does not spec­i­fy whether a con­ven­tion can be lim­it­ed to spe­cif­ic issues.

As of now, the three-fourths rat­i­fi­ca­tion require­ment still stands. Crit­ics fear del­e­gates could take the extreme step of low­er­ing the thresh­old to make it eas­i­er for the amend­ments to pass, a sce­nario that pro­po­nents dis­miss as “fear mon­ger­ing.”
...

The forces behind the Con­ven­tion of States and the Bal­anced Bud­get Amend­ment have joined forces to force a Con­sti­tu­tion­al Con­ven­tion. It’s the kind of joint effort that makes it exceed­ing­ly dif­fi­cult to just accept the assur­ances from ‘deficit hawks’ like David Walk­er that a con­ven­tion would be lim­it­ed to a bal­anced bud­get amend­ment. This is a law­suit to effec­tive­ly deploy legal trick­ery for the pur­pose of com­pelling the US into a run­away con­ven­tion.

The Balanced Budget Amendment Movement and the Convention of States Great Recession Merger

But the con­cerns of a run­away con­ven­tion aren’t just root­ed in the fact that the peo­ple behind the Fed­er­al Fis­cal Sus­tain­abil­i­ty Foun­da­tion law­suit include long-stand­ing ‘deficit hawks’ like David M. Walk­er and CNP lawyer Chuck Coop­er. It’s the fact that these forces have been work­ing togeth­er towards this goal for years now, with ‘main­stream’ enti­ties like ALEC play­ing a lead orga­niz­ing role. For years now. As the fol­low­ing 2017 Polit­i­cal Research Asso­ciates excerpt describes, a group called the Bal­anced Bud­get Amend­ment Task Force was formed in 2010 and co-found­ed by David Bid­dulph, the lawyer who, as we saw above, came up with legal the­o­ries under­pin­ning the Fed­er­al Fis­cal Sus­tain­abil­i­ty Foun­da­tion’s ongo­ing law­suit to force a con­ven­tion. The Bal­anced Bud­get Amend­ment Task Force has been work­ing with ALEC ever since to make this con­sti­tu­tion­al con­ven­tion hap­pen. As we saw above, a group of con­ser­v­a­tive leg­is­la­tor had already gath­ered in Decem­ber of 2013 to begin dis­cussing a con­sti­tu­tion­al con­ven­tion. And as we’ll see, in Sep­tem­ber 2014, the Con­ven­tion of States move­ment issued its “Jef­fer­son State­ment” declar­ing an Arti­cle V con­sti­tu­tion­al con­ven­tion was the only viable means of fix­ing the nation’s prob­lems. The group of con­ser­v­a­tive lawyers and law pro­fes­sors who issued this state­ment includ­ed , includ­ing attor­neys John East­man and Charles Coop­er. Yes, the same John East­man who played a key role in con­coct­ing the legal ratio­nale for Jan­u­ary 6.

As we’re going to see in the arti­cles below, 2010 and 2014 very notable years for the start of these efforts. 2010 was the height of the pro-aus­ter­i­ty lob­by’s influ­ence in DC pol­i­cy-mak­ing cir­cles as the Great Reces­sion fol­low­ing the 2008 finan­cial cri­sis was play­ing out. Aus­ter­i­ty efforts that David Walk­er played a major role in lead­ing and that had a key goal of a ‘grand bar­gain’ that would include mas­sive cuts to enti­tle­ments. By 2014, it was clear that those ‘grand bar­gain’ ambi­tions had failed (although they came way clos­er to suc­ceed­ing than they should have). In oth­er words, the appetite for impos­ing a bal­anced bud­get con­sti­tu­tion­al amend­ment only seemed to grow into the much more ambi­tious Con­ven­tion of States agen­da by the time it was clear the aus­ter­i­ty lob­by failed. It’s a key part of the con­text of the ongo­ing Fed­er­al Fis­cal Sus­tain­abil­i­ty Foun­da­tion law­suit being led by David Walk­er and endorsed by Chuck Coop­er: it’s like ’round two’ for the aus­ter­i­ty lob­by, but with much big­ger goals this time and with the back­ing of the CNP and pow­er­ful Chris­t­ian Recon­struc­tion­ist forces:

Polit­i­cal Research Asso­ciates

Will Cor­po­ra­tions, The Chris­t­ian Right, and the Tea Par­ty Get to Rewrite the Con­sti­tu­tion?

Peter Mont­gomery
Octo­ber 16, 2017

For­mer U.S. Sen­a­tor Jim DeMint (R‑SC), the Tea Par­ty icon who helped bring Ted Cruz (R‑TX) and Mike Lee (R‑UT) into the Sen­ate, was oust­ed after four years as pres­i­dent of the Her­itage Foun­da­tion in May 2017.¹ DeMint had thought he would have more influ­ence on pol­i­cy from his perch at Her­itage than he had in the Sen­ate. But as it turned out, there was not only life after Her­itage, but the pos­si­bil­i­ty of greater influ­ence still. “I feel like the Lord knows what He’s doing,” DeMint told broad­cast­er Glenn Beck, because now “I’m in a place where I can make a much big­ger dif­fer­ence.”²

The place where DeMint could make a big­ger dif­fer­ence than as sen­a­tor or head of the 800-pound goril­la of right-wing think tanks is Con­ven­tion of States,³ a group mobi­liz­ing an effort to rewrite the U.S. Con­sti­tu­tion through a set of amend­ments that would dras­ti­cal­ly lim­it the tax­a­tion, reg­u­la­to­ry and over­sight pow­ers of the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment and restruc­ture our con­sti­tu­tion­al order into one focused on states’ rights. DeMint joined the group as a “senior advi­sor” and sees the project as a new Tea Par­ty mis­sion that’s “much big­ger than the Tea Par­ty.”⁴

Con­ven­tion of States is a polit­i­cal alliance between ele­ments of the anti-reg­u­la­to­ry Cor­po­rate Right and the Chris­t­ian Right, orga­niz­ing toward a con­sti­tu­tion­al con­ven­tion that would destroy the under­pin­nings of Great Soci­ety projects like Medicare and food stamps, and New Deal pro­grams like Social Secu­ri­ty. They’re also turn­ing their sights on the pro­gres­sive gains from the turn of the 20th Cen­tu­ry, such as the 16th Amend­ment, which allows the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment to col­lect income tax­es and which they believe start­ed the dis­as­trous course toward big gov­ern­ment.

This effort, like the old­er, more focused dri­ve for a con­ven­tion to advance a bal­anced bud­get amend­ment, is pro­mot­ed in part by the lib­er­tar­i­an Koch broth­ers’ network—often called the “dark mon­ey ATM of the Right”—and the right-wing orga­ni­za­tions they fund, like the Amer­i­can Leg­isla­tive Exchange Coun­cil (ALEC).⁵ And it draws sup­port from Chris­t­ian Right fig­ures root­ed in Recon­struc­tion­ist the­ol­o­gy that believes God reserves tasks like edu­ca­tion or car­ing for the poor for church­es and fam­i­lies, not gov­ern­ment.

...

Polit­i­cal Research Asso­ciates pub­lished sig­nif­i­cant work in 2013 and 2014 by Fred­er­ick Clark­son, Rachel Tabach­nick and Frank Cocozzel­li on right-wing approach­es to lim­it­ing or erod­ing the pow­er of the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment. These includ­ed var­i­ous pro­pos­als for inter­state com­pacts and dif­fer­ent con­ven­tion pro­pos­als.⁶ Also cov­ered were threats of seces­sion and civ­il war, and argu­ments for nul­li­fi­ca­tion⁷—the the­o­ry, repeat­ed­ly reject­ed by the Supreme Court, that states can ignore or defy fed­er­al laws or court rul­ings they deem uncon­sti­tu­tion­al. Some seg­re­ga­tion­ists cham­pi­oned nul­li­fi­ca­tion as a response to Brown v. Board of Edu­ca­tion and some on the Right still call for a nul­li­fi­ca­tion strat­e­gy to resist devel­op­ments on immi­gra­tion,⁸ abor­tion rights, and mar­riage equal­i­ty.⁹ All this is part of the polit­i­cal and reli­gious con­text in which the rise of Con­ven­tion of States is hap­pen­ing. And it has gone pro­found­ly under­re­port­ed.

Arti­cle V out­lines two approach­es for alter­ing the Con­sti­tu­tion. Every con­sti­tu­tion­al amend­ment to date has fol­lowed the first: Con­gress pro­pos­es an amend­ment with a two-thirds vote of both hous­es; it becomes part of the Con­sti­tu­tion if it is rat­i­fied by three-quar­ters of the states. The sec­ond approach requires con­gress to call a “con­ven­tion for propos­ing amend­ments” when two-thirds of states apply for one via their state leg­is­la­tures. Any pro­posed amend­ments would also require approval by three-quar­ters of the states before rat­i­fi­ca­tion.

Orga­niz­ers of a con­ven­tion focused on a bal­anced bud­get amend­ment have 27 of the 34 states required and have iden­ti­fied nine tar­gets to take them toward their goal, which they hope to reach by July 4, 2018.¹⁰ The broad­er anti-fed­er­al-gov­ern­ment Con­ven­tion of States pro­pos­al has been approved by leg­is­la­tures in 12 states; in nine more, a call passed one house of the leg­is­la­ture. Accord­ing to Con­ven­tion of States, more than 20 states con­sid­ered leg­is­la­tion in 2017.¹¹

A Solu­tion as Big as the Prob­lem

States have long used the threat of a con­ven­tion to pres­sure Con­gress to pro­pose desired con­sti­tu­tion­al amend­ments. In the 1960s, 33 states called for a con­ven­tion to oppose the Supreme Court’s “one per­son, one vote” rul­ings, which some feared would hurt rur­al inter­ests; momen­tum fad­ed as con­cerns about the uncer­tain­ties of call­ing a con­ven­tion arose and the feared impacts on rur­al areas failed to mate­ri­al­ize.¹²

Con­ser­v­a­tives opposed to gov­ern­ment growth and wor­ried about deficit spend­ing have made repeat­ed efforts to get a Bal­anced Bud­get Amend­ment into the Con­sti­tu­tion, either via Con­gress or an Arti­cle V con­ven­tion. After a flur­ry of orga­niz­ing and state appli­ca­tions in the 1970s and ‘80s, the effort had gone some­what fal­low. But with a focused effort by the Bal­anced Bud­get Amend­ment Task Force since 2010¹³ and a push from ALEC, pro­po­nents of a Bal­anced Bud­get Amend­ment have come with­in strik­ing dis­tance of the 34 states required to trig­ger the Arti­cle V mech­a­nism. Com­pli­cat­ing the pic­ture is an effort led by the Texas-based orga­ni­za­tion Com­pact for Amer­i­ca, which is pro­mot­ing a bal­anced bud­get amend­ment through an inter­state com­pact, under which groups of states legal­ly com­mit them­selves to a joint project (usu­al­ly around region­al issues such as water use). Its sup­port­ers argue that this “next-gen­er­a­tion Arti­cle V move­ment” could lead to a much quick­er rat­i­fi­ca­tion process once enough states have signed on.¹⁴ As of August 2017, Com­pact for Amer­i­ca list­ed five states as mem­bers.¹⁵

But even as bal­anced bud­get advo­cates advanced, anoth­er right-wing move­ment, Con­ven­tion of the States, emerged, push­ing states to go big­ger and bold­er. They want to call a con­ven­tion to con­sid­er amend­ments in three areas: fis­cal restraints on the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment, includ­ing lim­its on tax­a­tion; lim­it­ing gov­ern­ment pow­er and “restor­ing the Con­sti­tu­tion to its orig­i­nal intent,” which could include restric­tive­ly redefin­ing the Constitution’s gen­er­al wel­fare and com­merce claus­es; and impos­ing term lim­its on all fed­er­al offi­cials, includ­ing the judi­cia­ry.¹⁶ Advo­cates call their pro­pos­al “a con­sti­tu­tion­al solu­tion that’s as big as the prob­lem.”¹⁷

Fur­ther mud­dy­ing the waters is the fact that not every con­ven­tion advo­cate is right-wing. Pro­gres­sive activist and Young Turks host Cenk Uygur start­ed a polit­i­cal action com­mit­tee, Wolf-PAC, which in 2011 began urg­ing state leg­is­la­tors to call a con­ven­tion to pro­pose a con­sti­tu­tion­al amend­ment to over­turn the Supreme Court’s Cit­i­zens Unit­ed deci­sion and empow­er Con­gress to lim­it the role of mon­ey in pol­i­tics.¹⁸ The effort has cre­at­ed con­flict between Uygur and Com­mon Cause,¹⁹,²⁰ a nation­al group focused on the influ­ence of mon­ey in pol­i­tics that sup­ports a con­sti­tu­tion­al amend­ment but oppos­es the con­ven­tion route.²¹ In 2016, Rhode Island became the fifth state to approve a con­ven­tion call to con­sid­er an amend­ment on “free and fair elec­tions.”²²

...

Who’s BehindThis?

The cam­paigns for a bal­anced bud­get amend­ment and larg­er anti-fed­er­al-gov­ern­ment con­ven­tion are pro­mot­ed and fund­ed by many of the same peo­ple who brought the Tea Par­ty to promi­nence.

ALEC, which hosts con­fer­ences to intro­duce con­ser­v­a­tive leg­is­la­tors to mod­el bills draft­ed with cor­po­rate lob­by­ists, has been a key venue for pro­mot­ing the Bal­anced Bud­get Amend­ment, the Com­pact of States, and in recent years, the Con­ven­tion of States, for which it has a mod­el res­o­lu­tion states can use to make the request to Con­gress.²⁴ ALEC claims mem­ber­ship of “near­ly one-third of America’s state elect­ed offi­cials.”²⁵ In July 2017, Jim DeMint dis­cussed Arti­cle V at a Den­ver ALEC meet­ing, and the need to enlist “the sup­port of state lead­ers to save the Amer­i­can repub­lic.”²⁶

Gov. John Kasich (R‑OH), a high-pro­file sup­port­er of a Bal­anced Bud­get Amend­ment and an Arti­cle V con­ven­tion to achieve it,²⁷ played a “key role” in get­ting Wyoming to request a BBA con­ven­tion in 2017, and has been active in oth­er state cam­paigns.²⁸

The broad­er Con­ven­tion of States is a project of Cit­i­zens for Self-Gov­er­nance. Mark Meck­ler, a founder of the Tea Par­ty Patri­ots, launched the group in 2012, and it has par­tic­i­pat­ed in ALEC con­fer­ences since 2013. Sarah Palin has cut at least two videos pro­mot­ing it, and encour­aged her fol­low­ers to weigh in on state-lev­el res­o­lu­tions.²⁹

In April 2017, Fusion report­ed that Cit­i­zens for Self-Gov­er­nance (CSG) has received mil­lions from Koch-affil­i­at­ed groups and the Trump-sup­port­ing Mer­cer Fam­i­ly Foun­da­tion.³⁰ CSG’s 2015 fil­ing with the IRS report­ed rev­enues of $5.7 mil­lion, up from just over $1 mil­lion in 2010.³¹ The Cen­ter for Media and Democ­ra­cy doc­u­ment­ed “a web of Koch-linked groups hav­ing pro­vid­ed near­ly $5.4 mil­lion to CSG from the group’s found­ing in 2011 through 2015.”³²

The chair­man of Meckler’s board, Eric O’Keefe, has a long affil­i­a­tion with the Koch broth­ers³³ and has found­ed and fund­ed a num­ber of right-wing groups, includ­ing the Wis­con­sin chap­ter of Club for Growth.³⁴

For­mer U.S. Sen. Tom Coburn (R‑OK), one of the group’s spokes­peo­ple, wrote, “Our nation­al soul is being cor­rupt­ed by Washington’s unhin­dered and uncon­sti­tu­tion­al over­reach.” He con­clud­ed that a con­ven­tion of states is “a means to smite the fed­er­al Leviathan.”²⁵

...

Coburn com­plains that pro­gres­sives put an end to the era of small gov­ern­ment at the turn of the 20th Cen­tu­ry,³⁸ and that the Great Depres­sion and New Deal “forged an alliance of activist courts and big gov­ern­ment.”³⁹ Incred­i­bly, he also cites Jef­fer­son Davis lament­ing in his mem­oirs that the Civ­il War might have been avoid­ed had a con­ven­tion of states been assem­bled “to con­sid­er the rela­tions of the var­i­ous States and the Gov­ern­ment of the Union”⁴⁰—in oth­er words, he believed war could have been avoid­ed if states had approved an amend­ment pre­serv­ing chat­tel slav­ery in south­ern states and allowed its expan­sion in south­west­ern ter­ri­to­ries.

Join­ing secre­tive dark-mon­ey net­works and ALEC in sup­port of the Con­ven­tion of States’ effort are some high-pro­file Reli­gious Right activists.

Meck­ler says CSG was orig­i­nal­ly con­ceived of by Michael Far­ris, the founder of Patrick Hen­ry Col­lege who in 2017 became CEO of the con­ser­v­a­tive Chris­t­ian legal group Alliance Defend­ing Free­dom.⁴¹ In April 2015, Far­ris told David Brody of the Chris­t­ian Broad­cast­ing Net­work, “When peo­ple tell me that it’s impos­si­ble to do this I go, ‘Cool. That means it’s going to be a God project not a Mike Far­ris project.’”⁴²

In Sep­tem­ber 2014, a group of con­ser­v­a­tive lawyers and law pro­fes­sors, includ­ing Lib­er­ty Counsel’s Mat Staver, Catholic neo-con­ser­v­a­tive strate­gist and anti-mar­riage-equal­i­ty activist Robert P. George, and attor­neys John East­man and Charles Coop­er, got togeth­er to talk about the Con­ven­tion of States.⁴³ They came up with “The Jef­fer­son State­ment,” which calls an Arti­cle V con­ven­tion the “only con­sti­tu­tion­al­ly effec­tive means avail­able to do what is so essen­tial for our nation—restoring robust fed­er­al­ism with gen­uine checks on the pow­er of the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment.”⁴⁴

The web­site of Cit­i­zens for Self-Gov­er­nance fea­tures a link to “The Bible & Pol­i­tics,” a web­site that appears to be a part­ner­ship between CSG and David Barton’s Wall­builders.⁴⁵

...

Some Chris­t­ian Right advo­cates have made explic­it calls for an Arti­cle V con­ven­tion. For exam­ple, after the Supreme Court’s 2015 mar­riage equal­i­ty rul­ing, Fam­i­ly Research Coun­cil Pres­i­dent Tony Perkins said he believed a Con­ven­tion of States should be called to amend the Con­sti­tu­tion regard­ing mar­riage.⁴⁷ When Coburn appeared on the Amer­i­can Pas­tors Network’s “Stand in the Gap” pro­gram in June 2017, he declared the Supreme Court “has divid­ed us” by mak­ing deci­sions that should have been left to the states. While there isn’t a major orga­nized push for a con­ven­tion to deal with amend­ments on social issues, the Arkansas Sen­ate passed two res­o­lu­tions in March, one call­ing for a con­ven­tion to draft amend­ments to define mar­riage as between a man and a woman, and anoth­er to declare that life begins at con­cep­tion.⁴⁸ Both amend­ments failed in the state House.⁴⁹ But regard­less of the fate of such spe­cif­ic attempts, the broad­er Con­ven­tion of States move­ment could restrict the fed­er­al government’s abil­i­ty to pro­tect women’s right to choose or equal­i­ty for LGBTQ peo­ple.

How Would a Con­ven­tion of States Work?

One brac­ing aspect of all this is that no one knows how a con­ven­tion would work.

A few basics are rel­a­tive­ly uncon­test­ed. A con­ven­tion must be called if Con­gress deter­mines that there are valid requests from 34 states to deal with the same top­ic. Giv­en the increas­ing inter­est in this sub­ject, since 2015 the House Judi­cia­ry Com­mit­tee has tracked the appli­ca­tions for Arti­cle V con­ven­tions of any sort.⁵⁰

Once Con­gress calls for a con­ven­tion, state leg­is­la­tures would deter­mine how to choose their del­e­gates, and what direc­tion to give them. Pro­po­nents say each state would get one vote, over-empow­er­ing small and rur­al states. A major­i­ty of states could approve pro­posed amend­ments, which Con­gress would then return to the states. If a con­ven­tion were held, and approved a pro­posed amend­ment, Con­gress would deter­mine whether state leg­is­la­tures would make the deci­sion on rat­i­fi­ca­tion or if state-lev­el con­ven­tions would be held.

Com­mon Cause, which has led oppo­si­tion to con­ven­tion pro­pos­als (and where, in full dis­clo­sure, the author worked decades ago), believes “there is too much legal ambi­gu­i­ty that leads to too great a risk that it could be hijacked by wealthy spe­cial inter­ests push­ing a rad­i­cal agen­da.”⁵¹

One schol­ar­ly paper laid out the threats a con­ven­tion could pose, in addi­tion to the eco­nom­ic and social dam­age,⁵² by enact­ing a fed­er­al Bal­anced Bud­get Amend­ment. Its authors, the Cen­ter on Bud­get and Pol­i­cy Pri­or­i­ties’ Michael Leach­man and George­town Uni­ver­si­ty law pro­fes­sor David Super, warned that del­e­gates to such a con­ven­tion, pre­sum­ably under pres­sure from pow­er­ful inter­est groups, could write their own rules, set their own agen­da, and declare a new rat­i­fi­ca­tion process for pro­posed amend­ments.⁵³

The pos­si­bil­i­ty that del­e­gates to a con­ven­tion called for one purpose—say, to pass a Bal­anced Bud­get Amendment—could decide to act on oth­er amend­ments once they con­vene is gen­er­al­ly referred to as a “run­away” con­ven­tion. Con­cern about this pos­si­bil­i­ty has ani­mat­ed oppo­si­tion from across the polit­i­cal spec­trum.

The ques­tion of whether a con­ven­tion could be restrict­ed to deal­ing with amend­ments only on cer­tain top­ics is hot­ly con­test­ed. Some, like Arti­cle V pro­po­nent Robert Natel­son, argue that the threat of a run­away con­ven­tion is a myth, and por­tray it as a con­spir­a­cy the­o­ry pro­mot­ed by sup­port­ers of the sta­tus quo.⁵⁴ But oth­ers note that the Con­sti­tu­tion itself was writ­ten at a con­ven­tion orig­i­nal­ly called “for the sole and express pur­pose of revis­ing the Arti­cles of Con­fed­er­a­tion.”⁵⁵ Instead, del­e­gates wrote an entire­ly new Constitution—and low­ered the Arti­cles of Confederation’s require­ment that all states con­sent to amend­ments to a three-quar­ters thresh­old. Says David Super, “It turned out OK—the Arti­cles were replaced with the vast­ly supe­ri­or Con­sti­tu­tion. But the point is this: No one—not Con­gress, not the Supreme Court and cer­tain­ly not the president—has any author­i­ty to rein in a run­away con­sti­tu­tion­al con­ven­tion.”⁵⁶

...

Sup­port­ers of both major Arti­cle V campaigns—the bal­anced bud­get and the broad­er anti-fed­er­al-gov­ern­ment versions—have sought to allay run­away fears and por­tray the process as safe and pre­dictable by hold­ing plan­ning meet­ings and prac­tice gath­er­ings of state leg­is­la­tors.

ALEC staged a “sim­u­lat­ed” con­ven­tion in Williams­burg, Vir­ginia, in Sep­tem­ber 2016, call­ing it “an impor­tant and reas­sur­ing win­dow into the future.”⁵⁷ The Con­ven­tion of States orga­ni­za­tion called it an “amaz­ing” suc­cess.⁵⁸ How reas­sur­ing you find it might depend on what you think about the pro­posed amend­ments approved at the gath­er­ing,⁵⁹ which would:

1. Empow­er states to void any new or exist­ing law, exec­u­tive order, or reg­u­la­to­ry rule issued by Con­gress, the pres­i­dent or fed­er­al reg­u­la­to­ry agen­cies if three-fifths of the state leg­is­la­tures vote to do so.
2. Restrict Congress’s pow­er by “return­ing the Com­merce Clause to its orig­i­nal mean­ing” and for­bid­ding it to “reg­u­late or pro­hib­it any activ­i­ty that is con­fined with­in a sin­gle state regard­less of its effects out­side the state.” Rep. Jamie Raskin (D‑MD), a for­mer con­sti­tu­tion­al law pro­fes­sor, has writ­ten that the Com­merce Clause may be “the most impor­tant con­sti­tu­tion­al instru­ment for social progress in our his­to­ry.” He cit­ed right-wing efforts over the years to use a cramped inter­pre­ta­tion of the clause to chal­lenge laws on child labor, civ­il rights, and health care.⁶⁰ Cur­rent­ly, the right-wing Pacif­ic Legal Foun­da­tion is argu­ing in fed­er­al court that the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment lacks the author­i­ty under the Com­merce Clause to pro­tect an endan­gered species that lives in only one state.⁶¹
3. For­bid the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment from tax­ing income, gifts, or estates and require three-fifths vote by the House and Sen­ate to impose or increase any tax­es.
4. Allow one-quar­ter of the mem­bers of either the House or Sen­ate to declare oppo­si­tion to any new or exist­ing fed­er­al reg­u­la­tion. A chal­lenged reg­u­la­tion could not go into effect with­out major­i­ty approval of both House and Sen­ate.
5. Require a two-thirds vote in both hous­es of Con­gress to increase pub­lic debt.
6. Impose term lim­its on mem­bers of Con­gress.

At the invi­ta­tion of the Ari­zona leg­is­la­ture,⁶² advo­cates for the Bal­anced Bud­get Amend­ment held their own plan­ning ses­sion in Phoenix in Sep­tem­ber 2017. Twen­ty-two states sent del­e­gates to the meet­ing, which was designed to devel­op rules for an even­tu­al bal­anced bud­get amend­ment con­ven­tion. “There was a pro­pos­al to allow a con­ven­tion to change its scope with the approval of two-thirds of the states,” accord­ing to a news report of the gath­er­ing. “It was with­drawn after heat­ed debate.”⁶³

Orga­niz­ers por­tray the meet­ing as pro­vid­ing evi­dence that “run­away” fears are mis­placed. But none of the rules devised at these or oth­er such meet­ings would be bind­ing on any actu­al con­ven­tion.

Con­ven­tion oppo­nents also note that there are basi­cal­ly no rules about the role of mon­ey. The selec­tion and lob­by­ing of del­e­gates would almost cer­tain­ly become a big-spend­ing free-for-all by the same groups that push for an amendment—as well as wealthy oppor­tunists who get involved once a con­ven­tion becomes inevitable.

On top of that, say Leach­man and Super, “No oth­er body, includ­ing the courts, has clear author­i­ty over a con­ven­tion.”⁶⁴ This may sound like a for­mu­la for con­sti­tu­tion­al cri­sis, but it’s a sell­ing point for con­ven­tion advo­cates. Speak­ing at an ALEC con­fer­ence, right-wing pun­dit and radio per­son­al­i­ty Mark Levin, who wrote a book pro­mot­ing a set of con­sti­tu­tion­al amend­ments,⁶⁵ extolled the pow­er that Arti­cle V gives to state leg­is­la­tors; in a con­ven­tion, he said, gov­er­nors have no role, the pres­i­dent has no role, and Congress’s only role is that it’s required to call a con­ven­tion when enough state peti­tions accrue.⁶⁶

...

At a news con­fer­ence held at last year’s sim­u­lat­ed con­ven­tion in Williams­burg, Meck­ler told atten­dees, “You have the pow­er to bypass the pres­i­dent, Con­gress, the Supreme Court—to throt­tle down the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment to get it out of our lives and to get it back to what the Founders intend­ed. Any­thing is pos­si­ble. We are the impos­si­ble nation.”⁶⁸

And if a Bal­anced Bud­get were passed and Con­gress ignored it, says for­mer Repub­li­can Alas­ka state Sen­a­tor Fritz Pet­tyjohn,69anoth­er con­ven­tion could “pro­pose any num­ber of solu­tions” to deal with it. “One would be to dis­solve Con­gress and elect a new one. When you’re the sov­er­eign, you can do that.”⁷⁰

What’s at Stake?

The idea of requir­ing the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment to oper­ate with­in a bal­anced bud­get has a gut-lev­el appeal. Cit­i­zens must bal­ance house­hold bud­gets, after all. But even fam­i­lies bor­row mon­ey to buy cars and hous­es or pay for edu­ca­tion. An amend­ment that pro­hibits fed­er­al deficit spend­ing or bor­row­ing could make reces­sions longer and deep­er, threat­en pro­grams like Social Secu­ri­ty, and cast uncer­tain­ty “over the econ­o­my that could retard eco­nom­ic growth even in nor­mal eco­nom­ic times,” accord­ing to Richard Kogan of the Cen­ter on Bud­get and Pol­i­cy Pri­or­i­ties.⁷¹ Kogan not­ed that in 2011 the promi­nent eco­nom­ic fore­cast­ing firm Macro­eco­nom­ic Advis­ers con­clud­ed that a Bal­anced Bud­get Amend­ment pro­posed that year would have had a “cat­a­stroph­ic” effect on the econ­o­my, dou­bling unem­ploy­ment.⁷²

Of course, the fed­er­al bud­get is a com­pli­cat­ed beast and there are many ways to write an amend­ment. But if you think grid­lock makes gov­ern­ing hard now, imag­ine that the Heart­land Institute’s ver­sion of the Bal­anced Bud­get Amend­ment gets rat­i­fied, and every con­gres­sion­al deci­sion that involves deficit spend­ing or bor­row­ing has to be approved by a major­i­ty of states rep­re­sent­ing a major­i­ty of the U.S. pop­u­la­tion.⁷³

...

How Like­ly Is a Con­ven­tion?

Com­mon Cause Pres­i­dent Karen Hobert Fly­nn told The Pub­lic Eye that the best way she’s found to get people’s atten­tion about the threat of an Arti­cle V con­ven­tion is to “show them the map.”

Thanks to Repub­li­can invest­ments in build­ing polit­i­cal infra­struc­ture and state-lev­el pow­er, con­ser­v­a­tives have a his­toric lev­el of con­trol in state leg­is­la­tures: Repub­li­cans con­trol both hous­es in 32 states and dom­i­nate the legal­ly non­par­ti­san uni­cam­er­al leg­is­la­ture of Nebras­ka. With 34 states need­ed to trig­ger a con­ven­tion, it would only take a uni­fied GOP plus “the help of only a few Democ­rats in a sin­gle state to reach the mark,” the Asso­ci­at­ed Press not­ed in 2016.⁷⁷ As Yale Uni­ver­si­ty law pro­fes­sor Akhil Reed Amar notes, “The over­whelm­ing suc­cess of one polit­i­cal par­ty at the state lev­el is some­thing of real con­sti­tu­tion­al sig­nif­i­cance.”⁷⁸

The Bal­anced Bud­get Amend­ment Task Force says it has 27 of the 34 states need­ed to call for a con­ven­tion. Its 2018 tar­gets include Ida­ho, Ken­tucky, Min­neso­ta, South Car­oli­na, and Vir­ginia.⁷⁹ They’d be even clos­er, but in the last two years, oppo­nents of a con­ven­tion have con­vinced leg­is­la­tors in four states—Delaware, New Mex­i­co, Mary­land, and Nevada—to rescind their ear­li­er sup­port.

The Con­ven­tion of States’ pro­pos­al has, in a much short­er peri­od, been approved by leg­is­la­tures in 12 states; in nine more, a call passed one house of the leg­is­la­ture. Anoth­er 20 con­sid­ered leg­is­la­tion in 2017.⁸⁰ Coburn pre­dicts an addi­tion­al eight to 10 states will adopt the broad­er Con­ven­tion of States’ call next year.⁸¹ If he’s right, the Con­ven­tion of States could be a cen­tral part of our nation­al polit­i­cal dis­cus­sion for the fore­see­able future.

Sev­er­al peo­ple famil­iar with the con­ven­tion cam­paigns say there’s bad blood between the two major efforts, which com­pete for fund­ing, activists, and leg­isla­tive allies. Coburn told par­tic­i­pants at the 2017 ALEC con­fer­ence that pass­ing a Bal­anced Bud­get Amend­ment address­es the symp­tom and not the dis­ease, which is the broad author­i­ty of the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment. ⁸² Con­verse­ly, says Com­mon Cause’s Jay Riesten­berg, the broad agen­da of Con­ven­tion of States advo­cates tends to give cre­dence to fears of a run­away gath­er­ing rewrit­ing the Constitution—which hurts the bal­anced bud­get effort.

Even with these dif­fer­ences, the groups some­times col­lab­o­rate. In 2017, the two cam­paigns joined forces in Neva­da⁸³ in a failed effort to stop the res­o­lu­tion that rescind­ed the state’s call for a bal­anced bud­get con­ven­tion and oth­er requests for an Arti­cle V con­ven­tion dat­ing back to 1903.

...

Per­haps in a qui­et nod to the appeal of a broad­er con­ven­tion and the numer­i­cal advan­tage held by the bal­anced bud­get effort, most of the Bal­anced Bud­get Amend­ment res­o­lu­tions enact­ed in the last three years, and in ALEC’s mod­el leg­is­la­tion, include an addi­tion­al clause: “togeth­er with any relat­ed and appro­pri­ate fis­cal con­straints.”⁸⁸ That could be a stealthy way to turn a bal­anced bud­get con­ven­tion into some­thing with a broad­er agen­da. ALEC’s hand­book says that phrase “enables the con­ven­tion to con­sid­er lim­its on tax­es, spend­ing and the like.”⁸⁹ Leach­man and Super warn that it “opens the door to any con­sti­tu­tion­al amend­ments that a con­ven­tion might decide fit under this broad rubric.”⁹⁰

What Lies Ahead?

Right-wing efforts to con­vene an Arti­cle V Con­ven­tion depend on con­ser­v­a­tive dom­i­na­tion of state leg­is­la­tures. That makes the future of the Con­sti­tu­tion itself one of the most impor­tant, if under­ap­pre­ci­at­ed, stakes in state-lev­el orga­niz­ing.

Bal­anced Bud­get Amend­ment advo­cates will make a major push in 2018 to reach the 34-state thresh­old.⁹¹ The Con­ven­tion of States has more ground to cov­er, but it also has an aggres­sive bat­tle plan ground­ed in grass­roots pres­sure. Meck­ler claims that the Con­ven­tion of States Project has “over 2.1 mil­lion sup­port­ers nation­wide and an orga­nized vol­un­teer lead­er­ship team in all 50 states, in addi­tion to our nation­al staff and board of renowned legal advi­sors.”⁹² He out­lined his strat­e­gy in 2013:

...

Jim DeMint said that in Texas, which passed a con­ven­tion call in 2017, it was con­ser­v­a­tive grass­roots pow­er that made the dif­fer­ence.⁹⁴ That, along with a major push from Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, over­came a lack of sup­port from the pub­lic at large, as well as some con­ser­v­a­tives’ doubts. A Uni­ver­si­ty of Texas/Texas Tri­bune poll in June 2017 revealed that even among self-described Tea Partiers, giv­en a choice between leav­ing the Con­sti­tu­tion alone and hold­ing a con­ven­tion of states, the “leave well enough alone” option won 57 to 40 per­cent. Among all Tex­ans, it won 54 to 28 per­cent.⁹⁵ Even so, orga­niz­ers don’t think they need to increase pop­u­lar sup­port as long as they can moti­vate their activist army to push leg­is­la­tors into action.

But oppo­nents have also been orga­niz­ing, as evi­denced by the four states that with­drew their con­ven­tion calls in the past two years. In April 2017, Com­mon Cause released a let­ter signed by more than 200 pub­lic inter­est orga­ni­za­tions,⁹⁶ from the AFL-CIO to NAACP to Green­peace, oppos­ing all calls for an Arti­cle V Con­ven­tion and urg­ing states to rescind pre­vi­ous calls.⁹⁷

“The impli­ca­tions of a Con­sti­tu­tion­al Con­ven­tion are stag­ger­ing,” said Robert Green­stein, pres­i­dent of the Cen­ter on Bud­get and Pol­i­cy Pri­or­i­ties, when the let­ter was released. “Our coun­try faces enough prob­lems and divi­sion. We don’t need to add to them and inflame an already tox­ic polit­i­cal envi­ron­ment by plac­ing at risk the con­sti­tu­tion­al struc­ture that has served us well for more than two cen­turies.”⁹⁸

Con­ven­tion pro­po­nents counter that even if some­thing hor­ri­ble came out of a convention—depending on your pol­i­tics, night­mare sce­nar­ios include a rewrite of the First or Sec­ond Amendments—the 38-state thresh­old for rat­i­fi­ca­tion would serve as a check on dan­ger­ous addi­tions to the Con­sti­tu­tion. But Com­mon Cause’s Viki Har­ri­son, who worked on the suc­cess­ful effort to get New Mex­i­co to rescind its con­ven­tion appli­ca­tion, said these assur­ances are “like set­ting your house on fire and pray­ing the fire depart­ment will show up.”⁹⁹ Rat­i­fi­ca­tion bat­tles could “tie the coun­try up in knots,” Wertheimer adds, and would require enor­mous invest­ments of time, resources and orga­niz­ing energy—all with­out any rules about how mon­ey would influ­ence the process.¹⁰⁰

Wis­con­sin Demo­c­ra­t­ic state Rep. Chris Tay­lor not­ed that the real­i­ty that just 13 state leg­is­la­tures could pre­vent rat­i­fi­ca­tion of a dam­ag­ing amend­ment was lit­tle com­fort. After watch­ing the Bradley Foun­da­tion and Koch broth­ers dis­man­tle her state’s pro­gres­sive tra­di­tion, she said, “I have learned nev­er to under­es­ti­mate the Right.”¹⁰¹

At its worst, said anoth­er Com­mon Cause state leader, Maryland’s Jen­nifer Bevan-Dan­gel, a Con­ven­tion of States threat­ens to look like redraft­ing the Con­sti­tu­tion “in the age of Twit­ter.” Issues cru­cial to the well­be­ing of mil­lions of Amer­i­cans would be hashed out “in a back room with no ref­er­ee, no clear rules, no guar­an­tee of trans­paren­cy,” but the almost assured involve­ment of fig­ures like the Kochs. ¹⁰²

A return to an ear­li­er con­sti­tu­tion­al order, in which the fed­er­al government’s abil­i­ty to reg­u­late cor­po­ra­tions and pro­tect the pub­lic inter­est is severe­ly con­strained, is the end toward which decades of right-wing invest­ments in think tanks, media net­works, and legal and polit­i­cal orga­ni­za­tions have been direct­ed.

...

The stage for an Arti­cle V con­ven­tion that bypass­es Con­gress, the White House, and the Supreme Court has been set by the mas­sive invest­ment in state-lev­el pol­i­tics by the Koch net­works and their allies. The Tea Par­ty elec­tion of 2010 gave Repub­li­cans a pow­er­ful hand in redis­trict­ing; part­ly as a result, Repub­li­cans con­trol almost 1,000 more leg­isla­tive seats now than they did in 2008—the most state leg­isla­tive seats in the his­to­ry of the GOP.¹⁰³

An ener­gized pro­gres­sive move­ment focused on revers­ing right-wing gains at the state lev­el is essen­tial to stop­ping the momen­tum of Arti­cle V cam­paigns. There are glim­mers of hope in the array of orga­niz­ing efforts designed to put pro­gres­sives into state offices. And there have been vic­to­ries: four wins in Sep­tem­ber in New Hamp­shire, Okla­homa and Flori­da brought the num­ber of Repub­li­can-to-Demo­c­ra­t­ic turnovers in con­test­ed state House and Sen­ate races in 2017 to eight.¹⁰⁴ Those vic­to­ries put pro­gres­sives on a pos­i­tive tra­jec­to­ry but are only a tiny down pay­ment on what’s need­ed for 2018 and 2020.

End­notes

¹ Eliza Collins, “Jim DeMint oust­ed at Her­itage Foun­da­tion,” USA Today, May 2, 2017, https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/onpolitics/2017/05/02/jim-demint-ousted-heritage-foundation/101220722/.

² “Jim DeMint and The Con­ven­tion of States Project,” The Glenn Beck Pro­gram, June 13, 2017, http://www.glennbeck.com/content/audio/61317-jim-demint-and-the-convention-of-states-project/.

³ Fre­dreka Schouten, “Exclu­sive: In lat­est job, Jim DeMint wants to give Tea Par­ty ‘a new mis­sion,’” USA Today, June 12, 2017, https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2017/06/12/jim-demint-joins-group-that-wants-to-amend-constitution-tea-party/102748540/.

⁴ Bre­it­bart, “What­ev­er It Takes,” Sound­Cloud audio, 15:33, July 28, 2017, https://soundcloud.com/breitbart/whatever-it-takes-fmr-senator-jim-demint-july-28–2017.

⁵ “Kochs Bankroll Move to Rewrite the Con­sti­tu­tion,” PR Watch Edi­tors, March 23, 2017, http://www.prwatch.org/news/2017/03/13229/koch-brothers-bankroll-constitutional-convention.

⁶ Rachel Tabach­nick, “Ted Cruz & ALEC: Seced­ing from the Union One Law at a Time,” Polit­i­cal Research Asso­ciates, Feb­ru­ary 5, 2014, https://www.politicalresearch.org/2014/02/05/ted-cruz-alec-seceding-from-the-union-one-law-at-a-time/. For fur­ther dis­cus­sion, see Paul Rosen­berg, “Tea Par­ty hatch­es qui­et-but-insane plot against democ­ra­cy: Meet the ’12 Per­cent Solu­tion’, Salon, Jan­u­ary 16, 2014, http://www.salon.com/2014/01/16/the_right%E2%80%99s_quiet_but_insane_plot_against_democracy_the_12_solution/.

⁷ Rachel Tabach­nick and Frank Cocozzel­li, “Nul­li­fi­ca­tion, Neo-Con­fed­er­ates, and the Revenge of the Old Right,” The Pub­lic Eye, Fall 2013, https://www.politicalresearch.org/2013/11/22/nullification-neo-confederates-and-the-revenge-of-the-old-right/; Fred­er­ick Clark­son, “Rum­blings of Theo­crat­ic Vio­lence,” The Pub­lic Eye, Sum­mer 2014, https://www.politicalresearch.org/2014/06/11/rumblings-of-theocratic-violence/.

⁸ Peter Mont­gomery, “Bryan Fis­ch­er Wants Trump To Defy Fed­er­al Judge on Immi­gra­tion,” Peo­ple For the Amer­i­can Way’s Right Wing Watch, March 31, 2017, http://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/bryan-fischer-wants-trump-to-defy-federal-judge-on-immigration/.

⁹ Peter Mont­gomery, “NC Bill to Defy Supreme Court on Mar­riage Reflects Broad­er Right-Wing Nul­li­fi­ca­tion Cam­paign,” Peo­ple For the Amer­i­can Way’s Right Wing Watch, April 12, 2017, http://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/nc-bill-to-defy-supreme-court-on-marriage-reflects-broader-right-wing-nullification-campaign/.

¹⁰ “2017 Cam­paign Report,” Bal­anced Bud­get Amend­ment Task Force, http://bba4usa.org/report/.

¹¹ Con­ven­tion of States nation­al update, accessed August 7, 2017, https://www.conventionofstates.com/nu.

¹² James Ken­neth Rogers, “The Oth­er Way to Amend the Con­sti­tu­tion: The Arti­cle V Con­sti­tu­tion­al Con­ven­tion Amend­ment Process,” Har­vard Jour­nal of Law & Pub­lic Pol­i­cy, Vol 30, No. 3, p 1009, http://www.law.harvard.edu/students/orgs/jlpp/Vol30_No3_Rogersonline.pdf.

¹³ “BBA Cam­paign His­to­ry,” Bal­anced Bud­get Amend­ment Task Force, http://bba4usa.org/campaign/.

¹⁴ Nick Dra­nias, “Intro­duc­ing Arti­cle V 2.0: The Com­pact for a Bal­anced Bud­get,” The Heart­land Insti­tute, March 2016, https://www.heartland.org/_template-assets/documents/publications/03–30….

¹⁵ “5 Down, 33 to Go!” Com­pact for Amer­i­ca map, http://www.compactforamerica.org/balanced-budget-compact-project.

¹⁶ “The Con­ven­tion of States Arti­cle V Appli­ca­tion,” Con­ven­tion of States, Feb­ru­ary 2, 2017, https://www.conventionofstates.com/cos_application_in_2_minutes.

¹⁷ Ibid.

¹⁸ The Young Turks, “Cenk Announces Wolf-PAC.com at Occu­py Wall Street,”, YouTube video, 2:43, Octo­ber 19,2011, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ykLB0d4KNAc.

¹⁹ The Young Turks, “Find Out How Left-Wing Group Betrayed Pro­gres­sives (Com­mon Cause),” YouTube Video, 18:58, April 6, 2017, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CmEpvaL5mKQ.

²⁰ Karen Hobert Fly­nn, “Young Turks Attack on Com­mon Cause Ignores Dan­ger of New Con­sti­tu­tion­al Con­ven­tion,” Com­mon Cause, April 6, 2017, http://www.commoncause.org/press/press-releases/young-turks-attack-on‑c….

²¹ “Com­mon Cause Oppos­es a Con­sti­tu­tion­al Con­ven­tion,” Com­mon Cause, http://www.commoncause.org/issues/more-democracy-reforms/constitutional-convention/constitutional-convention-fact-sheet.pdf.

²² Jen­nifer Bog­dan, “At R.I. State House, Wolf PAC lob­by­ists made late push,” Prov­i­dence Jour­nal, June 20, 2016, http://www.providencejournal.com/news/20160620/at-ri-state-house-wolf-pac-lobbyists-made-late-push.

²³ Fred Wertheimer, inter­view with author, July 25,2017.

²⁴ “Appli­ca­tion for a Con­ven­tion of the States Under Arti­cle V of the Con­sti­tu­tion of the Unit­ed States,” Amer­i­can Leg­isla­tive Exchange Coun­cil, final­ized July 24, 2015 and amend­ed Sep­tem­ber 4, 2014, https://www.alec.org/model-policy/article-v-convention-of-the-states/.

²⁵ Robert Natel­son, “Propos­ing Con­sti­tu­tion­al Amend­ments By a Con­ven­tion of the States: Arti­cle V A Hand­book for State Law­mak­ers,” Amer­i­can Leg­isla­tive Exchange Coun­cil, 2016, https://www.alec.org/app/uploads/2016/06/2016-Article-V_FINAL_WEB.pdf.

²⁶ Kar­la Jones, “Spot­light on Fed­er­al­ism in Den­ver,” Amer­i­can Leg­isla­tive Exchange Coun­cil, July 14, 2017, https://www.alec.org/article/spotlight-on-federalism-in-denver/.

²⁷ Dan Tuo­hy, “GOP’s Kasich explores whether he’s a con­tender,” New Hamp­shire Union Leader, March 24, 2015, http://www.unionleader.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20150325/NEWS0605/150329578.

²⁸ “Repub­li­can John Kasich leads charge for bal­anced bud­get vote,” The Asso­ci­at­ed Press, March 25, 2017, http://wtop.com/government/2017/03/republican-john-kasich-leads-charge-for-balanced-budget-vote/.

²⁹ Sarah Palin, Face­book post, Feb­ru­ary 3, 2015, https://www.facebook.com/sarahpalin/videos/vb.24718773587/10153082943858588/ and Con­ven­tion of States Action, “Sarah Palin says it how it is,” Face­book, April 7, 2016 https://www.facebook.com/COSAction/videos/vb.858690294163657/1155376494….

³⁰ Bren­dan O’Connor, “Right-Wing Bil­lion­aires Are Buy­ing Them­selves a New Con­sti­tu­tion,” Splin­ter News, April 4, 2017, http://splinternews.com/right-wing-billionaires-are-buying-themselves-a-new-con-1793960357.

³¹ “Cit­i­zens for Self-Gov­er­nance,” Source­Watch, The Cen­ter for Media and Democ­ra­cy, http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Citizens_for_Self-Governance.

³² Alex Kotch, “Kochs Bankroll Move to Rewrite the Con­sti­tu­tion,” The Cen­ter for Media and Democracy’s PR Watch, March 23, 2017, http://www.prwatch.org/news/2017/03/13229/koch-brothers-bankroll-constitutional-convention.

³³ Bren­dan O’Connor, “Right-Wing Bil­lion­aires Are Buy­ing Them­selves a New­Con­sti­tu­tion.”

³⁴ “Cit­i­zens for Self-Gov­er­nance,” Source­Watch, The Cen­ter for Media and Democ­ra­cy, http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Citizens_for_Self-Governance.

³⁵ Tom Coburn, “A means to smite the fed­er­al Leviathan,” The Wash­ing­ton Times, Feb­ru­ary 24, 2015, http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2015/feb/24/tom-coburn-calling-a-convention-of-states/.

³⁶ Tom Coburn, Smash­ing the DC Monop­oly: Using Arti­cle V to Restore Free­dom and Stop Run­away Gov­ern­ment, (Wash­ing­ton, D.C.: WND Books,2017).

³⁷ Tom Coburn, Smash­ing the DC Monop­oly, Kin­dle location860.

³⁸ Tom Coburn, Smash­ing the DC Monop­oly, Kin­dle location2822.

³⁹ Tom Coburn, Smash­ing the DC Monop­oly, Kin­dle location2840.

⁴⁰ Tom Coburn, Smash­ing the DC Monop­oly, Kin­dle location3056.

⁴¹ Bren­dan O’Connor, “Right-Wing Bil­lion­aires Are Buy­ing Them­selves a New­Con­sti­tu­tion.”

⁴² David Brody, “Enough is Enough: The Case for a Con­ven­tion of States,” CBN News, April 15, 2015, http://www1.cbn.com/cbnnews/politics/2015/April/Enough-Is-Enough-The-Case-for-a-Convention-of-States.

⁴³ “The Jef­fer­son State­ment,” Con­ven­tion of States, Sep­tem­ber 11, 2014, https://www.conventionofstates.com/the_jefferson_statement.

⁴⁴ “The Jef­fer­son State­ment,” Con­ven­tion ofS­tates.

⁴⁵ Bible & Pol­i­tics, www.bibleandpolitics.com, accessed August 7,2017.

⁴⁶ Peter Mont­gomery, “Bib­li­cal Eco­nom­ics: The Divine Lais­sez-Faire­Man­date.”

⁴⁷ Bri­an Tash­man, “Tony Perkins: Stop Say­ing ‘God Bless Amer­i­ca’ After Gay Mar­riage Rul­ing,” Right Wing Watch, July 10, 2015, http://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/tony-perkins-stop-saying-god-bless-america-after-gay-marriage-ruling/.

⁴⁸ Andrew DeMil­lo, “Arkansas Sen­ate OKs Bids for Mar­riage, Abor­tion Amend­ments,” Asso­ci­at­ed Press, Feb­ru­ary 28, 2017, https://www.usnews.com/news/best-states/arkansas/articles/2017–02-28/arkansas-senate-oks-bids-for-marriage-abortion-amendments.

⁴⁹ Jacque­line Foelich, “Arkansas’s Call for a Con­sti­tu­tion­al Con­ven­tion of States Pro­gress­es, Before Fail­ing,” Arkansas Pub­lic Media, March 16, 2017. http://ualrpublicradio.org/post/arkansass-call-constitutional-convention-states-progresses-failing#stream/0.

⁵⁰ “Stivers’ Arti­cle V Rule Change Pass­es on House Floor,” Press Release from office of Rep. Steve Stivers, Jan­u­ary 8, 2015, https://stivers.house.gov/news/documentsingle.aspx?DocumentID=398492.

⁵¹ “The Dan­ger­ous Path: Big Money’s Plan to Shred the Con­sti­tu­tion,” Com­mon Cause, May 2016, http://www.commoncause.org/issues/more-democracy-reforms/constitutional-convention/dangerous-path-report.pdf.

⁵² Richard Kogan, “Con­sti­tu­tion­al Bal­anced Bud­get Amend­ment Pos­es Seri­ous Risks: Would Like­ly Make Reces­sions Longer and Deep­er, Could Harm Social Secu­ri­ty and Mil­i­tary and Civ­il Ser­vice Retire­ment,” Cen­ter on Bud­get and Pol­i­cy Pri­or­i­ties, updat­ed Jan­u­ary 18, 2017, https://www.cbpp.org/research/constitutional-balanced-budget-amendment-poses-serious-risks.

⁵³ Michael Leach­man and David Super, “States Like­ly Could Not Con­trol Con­sti­tu­tion­al Con­ven­tion on Bal­anced Bud­get Amend­ment or Oth­er Issues,” Cen­ter on Bud­get and Pol­i­cy Pri­or­i­ties, Jan­u­ary 18, 2017, https://www.cbpp.org/research/states-likely-could-not-control-constitutional-convention-on-balanced-budget-amendment-or.

⁵⁴ Robert Natel­son, “How pro­gres­sives pro­mot­ed the ‘run­away con­ven­tion’ myth to pre­serve judi­cial activism,” The Hill, May 7, 2017, http://thehill.com/blogs/pundits-blog/the-judiciary/332172-how-progressives-promoted-the-runaway-convention-myth-to.

⁵⁵ “Report of Pro­ceed­ings in Con­gress, Wednes­day, Feb­ru­ary 21, 1787,” post­ed by Lil­lian Gold­man Law Library of Yale Law School, http://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/const04.asp.

⁵⁶ David Super, “A con­sti­tu­tion­al con­ven­tion is the last thing Amer­i­ca needs,” Los Ange­les Times, March 15, 2017, http://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-super-constitutional-convention-20170315-story.html.

⁵⁷ “The Con­ven­tion of States Arti­cle V Appli­ca­tion,” Con­ven­tion of States, Feb­ru­ary 2, 2017, https://www.conventionofstates.com/cos_application_in_2_minutes.

⁵⁸ “COS Sim­u­la­tion,” Con­ven­tion of States, https://www.conventionofstates.com/cossim.

⁵⁹ “Offi­cial Pro­pos­als of the Sim­u­lat­ed Con­ven­tion of States,” Con­ven­tion of States, adopt­ed Sep­tem­ber 23, 2016, https://d3n8a8pro7vhmx.cloudfront.net/conventionofstates/pages/6429/attachments/original/1474994742/Final_Convention_Report_with_Votes.pdf?1474994742.

⁶⁰ Jamie Raskin, “The True Spir­it of the Union: How the Com­merce Clause Helped Build Amer­i­ca and Why the Cor­po­rate Right Wants to Shrink It Today,” Peo­ple For the Amer­i­can Way, Sep­tem­ber 2011, http://www.pfaw.org/report/the-true-spirit-of-the-union-how-the-commerce-clause-helped-build-america.

⁶¹ Jason Rylan­der, “Pro­tect­ing Endan­gered Species Under the Com­merce Clause: Peo­ple for the Eth­i­cal Treat­ment of Prop­er­ty Own­ers v. U.S. Fish and Wildlife Ser­vice, ACS Blog, Amer­i­can Con­sti­tu­tion Soci­ety, Sep­tem­ber 25, 2015, https://www.acslaw.org/acsblog/all/commerce-clause; Jonathan Wood, “PLF peti­tions for rehear­ing in Utah prairie dog case,” Lib­er­ty Blog, Pacif­ic Legal Foun­da­tion, May 17, 2017, https://pacificlegal.org/plf-petitions-rehearing-utah-prairie-dog-case/.

⁶² “Speak­er Mes­nard Applauds Pas­sage of Leg­is­la­tion Call­ing for Arti­cle V Con­ven­tion on Bal­anced Bud­get Amend­ment, Ari­zona Also Calls for Meet­ing of States to Plan Rules for Con­ven­tion,” Ari­zona House Repub­li­cans press release, April 3, 2017, https://www.azhouserepublicans.com/single-post/2017/04/03/Speaker-Mesnard-Applauds-Passage-of-Legislation-Calling-for-Article-V-Convention-on-Balanced-Budget-Amendment-Arizona-Also-Calls-for-Meeting-of-States-to-Plan-Rules-for-Convention.

⁶³ Alia Beard Rau, “Phoenix con­sti­tu­tion­al con­ven­tion gives ‘rebirth to a new nation,’ plan­ners say,” AZ Cen­tral, Sep­tem­ber 15, 2017. http://www.azcentral.com/story/news/politics/arizona/2017/09/15/phoenix-constitutional-convention-gives-rebirth-new-nation-planners-say/664206001/.

⁶⁴ Michael Leach­man and David Super, “States Like­ly Could Not Con­trol Con­sti­tu­tion­al Con­ven­tion on Bal­anced Bud­get Amend­ment or Oth­erIs­sues.”

⁶⁵ Mark Levin, The Lib­er­ty Amend­ments: Restor­ing the Amer­i­can Repub­lic, (New York: Thresh­old Editions,2013).

⁶⁶ Mark Levin, address to 2014 Amer­i­can Leg­isla­tive Exchange Coun­cil States and Nation Pol­i­cy­Sum­mit

⁶⁷ Mark Meck­ler tes­ti­mo­ny: “Assem­bly Stand­ing Com­mit­tee on Judi­cia­ry Hear­ing of 04-26-2016, video, 42:43, https://test.digitaldemocracy.org/hearing/1042?startTime=84&vid=ce3toY5NtaA.

⁶⁸ Bren­dan O’Connor, “Right-Wing Bil­lion­aires Are Buy­ing Them­selves a New­Con­sti­tu­tion.”

⁶⁹ Fritz Pet­tyjohn, “Ari­zona Calls the First Con­ven­tion of States Since 1861,” Amer­i­can Leg­isla­tive Exchange Coun­cil (orig­i­nal­ly post­ed at ReaganProject.com), April 3, 2017, https://www.alec.org/article/arizona-calls-the-first-convention-of-stat….

⁷⁰ Fritz Pet­tyjohn, “Ari­zona Calls the First Con­ven­tion of States Since 1861,” Amer­i­can Leg­isla­tive Exchange Coun­cil (orig­i­nal­ly post­ed at ReaganProject.com), April 3, 2017, https://www.alec.org/article/arizona-calls-the-first-convention-of-stat….

⁷¹ Richard Kogan, “Con­sti­tu­tion­al Bal­anced Bud­get Amend­ment Pos­es Seri­ous Risks: Would Like­ly Make Reces­sions Longer and Deep­er, Could Harm Social Secu­ri­ty and Mil­i­tary and Civ­il Ser­viceRe­tire­ment.”

⁷² Ibid.

⁷³ Robert Natel­son, “A Pro­posed Bal­anced Bud­get Amend­ment,” Heart­land Insti­tute Pol­i­cy Brief, July 18, 2017, https://www.heartland.org/publications-resources/publications/a‑proposed-balanced-budget-amendment.

⁷⁴ Bre­it­bart, “What­ev­er it Takes,” Sound­Cloud audio, 15:33, July 28, 2017, https://soundcloud.com/breitbart/whatever-it-takes-fmr-senator-jim-demint-july-28–2017.

⁷⁵ “Excerpt: Mark Levin’s ‘The Lib­er­ty Amend­ments,’” Fox Nation, Octo­ber 1, 2013, http://nation.foxnews.com/2013/10/01/excerpt-mark-levins-liberty-amendm….

⁷⁶ Arn Pear­son, “Koch Con­ven­tion to Rewrite Con­sti­tu­tion Runs intoRoad­blocks.”

⁷⁷ David Lieb, “Will Repub­li­cans take reli­gious exemp­tions law to con­sti­tu­tion­al con­ven­tion,” Asso­ci­at­ed Press, Decem­ber 5, 2016, https://www.lgbtqnation.com/2016/12/will-republicans-take-religious-exemptions-law-constitutional-convention/.

⁷⁸ “Repub­li­can suc­cess opens door to amend­ing U.S. Con­sti­tu­tion,” Chica­go Tri­bune, Decem­ber 5, 2016, http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/ct-republican-constitution-amendment-20161205-story.html.

⁷⁹ “2017 Cam­paign Report,” Bal­anced Bud­get Amend­ment Task­Force.

⁸⁰ ”COS Nation­al Update,” Con­ven­tion of States, accessed August 7, 2017, https://www.conventionofstates.com/nu.

⁸¹ Bre­it­bart, “Bre­it­bart News Dai­ly – Tom Coburn,” Sound­Cloud audio, 18:16, July 6, 2017, https://soundcloud.com/breitbart/breitbart-news-daily-tom-coburn-july‑5–2017.

⁸² Wis­con­sin Rep. Chris Tay­lor , inter­view with author, August 1,2017.

⁸³ Let­ter to activists on Neva­da rescis­sion res­o­lu­tion: “Neva­da,” Con­ven­tion of States Action, 2017, https://www.cosaction.com/nevada.

⁸⁴ Riley Sny­der, “Under-the-radar res­o­lu­tion means Neva­da backs off from grow­ing con­sti­tu­tion­al con­ven­tion move­ment,” The Neva­da Inde­pen­dent, June 13, 2017, https://thenevadaindependent.com/article/under-the-radar-resolution-means-nevada-backs-off-from-growing-constitutional-convention-movement.

⁸⁵ Jay Riesten­berg, email inter­view with author, July 26,2017.

⁸⁶ “Coali­tion Let­ter in Sup­port of our U.S. Con­sti­tu­tion,” Phyl­lis Schlafly Eagles, http://www.pseagles.com/Coalition_letter_against_Convention_of_States.

⁸⁷ Phyl­lis Schlafly, “Failed Repub­li­cans Want to Rewrite the Con­sti­tu­tion,” Cre­ators Syn­di­cate, May 24, 2016 https://www.creators.com/read/phyllis-schlafly/05/16/failed-republicans-want-to-rewrite-the-constitution.

⁸⁸ Michael Leach­man and David Super, “States Like­ly Could Not Con­trol Con­sti­tu­tion­al Con­ven­tion on Bal­anced Bud­get Amend­ment or Oth­erIs­sues.”

⁸⁹ Robert Natel­son, “Propos­ing Con­sti­tu­tion­al Amend­ments By a Con­ven­tion of the States: Arti­cle V A Hand­book for StateLaw­mak­ers.”

⁹⁰ Michael Leach­man and David Super, “States Like­ly Could Not Con­trol Con­sti­tu­tion­al Con­ven­tion on Bal­anced Bud­get Amend­ment or Oth­erIs­sues.”

⁹¹ “2017 Cam­paign Report,” Bal­anced Bud­get Amend­ment Task­Force.

⁹² Mark Meck­ler to Hon. Luke Mess­er, March 23, 2017, Con­ven­tion of States, http://www.foavc.org/Pages/COS.pdf.

⁹³ “Cit­i­zens for Self Governance’s Mark Meck­ler makes the case for a Con­ven­tion of States,” GlennBeck.com, Decem­ber 18, 2013,http://www.glennbeck.com/2013/12/18/citizens-for-self-governance%E2%80%99s-mark-meckler-makes-the-case-for-a-convention-of-states/.

⁹⁴ “Jim DeMint and The Con­ven­tion of States Project,” The Glenn Beck­Pro­gram.

⁹⁵ Ross Ram­sey, “UT/TT Poll: Texas vot­ers wary of mak­ing changes to the U.S. Con­sti­tu­tion,” The Texas Tri­bune, June 20, 2017, https://www.texastribune.org/2017/06/20/uttt-poll-texas-voters-wary-making-changes-us-constitution/.

⁹⁶ “Con­sti­tu­tion­al Rights and Pub­lic Inter­est Groups Oppose Calls for an Arti­cle V Con­sti­tu­tion­al Con­ven­tion,” Open let­ter, April 14, 2017, http://www.commoncause.org/issues/more-democracy-reforms/constitutional-convention/constitutional-rights-and.pdf.

⁹⁷ “More Than 200 Orga­ni­za­tions Oppose Calls for New Con­sti­tu­tion­al Con­ven­tion, Warn of Dan­gers,” Com­mon Cause press release, April 14, 2017, https://www.commondreams.org/newswire/2017/04/14/more-200-organizations-oppose-calls-new-constitutional-convention-warn-dangers.

⁹⁸ “More than 200 Orga­ni­za­tions Oppose Calls for New Con­sti­tu­tion­al Con­ven­tion, Warn of Dan­gers,” Com­mon Cause press­re­lease.

⁹⁹ Viki Har­ri­son, inter­view with author, July 26,2017.

¹⁰⁰ Fred Wertheimer, inter­view with author, July 25,2017.

¹⁰¹ Wis­con­sin Rep. Chris Tay­lor, inter­view with author, August 1,2017.

¹⁰² Jen­nifer Bevan-Dan­gel, inter­view with author, July 27,2017.

¹⁰³ Reid Wil­son, “Dems hit new low in state leg­is­la­tures,” The Hill, Novem­ber 18, 2016, http://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/306736-dems-hit-new-low-in-state‑l….

¹⁰⁴ Rebec­ca Savran­sky, “Democ­rats flip two seats in state spe­cial elec­tions,” The Hill, Sep­tem­ber 27, 2017, http://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/352617-democrats-flip-two-seats-in-state-special-elections.

———–

“Will Cor­po­ra­tions, The Chris­t­ian Right, and the Tea Par­ty Get to Rewrite the Con­sti­tu­tion?” by Peter Mont­gomery; Polit­i­cal Research Asso­ciates; 10/16/2017

“This effort, like the old­er, more focused dri­ve for a con­ven­tion to advance a bal­anced bud­get amend­ment, is pro­mot­ed in part by the lib­er­tar­i­an Koch broth­ers’ net­work—often called the “dark mon­ey ATM of the Right”—and the right-wing orga­ni­za­tions they fund, like the Amer­i­can Leg­isla­tive Exchange Coun­cil (ALEC).⁵ And it draws sup­port from Chris­t­ian Right fig­ures root­ed in Recon­struc­tion­ist the­ol­o­gy that believes God reserves tasks like edu­ca­tion or car­ing for the poor for church­es and fam­i­lies, not gov­ern­ment.”

A joint effort by the Koch net­work and Chris­t­ian Recon­struc­tion­ists to over­haul the US Con­sti­tu­tion. It was already a tan­gi­ble threat back in 2017. A grow­ing estab­lish­ment threat in the form of the Con­ven­tion of States project. These weren’t polit­i­cal out­sider lead­ing this effort. It was fig­ures like for­mer Her­itage Foun­da­tion pres­i­dent (and CNP mem­ber) Jim DeMint who were serv­ing as CoS senior advi­sors:

...
The place where DeMint could make a big­ger dif­fer­ence than as sen­a­tor or head of the 800-pound goril­la of right-wing think tanks is Con­ven­tion of States,³ a group mobi­liz­ing an effort to rewrite the U.S. Con­sti­tu­tion through a set of amend­ments that would dras­ti­cal­ly lim­it the tax­a­tion, reg­u­la­to­ry and over­sight pow­ers of the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment and restruc­ture our con­sti­tu­tion­al order into one focused on states’ rights. DeMint joined the group as a “senior advi­sor” and sees the project as a new Tea Par­ty mis­sion that’s “much big­ger than the Tea Par­ty.”⁴

Con­ven­tion of States is a polit­i­cal alliance between ele­ments of the anti-reg­u­la­to­ry Cor­po­rate Right and the Chris­t­ian Right, orga­niz­ing toward a con­sti­tu­tion­al con­ven­tion that would destroy the under­pin­nings of Great Soci­ety projects like Medicare and food stamps, and New Deal pro­grams like Social Secu­ri­ty. They’re also turn­ing their sights on the pro­gres­sive gains from the turn of the 20th Cen­tu­ry, such as the 16th Amend­ment, which allows the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment to col­lect income tax­es and which they believe start­ed the dis­as­trous course toward big gov­ern­ment.
...

And as the arti­cle reminds us, while the CoS move­ment isn’t the first or old­est move­ment to push for a Con­sti­tu­tion­al Con­ven­tion. The Balenced Bud­get Amend­ment move­ment has been push­ing for bud­get-relat­ed amend­ments for years, includ­ing the Bal­anced Bud­get Amend­ment Task Force that was formed in 2010 and co-found­ed by David Bid­dulph, the lawyer who, as we saw above, came up with legal the­o­ries under­pin­ning the Fed­er­al Fis­cal Sus­tain­abil­i­ty Foun­da­tion’s ongo­ing law­suit to force a con­ven­tion. But the CoS move­ment still stands out for being among the bold­est in terms of the scope of the desired con­sti­tu­tion­al changes. That’s part of what makes the merg­er of the Bal­anced Bud­get move­ment with the Chris­t­ian Recon­struc­tion­ists so dan­ger­ous. The CoS is like a merg­er of the Bal­anced Bud­get Amend­ment forces — which already had exten­sive back­ing from pow­er­ful busi­ness inter­est enti­ties like ALEC — with Chris­t­ian Domin­ion­ists who have much larg­er ambi­tions. Even rel­a­tive­ly ‘mod­er­ate’ Repub­li­cans like for­mer Ohio Gov­er­nor John Kasich are show­ing up as Arti­cle V boost­ers. This is now a main­stream move­ment inside the Repub­li­can Par­ty, at least when it comes to the Repub­li­can elites:

...
Con­ser­v­a­tives opposed to gov­ern­ment growth and wor­ried about deficit spend­ing have made repeat­ed efforts to get a Bal­anced Bud­get Amend­ment into the Con­sti­tu­tion, either via Con­gress or an Arti­cle V con­ven­tion. After a flur­ry of orga­niz­ing and state appli­ca­tions in the 1970s and ‘80s, the effort had gone some­what fal­low. But with a focused effort by the Bal­anced Bud­get Amend­ment Task Force since 2010¹³ and a push from ALEC, pro­po­nents of a Bal­anced Bud­get Amend­ment have come with­in strik­ing dis­tance of the 34 states required to trig­ger the Arti­cle V mech­a­nism. Com­pli­cat­ing the pic­ture is an effort led by the Texas-based orga­ni­za­tion Com­pact for Amer­i­ca, which is pro­mot­ing a bal­anced bud­get amend­ment through an inter­state com­pact, under which groups of states legal­ly com­mit them­selves to a joint project (usu­al­ly around region­al issues such as water use). Its sup­port­ers argue that this “next-gen­er­a­tion Arti­cle V move­ment” could lead to a much quick­er rat­i­fi­ca­tion process once enough states have signed on.¹⁴ As of August 2017, Com­pact for Amer­i­ca list­ed five states as mem­bers.¹⁵

But even as bal­anced bud­get advo­cates advanced, anoth­er right-wing move­ment, Con­ven­tion of the States, emerged, push­ing states to go big­ger and bold­er. They want to call a con­ven­tion to con­sid­er amend­ments in three areas: fis­cal restraints on the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment, includ­ing lim­its on tax­a­tion; lim­it­ing gov­ern­ment pow­er and “restor­ing the Con­sti­tu­tion to its orig­i­nal intent,” which could include restric­tive­ly redefin­ing the Constitution’s gen­er­al wel­fare and com­merce claus­es; and impos­ing term lim­its on all fed­er­al offi­cials, includ­ing the judi­cia­ry.¹⁶ Advo­cates call their pro­pos­al “a con­sti­tu­tion­al solu­tion that’s as big as the prob­lem.”¹⁷

...

ALEC, which hosts con­fer­ences to intro­duce con­ser­v­a­tive leg­is­la­tors to mod­el bills draft­ed with cor­po­rate lob­by­ists, has been a key venue for pro­mot­ing the Bal­anced Bud­get Amend­ment, the Com­pact of States, and in recent years, the Con­ven­tion of States, for which it has a mod­el res­o­lu­tion states can use to make the request to Con­gress.²⁴ ALEC claims mem­ber­ship of “near­ly one-third of America’s state elect­ed offi­cials.”²⁵ In July 2017, Jim DeMint dis­cussed Arti­cle V at a Den­ver ALEC meet­ing, and the need to enlist “the sup­port of state lead­ers to save the Amer­i­can repub­lic.”²⁶

Gov. John Kasich (R‑OH), a high-pro­file sup­port­er of a Bal­anced Bud­get Amend­ment and an Arti­cle V con­ven­tion to achieve it,²⁷ played a “key role” in get­ting Wyoming to request a BBA con­ven­tion in 2017, and has been active in oth­er state cam­paigns.²⁸
...

And as we can see, the CoS was found­ed by CNP mem­ber Mark Meck­ler in 2012 and has been par­tic­i­pat­ing in ALEC con­fer­ences since 2013. The CoS has been a con­ser­v­a­tive estab­lish­ment effort effec­tive­ly found its found­ing. With Eric O’Keefe, some­one with long­stand­ing ties to the Koch Broth­ers, serv­ing as chair­man of the Cit­i­zens for Self-Gov­er­nance (CSG), the group behind the CoS project. Even the Mer­cer fam­i­ly is involved:

...
The broad­er Con­ven­tion of States is a project of Cit­i­zens for Self-Gov­er­nance. Mark Meck­ler, a founder of the Tea Par­ty Patri­ots, launched the group in 2012, and it has par­tic­i­pat­ed in ALEC con­fer­ences since 2013. Sarah Palin has cut at least two videos pro­mot­ing it, and encour­aged her fol­low­ers to weigh in on state-lev­el res­o­lu­tions.²⁹

In April 2017, Fusion report­ed that Cit­i­zens for Self-Gov­er­nance (CSG) has received mil­lions from Koch-affil­i­at­ed groups and the Trump-sup­port­ing Mer­cer Fam­i­ly Foun­da­tion.³⁰ CSG’s 2015 fil­ing with the IRS report­ed rev­enues of $5.7 mil­lion, up from just over $1 mil­lion in 2010.³¹ The Cen­ter for Media and Democ­ra­cy doc­u­ment­ed “a web of Koch-linked groups hav­ing pro­vid­ed near­ly $5.4 mil­lion to CSG from the group’s found­ing in 2011 through 2015.”³²

The chair­man of Meckler’s board, Eric O’Keefe, has a long affil­i­a­tion with the Koch broth­ers³³ and has found­ed and fund­ed a num­ber of right-wing groups, includ­ing the Wis­con­sin chap­ter of Club for Growth.³⁴
...

But this effort to trig­ger some sort of con­sti­tu­tion­al con­ven­tion isn’t an exclu­sive­ly con­ser­v­a­tive effort. Cenk Uygur start­ed Wolf-PAC to advo­cate for a con­sti­tu­tion­al amend­ment that would over­turn the Supreme Court’s his­toric 2010 Cit­i­zens Unit­ed rul­ing that opened the flood­gates to dark mon­ey in US pol­i­tics. An admirable goal but a very dan­ger­ous path to achiev­ing it:

...
States have long used the threat of a con­ven­tion to pres­sure Con­gress to pro­pose desired con­sti­tu­tion­al amend­ments. In the 1960s, 33 states called for a con­ven­tion to oppose the Supreme Court’s “one per­son, one vote” rul­ings, which some feared would hurt rur­al inter­ests; momen­tum fad­ed as con­cerns about the uncer­tain­ties of call­ing a con­ven­tion arose and the feared impacts on rur­al areas failed to mate­ri­al­ize.¹²

...

Fur­ther mud­dy­ing the waters is the fact that not every con­ven­tion advo­cate is right-wing. Pro­gres­sive activist and Young Turks host Cenk Uygur start­ed a polit­i­cal action com­mit­tee, Wolf-PAC, which in 2011 began urg­ing state leg­is­la­tors to call a con­ven­tion to pro­pose a con­sti­tu­tion­al amend­ment to over­turn the Supreme Court’s Cit­i­zens Unit­ed deci­sion and empow­er Con­gress to lim­it the role of mon­ey in pol­i­tics.¹⁸ The effort has cre­at­ed con­flict between Uygur and Com­mon Cause,¹⁹,²⁰ a nation­al group focused on the influ­ence of mon­ey in pol­i­tics that sup­ports a con­sti­tu­tion­al amend­ment but oppos­es the con­ven­tion route.²¹ In 2016, Rhode Island became the fifth state to approve a con­ven­tion call to con­sid­er an amend­ment on “free and fair elec­tions.”²²
...

And then we get to some of the var­i­ous Chris­t­ian Recon­struc­tion­ists involved with this CoS effort. Peo­ple like CoS co-founder Michael Far­ris, who also found­ed the pow­er­ful Alliance Defend­ing Free­dom (ADF), an orga­ni­za­tion that shows up on the SPLC’s list of hate groups along with Tony Perkin­s’s Fam­i­ly Research Coun­cil. As we can see, Perkins is also a CoS backer, anoth­er promi­nent CNP mem­ber. As well as the CNP’s key pseu­do-his­to­ri­an David Bar­ton. Along with Mat Staver. Recall how Staver — who serves on the advi­so­ry board of the domin­ion­ist Nation­al Asso­ci­a­tion of Chris­t­ian Law­mak­ers (NACL) — showed up on the leaked 2014 CNP mem­ber­ship list that had Staver a CNP board mem­ber, along­side fel­low CNP board mem­bers like the League of the South’s Mike Per­out­ka who is an open advo­cate of the theo­crat­ic impo­si­tion of the Old Tes­ta­ment. Also recall how House Speak­er Mike John­son gave the CNP keynote address in 2019 and repeat­ed­ly namechecked both Perkins and Staver as big influ­ences. Even John East­man — the Clare­mont Insti­tute lawyer who con­coct­ed much of the legal ‘jus­ti­fi­ca­tion’ for the Jan­u­ary 6 Capi­tol insur­rec­tion — is involved with the CoS effort. And then we get to a very impor­tant name in the rela­tion to the above ProP­ub­li­ca piece: CNP mem­ber Charles Coop­er, who was report­ed­ly involved with draft­ing the Fed­er­al Fis­cal Sus­tain­abil­i­ty Foun­da­tion law­suit designed to trig­ger a Con­sti­tu­tion­al Con­ven­tion. Which is a reminder that we should­n’t sep­a­rate the CoS scheme from that law­suit. It’s all one years long joint effort:

...
Join­ing secre­tive dark-mon­ey net­works and ALEC in sup­port of the Con­ven­tion of States’ effort are some high-pro­file Reli­gious Right activists.

Meck­ler says CSG was orig­i­nal­ly con­ceived of by Michael Far­ris, the founder of Patrick Hen­ry Col­lege who in 2017 became CEO of the con­ser­v­a­tive Chris­t­ian legal group Alliance Defend­ing Free­dom.⁴¹ In April 2015, Far­ris told David Brody of the Chris­t­ian Broad­cast­ing Net­work, “When peo­ple tell me that it’s impos­si­ble to do this I go, ‘Cool. That means it’s going to be a God project not a Mike Far­ris project.’”⁴²

In Sep­tem­ber 2014, a group of con­ser­v­a­tive lawyers and law pro­fes­sors, includ­ing Lib­er­ty Counsel’s Mat Staver, Catholic neo-con­ser­v­a­tive strate­gist and anti-mar­riage-equal­i­ty activist Robert P. George, and attor­neys John East­man and Charles Coop­er, got togeth­er to talk about the Con­ven­tion of States.⁴³ They came up with “The Jef­fer­son State­ment,” which calls an Arti­cle V con­ven­tion the “only con­sti­tu­tion­al­ly effec­tive means avail­able to do what is so essen­tial for our nation—restoring robust fed­er­al­ism with gen­uine checks on the pow­er of the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment.”⁴⁴

The web­site of Cit­i­zens for Self-Gov­er­nance fea­tures a link to “The Bible & Pol­i­tics,” a web­site that appears to be a part­ner­ship between CSG and David Barton’s Wall­builders.⁴⁵

...

Some Chris­t­ian Right advo­cates have made explic­it calls for an Arti­cle V con­ven­tion. For exam­ple, after the Supreme Court’s 2015 mar­riage equal­i­ty rul­ing, Fam­i­ly Research Coun­cil Pres­i­dent Tony Perkins said he believed a Con­ven­tion of States should be called to amend the Con­sti­tu­tion regard­ing mar­riage.⁴⁷ When Coburn appeared on the Amer­i­can Pas­tors Network’s “Stand in the Gap” pro­gram in June 2017, he declared the Supreme Court “has divid­ed us” by mak­ing deci­sions that should have been left to the states. While there isn’t a major orga­nized push for a con­ven­tion to deal with amend­ments on social issues, the Arkansas Sen­ate passed two res­o­lu­tions in March, one call­ing for a con­ven­tion to draft amend­ments to define mar­riage as between a man and a woman, and anoth­er to declare that life begins at con­cep­tion.⁴⁸ Both amend­ments failed in the state House.⁴⁹ But regard­less of the fate of such spe­cif­ic attempts, the broad­er Con­ven­tion of States move­ment could restrict the fed­er­al government’s abil­i­ty to pro­tect women’s right to choose or equal­i­ty for LGBTQ peo­ple.
...

And as the arti­cle also points out, the advo­cates for an Arti­cle V con­ven­tion can promise all they want that it will only be focused on a Bal­anced Bud­get amend­ment and not turn into a larg­er ‘run­away’ con­ven­tion. But those would be hol­low promis­es that can’t hon­est­ly be made. Once a con­ven­tion starts, it will be up to the del­e­gates to deter­mine whether or not it turns into a run­away con­ven­tion:

...
One brac­ing aspect of all this is that no one knows how a con­ven­tion would work.

A few basics are rel­a­tive­ly uncon­test­ed. A con­ven­tion must be called if Con­gress deter­mines that there are valid requests from 34 states to deal with the same top­ic. Giv­en the increas­ing inter­est in this sub­ject, since 2015 the House Judi­cia­ry Com­mit­tee has tracked the appli­ca­tions for Arti­cle V con­ven­tions of any sort.⁵⁰

Once Con­gress calls for a con­ven­tion, state leg­is­la­tures would deter­mine how to choose their del­e­gates, and what direc­tion to give them. Pro­po­nents say each state would get one vote, over-empow­er­ing small and rur­al states. A major­i­ty of states could approve pro­posed amend­ments, which Con­gress would then return to the states. If a con­ven­tion were held, and approved a pro­posed amend­ment, Con­gress would deter­mine whether state leg­is­la­tures would make the deci­sion on rat­i­fi­ca­tion or if state-lev­el con­ven­tions would be held.

Com­mon Cause, which has led oppo­si­tion to con­ven­tion pro­pos­als (and where, in full dis­clo­sure, the author worked decades ago), believes “there is too much legal ambi­gu­i­ty that leads to too great a risk that it could be hijacked by wealthy spe­cial inter­ests push­ing a rad­i­cal agen­da.”⁵¹

One schol­ar­ly paper laid out the threats a con­ven­tion could pose, in addi­tion to the eco­nom­ic and social dam­age,⁵² by enact­ing a fed­er­al Bal­anced Bud­get Amend­ment. Its authors, the Cen­ter on Bud­get and Pol­i­cy Pri­or­i­ties’ Michael Leach­man and George­town Uni­ver­si­ty law pro­fes­sor David Super, warned that del­e­gates to such a con­ven­tion, pre­sum­ably under pres­sure from pow­er­ful inter­est groups, could write their own rules, set their own agen­da, and declare a new rat­i­fi­ca­tion process for pro­posed amend­ments.⁵³

The pos­si­bil­i­ty that del­e­gates to a con­ven­tion called for one purpose—say, to pass a Bal­anced Bud­get Amendment—could decide to act on oth­er amend­ments once they con­vene is gen­er­al­ly referred to as a “run­away” con­ven­tion. Con­cern about this pos­si­bil­i­ty has ani­mat­ed oppo­si­tion from across the polit­i­cal spec­trum.

The ques­tion of whether a con­ven­tion could be restrict­ed to deal­ing with amend­ments only on cer­tain top­ics is hot­ly con­test­ed. Some, like Arti­cle V pro­po­nent Robert Natel­son, argue that the threat of a run­away con­ven­tion is a myth, and por­tray it as a con­spir­a­cy the­o­ry pro­mot­ed by sup­port­ers of the sta­tus quo.⁵⁴ But oth­ers note that the Con­sti­tu­tion itself was writ­ten at a con­ven­tion orig­i­nal­ly called “for the sole and express pur­pose of revis­ing the Arti­cles of Con­fed­er­a­tion.”⁵⁵ Instead, del­e­gates wrote an entire­ly new Constitution—and low­ered the Arti­cles of Confederation’s require­ment that all states con­sent to amend­ments to a three-quar­ters thresh­old. Says David Super, “It turned out OK—the Arti­cles were replaced with the vast­ly supe­ri­or Con­sti­tu­tion. But the point is this: No one—not Con­gress, not the Supreme Court and cer­tain­ly not the president—has any author­i­ty to rein in a run­away con­sti­tu­tion­al con­ven­tion.”⁵⁶
...

Worse, there’s no rules about the influ­ence of dark mon­ey on the con­sti­tu­tion­al con­ven­tion process. The con­ven­tion even has the pow­er to dis­solve Con­gress and elect a new one. It could be a his­toric dark mon­ey bonan­za:

...
Con­ven­tion oppo­nents also note that there are basi­cal­ly no rules about the role of mon­ey. The selec­tion and lob­by­ing of del­e­gates would almost cer­tain­ly become a big-spend­ing free-for-all by the same groups that push for an amendment—as well as wealthy oppor­tunists who get involved once a con­ven­tion becomes inevitable.

On top of that, say Leach­man and Super, “No oth­er body, includ­ing the courts, has clear author­i­ty over a con­ven­tion.”⁶⁴ This may sound like a for­mu­la for con­sti­tu­tion­al cri­sis, but it’s a sell­ing point for con­ven­tion advo­cates. Speak­ing at an ALEC con­fer­ence, right-wing pun­dit and radio per­son­al­i­ty Mark Levin, who wrote a book pro­mot­ing a set of con­sti­tu­tion­al amend­ments,⁶⁵ extolled the pow­er that Arti­cle V gives to state leg­is­la­tors; in a con­ven­tion, he said, gov­er­nors have no role, the pres­i­dent has no role, and Congress’s only role is that it’s required to call a con­ven­tion when enough state peti­tions accrue.⁶⁶

...

At a news con­fer­ence held at last year’s sim­u­lat­ed con­ven­tion in Williams­burg, Meck­ler told atten­dees, “You have the pow­er to bypass the pres­i­dent, Con­gress, the Supreme Court—to throt­tle down the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment to get it out of our lives and to get it back to what the Founders intend­ed. Any­thing is pos­si­ble. We are the impos­si­ble nation.”⁶⁸

And if a Bal­anced Bud­get were passed and Con­gress ignored it, says for­mer Repub­li­can Alas­ka state Sen­a­tor Fritz Pet­tyjohn,69anoth­er con­ven­tion could “pro­pose any num­ber of solu­tions” to deal with it. “One would be to dis­solve Con­gress and elect a new one. When you’re the sov­er­eign, you can do that.”⁷⁰

...

Per­haps in a qui­et nod to the appeal of a broad­er con­ven­tion and the numer­i­cal advan­tage held by the bal­anced bud­get effort, most of the Bal­anced Bud­get Amend­ment res­o­lu­tions enact­ed in the last three years, and in ALEC’s mod­el leg­is­la­tion, include an addi­tion­al clause: “togeth­er with any relat­ed and appro­pri­ate fis­cal con­straints.”⁸⁸ That could be a stealthy way to turn a bal­anced bud­get con­ven­tion into some­thing with a broad­er agen­da. ALEC’s hand­book says that phrase “enables the con­ven­tion to con­sid­er lim­its on tax­es, spend­ing and the like.”⁸⁹ Leach­man and Super warn that it “opens the door to any con­sti­tu­tion­al amend­ments that a con­ven­tion might decide fit under this broad rubric.”⁹⁰
...

Keep in mind that part of what is so dis­tress­ing about the poten­tial of a con­sti­tu­tion con­ven­tion to dis­solve Con­gress is that this threat of a new con­ven­tion ded­i­cat­ed to dis­solv­ing con­gress and elect­ing a new one would be, at that point, a very plau­si­ble threat that these same spe­cial inter­ests could threat­en to wield in the event that the pub­lic at large deeply rejects the new elite-pre­scribed sta­tus quo and starts elect­ing all sorts of pro­gres­sive rep­re­sen­ta­tives. The elec­toral sys­tem would pre­sum­ably be wild­ly skewed towards con­ser­v­a­tive can­di­dates after their planned over­haul, after all, at both the fed­er­al and state lev­els. Launch­ing sub­se­quent con­sti­tu­tion­al con­ven­tions could become a much more plau­si­ble sce­nario. Although that’s assum­ing the new con­sti­tu­tion has­n’t had the con­ven­tion process stripped out. They might not want to give the pub­lic the pow­er to undo it, after all.

The Austerity Lobby’s 2009 Solution to the Great Recession: Time to Gut Entitlements

But it’s not just the rad­i­cal vision of this joint move­ment that under­scores the depth of this threat. There’s also the fact that they have a track record of advo­cat­ing mas­sive aus­ter­i­ty pack­ages in response to major eco­nom­ic crises. So with the sec­ond Trump admin­is­tra­tion start­ing off what what appears to be some sort of planned eco­nom­ic mega-cri­sis, we have to rec­og­nize that eco­nom­ic mega-crises are pre­cise­ly when the forces behind Bal­anced Bud­get Amend­ment and the larg­er aus­ter­i­ty agen­da behind it are most inclined to pounce. Like they did back in ear­ly 2009, just months into the Great Reces­sion fol­low­ing the 2008 Wall Street melt­down. By Feb­ru­ary of 2009, the ‘usu­al sus­pects’ of the aus­ter­i­ty lob­by were fever­ish­ly orga­niz­ing and get­ting ready to demand a ‘grand bar­gain’ as the eco­nom­ic solu­tion. A ‘grand bar­gain’ that would con­sist of tril­lions of dol­lars in cuts to enti­tle­ments in exchange for hun­dreds of bil­lions in tax increas­es. The kind of grand bar­gain only a bil­lion­aire could love. Which is why we should­n’t be sur­prised to find that almost all of the financ­ing for this aus­ter­i­ty lob­by was com­ing from Wall Street bil­lion­aire Pete Peter­son, with David Walk­er serv­ing as one of Peter­son­’s top lieu­tenants:

The Nation

Loot­ing Social Secu­ri­ty

Behind closed doors, advo­cates of enti­tle­ment reform are push­ing Oba­ma to tap the Social Secu­ri­ty sur­plus to pay for bank bailouts. It could be a defin­ing test for new pol­i­tics in the Oba­ma era.

William Grei­der
This arti­cle appears in the March 2, 2009 issue.
Feb­ru­ary 11, 2009

Is Social Secu­ri­ty threat­ened by enti­tle­ment reform­ers? David M. Walk­er, pres­i­dent and CEO of the Peter G. Peter­son Foun­da­tion responds to William Greider’s essay here. Read William Greider’s answer to Peterson’s crit­i­cism here.

Gov­ern­ing elites in Wash­ing­ton and Wall Street have devised a fiendish­ly clever “grand bar­gain” they want Pres­i­dent Oba­ma to embrace in the name of “fis­cal respon­si­bil­i­ty.” The gov­ern­ment, they argue, hav­ing spent bil­lions on bail­ing out the banks, can recov­er its costs by loot­ing the Social Secu­ri­ty sys­tem. They are also tar­get­ing Medicare and Med­ic­aid. The pitch sounds pre­pos­ter­ous to mil­lions of ordi­nary work­ing peo­ple anx­ious about their eco­nom­ic secu­ri­ty and wor­ried about their retire­ment years. But an impres­sive arma­da is lined up to push the idea–Washington’s lead­ing think tanks, the pres­tige media, tax-exempt foun­da­tions, skill­ful pro­pa­gan­dists pos­ing as eco­nom­ic experts and a self-right­eous bil­lion­aire spend­ing his for­tune to save the nation from the elder­ly.

These play­ers are pro­mot­ing a tricky way to whack Social Secu­ri­ty ben­e­fits, but to do it behind closed doors so the pub­lic can­not see what’s hap­pen­ing or fig­ure out which politi­cians to blame. The essen­tial trans­ac­tion would amount to mis­ap­pro­pri­at­ing the tril­lions in Social Secu­ri­ty tax­es that work­ers have paid to finance their retire­ment ben­e­fits. This swin­dle is por­trayed as “fis­cal reform.” In fact, it’s the polit­i­cal equiv­a­lent of bait-and-switch fraud.

Defend­ing Social Secu­ri­ty sounds like yesterday’s issue–the fight peo­ple won when they defeat­ed George W. Bush’s attempt to pri­va­tize the sys­tem in 2005. But the finan­cial estab­lish­ment has pushed it back on the table, claim­ing that the cur­rent cri­sis requires “respon­si­ble” lead­ers to take action. Will Oba­ma take the bait? Sure­ly not. The new pres­i­dent has been clear and con­sis­tent about Social Secu­ri­ty, as a can­di­date and since his elec­tion. The program’s financ­ing is basi­cal­ly sound, he has explained, and can be assured far into the future by mak­ing only mod­est adjust­ments.

But Oba­ma is also play­ing foot­sie with the con­ser­v­a­tive advo­cates of “enti­tle­ment reform” (their euphemism for cut­ting ben­e­fits). The pres­i­dent wants the cor­po­rate establishment’s sup­port on many oth­er impor­tant mat­ters, and he recent­ly promised to hold a “fis­cal respon­si­bil­i­ty sum­mit” to exam­ine the long-term costs of enti­tle­ments. That forum could set the trap for a “bipar­ti­san com­pro­mise” that may become dif­fi­cult for Oba­ma to resist, giv­en the bur­geon­ing deficit. If he resists, he will be denounced as an old-fash­ioned free-spend­ing lib­er­al. The advo­cates are urg­ing both par­ties to hold hands and take the leap togeth­er, autho­riz­ing big ben­e­fits cuts in a cir­cuitous way that allows them to dodge the public’s blame. In my new book, Come Home, Amer­i­ca, I make the point: “When offi­cial Amer­i­ca talks of ‘bipar­ti­san com­pro­mise,’ it usu­al­ly means the peo­ple are about to get screwed.”

...

To under­stand the mechan­ics of this attempt­ed swin­dle, you have to roll back twen­ty-five years, to the time the game of bait and switch began, under Ronald Rea­gan. The Gipper’s great leg­isla­tive vic­to­ry in 1981–enacting mas­sive tax cuts for cor­po­ra­tions and upper-income ranks–launched the era of swollen fed­er­al bud­get deficits. But their eco­nom­ic impact was off­set by the huge tax increase that Con­gress imposed on work­ing peo­ple in 1983: the pay­roll tax rate sup­port­ing Social Security–the week­ly FICA deduction–was raised sub­stan­tial­ly, sup­pos­ed­ly to cre­ate a nest egg for when the baby boom gen­er­a­tion reached retire­ment age. A blue-rib­bon com­mis­sion chaired by Alan Greenspan worked out the terms, then both par­ties signed on. Since there was no par­ti­san fight, the press por­trayed the mas­sive tax increase as a non­con­tro­ver­sial “good gov­ern­ment” reform.

Ever since, work­ing Amer­i­cans have paid high­er tax­es on their labor wages–12.4 per­cent, split between employ­ees and employ­ers. As a result, the Social Secu­ri­ty sys­tem has accu­mu­lat­ed a vast surplus–now around $2.5 tril­lion and grow­ing. This is the mon­ey pot the estab­lish­ment wants to grab, claim­ing the gov­ern­ment can no longer afford to keep the promise it made to work­ers twen­ty-five years ago.

Actu­al­ly, the gov­ern­ment has already spent their mon­ey. Every year the Trea­sury has bor­rowed the sur­plus rev­enue col­lect­ed by Social Secu­ri­ty and spent the mon­ey on oth­er purposes–whatever pres­i­dents and Con­gress decide, includ­ing more tax cuts for monied inter­ests. The Social Secu­ri­ty sur­plus thus makes the fed­er­al deficits seem small­er than they are–around $200 bil­lion a year small­er. Each time the gov­ern­ment dipped into the Social Secu­ri­ty trust fund this way, it issued a legal oblig­a­tion to pay back the mon­ey with inter­est when­ev­er Social Secu­ri­ty need­ed it to pay ben­e­fits.

That moment of reck­on­ing is approach­ing. Uncle Sam owes these tril­lions to Social Secu­ri­ty retirees and has to pay it back or look like just anoth­er dead­beat. That risk is the only “cri­sis” fac­ing Social Secu­ri­ty. It is the real rea­son pow­er­ful inter­ests are so anx­ious to cut ben­e­fits. Social Secu­ri­ty is not broke–not even close. It can sus­tain its oblig­a­tions for rough­ly forty years, accord­ing to the Con­gres­sion­al Bud­get Office, even if noth­ing is changed. Even reports by the system’s con­ser­v­a­tive trustees say it has no prob­lem until 2041 (that report is signed by for­mer Trea­sury Sec­re­tary Hen­ry Paul­son, the guy who bailed out the bankers). Dur­ing the com­ing decade, how­ev­er, the sys­tem will need to start draw­ing on its reserve sur­plus­es to pay for ben­e­fits as boomers retire in greater num­bers.

But if the gov­ern­ment cuts the ben­e­fits first, it can push off repay­ment far into the future, and pos­si­bly for­ev­er. Oth­er­wise, gov­ern­ment has to bor­row the mon­ey by sell­ing gov­ern­ment bonds or extend the Social Secu­ri­ty tax to cov­er incomes above the cur­rent $107,000 ceil­ing. Oba­ma endors­es the lat­ter option.

Fol­low the bounc­ing ball: Wash­ing­ton first cuts tax­es on the well-to-do, then off­sets the rev­enue loss by rais­ing tax­es on the work­ing class and tells folks it is sav­ing their mon­ey for future retire­ment. But Wash­ing­ton spends the mon­ey on oth­er stuff, so when work­ers need it for their retire­ment, they are told, Sor­ry, we can’t afford it.

Fed­er­al bud­get ana­lysts try to brush aside these facts by claim­ing the gov­ern­ment is mere­ly “bor­row­ing from itself” when it dips into Social Secu­ri­ty. But that is a sub­stan­tive false­hood. Gov­ern­ment doesn’t own this mon­ey. It essen­tial­ly acts as the fidu­cia­ry, hold­ing this wealth in trust for the “ben­e­fi­cial own­ers,” the peo­ple who paid the tax­es. This is the bait and switch the estab­lish­ment intends to exe­cute.

Peter Peter­son, a Repub­li­can financier who made a for­tune doing cor­po­rate takeover deals at Wall Street’s Black­stone Group, is the Dad­dy War­bucks of the “fis­cal respon­si­bil­i­ty” cru­sade. He has cam­paigned for decades against the dan­gers that old folks pose to the Repub­lic. Now 82 and retired, Peter­son claims he will spend near­ly one-third of his $2.8 bil­lion in wealth–he ranks 147 on the Forbes 400 list of rich­est Americans–alerting the pub­lic to this threat (leave aside the fact that old peo­ple have already paid for their retire­ment or that Social Security’s mod­est ben­e­fits are equiv­a­lent to min­i­mum-wage income). The major media treat him ador­ing­ly. Most reporters are too lazy (or dim) to check out the facts for them­selves, so they sim­ply repeat what Peter­son tells them about Social Secu­ri­ty.

It is a fright­ful mes­sage. Peter­son describes a “$53 tril­lion hole” in America’s fis­cal condition–but the claim assumes numer­ous art­ful fal­lac­i­es. His most bla­tant dis­tor­tion is lump­ing Social Secu­ri­ty, which is self-fund­ed and sound, with oth­er enti­tle­ments like Medicare and Med­ic­aid. Those pro­grams do face finan­cial crisis–not because the elder­ly and poor are greed­i­ly gam­ing the sys­tem but because the med­ical-indus­tri­al com­plex has the prof­it incen­tive to dri­ve health­care costs high­er and high­er. Health­care reform can solve the financ­ing prob­lem only if it impos­es cost con­trols on pri­vate play­ers like the insur­ance and phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal indus­tries.

Peter­son is financ­ing a media blitz. His ten­den­tious doc­u­men­tary–I.O.U.S.A.–opened in 400 the­aters and was broad­cast on CNN with appro­pri­ate solem­ni­ty. Last Sep­tem­ber Peter­son bought two full pages in the New York Times to urge the next pres­i­dent to cre­ate a “bipar­ti­san fis­cal respon­si­bil­i­ty com­mis­sion” once he was in office (Peter­son was for John McCain). This group of so-called experts would be autho­rized to design the reforms for Con­gress to enact. But Peter­son does not want Con­gress to have a full, free­wheel­ing debate on the par­tic­u­lars. The reform pack­age, he sug­gests, should be sub­mit­ted to a sin­gle “up-or-down vote by Con­gress, as is done with mil­i­tary base clos­ings.” That’s one of the gim­micks intend­ed to give politi­cians cov­er and pro­tect them from their con­stituents. It is pro­found­ly anti­de­mo­c­ra­t­ic. But that’s the idea–save the gov­ern­ment from the unruly pas­sions of cit­i­zens. Peterson’s pro­pos­al also resem­bles the noto­ri­ous fast-track pro­vi­sion, which for years enabled pres­i­dents to steam­roll Con­gress on trade agree­ments, no amend­ments allowed.

Peterson’s pro­pos­al would essen­tial­ly dis­man­tle the Social Secu­ri­ty enti­tle­ment enact­ed in the New Deal, much as Bill Clin­ton repealed the right to wel­fare. Peter­son has assem­bled influ­en­tial allies for this rad­i­cal step. They include a coali­tion of six major think tanks and four tax-exempt foun­da­tions.

Their report–Tak­ing Back Our Fis­cal Future, issued joint­ly by the Brook­ings Insti­tu­tion and the Her­itage Foun­da­tion–rec­om­mends that Con­gress put long-term bud­get caps on Social Secu­ri­ty and oth­er enti­tle­ment spend­ing, which would auto­mat­i­cal­ly trig­ger ben­e­fits cuts if need­ed to stay with­in the pre­scribed lim­its. The same anti­de­mo­c­ra­t­ic mechanisms–a com­mis­sion of tech­nocrats and lim­it­ed Con­gres­sion­al discretion–would shield politi­cians from pop­u­lar blow­back.

The authors of this plan are six­teen econ­o­mists from Brook­ings and Her­itage, joined by the Amer­i­can Enter­prise Insti­tute, the Con­cord Coali­tion, the New Amer­i­ca Foun­da­tion, the Pro­gres­sive Pol­i­cy Insti­tute and the Urban Insti­tute. “Our group cov­ers the ide­o­log­i­cal spec­trum,” they claim. This too is a false­hood. All these orga­ni­za­tions are cor­po­rate-friend­ly and depen­dent on big-mon­ey con­trib­u­tors. No lib­er­al or labor thinkers need apply, though the group includes some for­mer­ly lib­er­al econ­o­mists like Robert Reis­chauer, Alice Rivlin and Isabel Sawhill.

...

The real cri­sis, in any case, is not Social Secu­ri­ty but the colos­sal fail­ure of the pri­vate pen­sion sys­tem. Most peo­ple know this, either because their 401(k) account is piti­ful­ly inad­e­quate, or their com­pa­ny dumped its pen­sion plan, or the plum­met­ing stock mar­ket devoured their sav­ings. Oba­ma can pro­tect him­self with the pub­lic by speak­ing can­did­ly about this real­i­ty and propos­ing a force­ful, long-term solu­tion. He should expand the guar­an­tees that ordi­nary peo­ple need to get their fam­i­lies through these adverse times. Instead of tak­ing away old promis­es to peo­ple, the pres­i­dent should make some new ones. Health­care reform is obvi­ous­ly an impor­tant imper­a­tive, but so is retire­ment secu­ri­ty.

The solu­tion to retire­ment inse­cu­ri­ty is the cre­ation of a nation­al pen­sion, along­side Social Secu­ri­ty, that would be the bedrock social insur­ance. Improv­ing Social Secu­ri­ty ben­e­fits is one step, but it can­not pos­si­bly restore what so many mid­dle-class fam­i­lies have lost. Tin­ker­ing with the 401(k) would be doomed, because it is basi­cal­ly a tax sub­sidy for the mid­dle and upper class­es, anoth­er way to avoid tax­es that failed utter­ly to pro­duce real sav­ings [see Grei­der, “Rid­ing Into the Sun­set,” June 27, 2005].

The new uni­ver­sal pen­sion would be main­ly self-financing–that is, fund­ed by manda­to­ry savings–but the sys­tem would oper­ate as a gov­ern­ment-super­vised non­prof­it, not manip­u­lat­ed by cor­po­rate exec­u­tives or Wall Street firms. A nation­al pen­sion would com­bine the best qual­i­ties of defined-ben­e­fit plans and indi­vid­ual accounts. Each worker’s pen­sion would be indi­vid­u­al­ized and portable, mov­ing with job changes, but the sav­ings would be pooled with oth­ers for diver­si­fied invest­ment.

...

Wash­ing­ton would set the per­for­mance stan­dards and enforce prop­er behav­ior, but the oper­a­tions of retire­ment pro­grams could be wide­ly decen­tral­ized among many pri­vate orga­ni­za­tions or sec­tor by sec­tor. Oth­er nations, like Aus­tralia, have proved this can be both demo­c­ra­t­ic and reli­able. Econ­o­mist Tere­sa Ghi­lar­duc­ci of the New School has designed a promis­ing and plau­si­ble plan (avail­able at the Eco­nom­ic Pol­i­cy Institute’s web­site, epi.org, or in her book When I’m Six­ty-Four: The Plot Against Pen­sions and the Plan to Save Them). With pay­roll sav­ings of 5 per­cent and gov­ern­ment-guar­an­teed returns on invest­ment, aver­age work­ers could count on pen­sions that would replace 70 per­cent of pre-retire­ment earn­ings when com­bined with Social Secu­ri­ty. Low-wage earn­ers could be sub­si­dized by gov­ern­ment to make up for inad­e­quate pay. Pri­vate retire­ment plans that col­lect a high­er per­cent­age of pay and pro­vide high­er ben­e­fits could con­tin­ue, so long as they exceed the fed­er­al stan­dard. One great virtue of this approach is that nobody gets left behind, depen­dent on char­i­ty, the preda­to­ry instincts of the finan­cial sys­tem or the mag­ic of the mar­ket­place.

Anoth­er great virtue is that a nation­al pen­sion would con­front the country’s glar­ing eco­nom­ic weakness–the col­lapse of nation­al sav­ings. As the econ­o­my digs out of its hole, restor­ing house­hold sav­ings will be cru­cial for ulti­mate recov­ery and for reduc­tion of our dan­ger­ous depen­dence on for­eign cap­i­tal. Obvi­ous­ly, any sys­tem that adds a new pay­roll tax can­not be intro­duced at the depth of a reces­sion, but the work of con­struct­ing it can begin right now, with the new sys­tem phased in grad­u­al­ly, as eco­nom­ic con­di­tions per­mit. Instead of sec­ond-guess­ing the past and destroy­ing its accom­plish­ments, this reform would look for­ward and cre­ate con­di­tions for a more promis­ing future. Nobody gets a free lunch, and every­body has to take per­son­al respon­si­bil­i­ty. But unlike what the gov­ern­ing elites are attempt­ing, nobody gets thrown over the side.

———–

“Loot­ing Social Secu­ri­ty” by William Grei­der; The Nation; 02/11/2009

“These play­ers are pro­mot­ing a tricky way to whack Social Secu­ri­ty ben­e­fits, but to do it behind closed doors so the pub­lic can­not see what’s hap­pen­ing or fig­ure out which politi­cians to blame. The essen­tial trans­ac­tion would amount to mis­ap­pro­pri­at­ing the tril­lions in Social Secu­ri­ty tax­es that work­ers have paid to finance their retire­ment ben­e­fits. This swin­dle is por­trayed as “fis­cal reform.” In fact, it’s the polit­i­cal equiv­a­lent of bait-and-switch fraud.”

A giant swin­dle. That’s how The Nation’s William Grei­der char­ac­ter­ized the Peter G. Peter­son Foun­da­tion’s efforts to pro­mote a ‘bi-par­ti­san’ Social Secu­ri­ty ‘reform’ pan­el that would be empow­ered to craft a new vision for the US’s enti­tle­ments sys­tem. A vision that seem­ly just assumes the tril­lions of dol­lars that had already been raised for since the 1980s as the Social Secu­ri­ty “trust fund” was already spent and gone and unavail­able for the planned future pay­out. A vision that con­ve­nient­ly ignores the fact that the trust fund is filled with IOUs instead of cash because that mon­ey was effec­tive­ly spent to finance the cuts cuts for the wealth going back to the 1980s. Work­ing class Amer­i­can’s got a his­toric tax hike under Rea­gan to help finance his bud­get-bust­ing tax cuts for the wealthy and big cor­po­ra­tions and here we were, a quar­ter cen­tu­ry lat­er, with bil­lion­aire Pete Peter­son lead­ing a ‘bipar­ti­san’ estab­lish­ment effort to ‘reform’ social secu­ri­ty in a man­ner that just assumes the trust fund is nev­er get­ting paid back. The tax cuts ate it all and we’re just sup­posed to ignore. And that was 16 years ago. Just imag­ine how much more eager this estab­lish­ment is to com­plete the ‘reform’ now:

...
Defend­ing Social Secu­ri­ty sounds like yesterday’s issue–the fight peo­ple won when they defeat­ed George W. Bush’s attempt to pri­va­tize the sys­tem in 2005. But the finan­cial estab­lish­ment has pushed it back on the table, claim­ing that the cur­rent cri­sis requires “respon­si­ble” lead­ers to take action. Will Oba­ma take the bait? Sure­ly not. The new pres­i­dent has been clear and con­sis­tent about Social Secu­ri­ty, as a can­di­date and since his elec­tion. The program’s financ­ing is basi­cal­ly sound, he has explained, and can be assured far into the future by mak­ing only mod­est adjust­ments.

...

To under­stand the mechan­ics of this attempt­ed swin­dle, you have to roll back twen­ty-five years, to the time the game of bait and switch began, under Ronald Rea­gan. The Gipper’s great leg­isla­tive vic­to­ry in 1981–enacting mas­sive tax cuts for cor­po­ra­tions and upper-income ranks–launched the era of swollen fed­er­al bud­get deficits. But their eco­nom­ic impact was off­set by the huge tax increase that Con­gress imposed on work­ing peo­ple in 1983: the pay­roll tax rate sup­port­ing Social Security–the week­ly FICA deduction–was raised sub­stan­tial­ly, sup­pos­ed­ly to cre­ate a nest egg for when the baby boom gen­er­a­tion reached retire­ment age. A blue-rib­bon com­mis­sion chaired by Alan Greenspan worked out the terms, then both par­ties signed on. Since there was no par­ti­san fight, the press por­trayed the mas­sive tax increase as a non­con­tro­ver­sial “good gov­ern­ment” reform.

Ever since, work­ing Amer­i­cans have paid high­er tax­es on their labor wages–12.4 per­cent, split between employ­ees and employ­ers. As a result, the Social Secu­ri­ty sys­tem has accu­mu­lat­ed a vast surplus–now around $2.5 tril­lion and grow­ing. This is the mon­ey pot the estab­lish­ment wants to grab, claim­ing the gov­ern­ment can no longer afford to keep the promise it made to work­ers twen­ty-five years ago.

Actu­al­ly, the gov­ern­ment has already spent their mon­ey. Every year the Trea­sury has bor­rowed the sur­plus rev­enue col­lect­ed by Social Secu­ri­ty and spent the mon­ey on oth­er purposes–whatever pres­i­dents and Con­gress decide, includ­ing more tax cuts for monied inter­ests. The Social Secu­ri­ty sur­plus thus makes the fed­er­al deficits seem small­er than they are–around $200 bil­lion a year small­er. Each time the gov­ern­ment dipped into the Social Secu­ri­ty trust fund this way, it issued a legal oblig­a­tion to pay back the mon­ey with inter­est when­ev­er Social Secu­ri­ty need­ed it to pay ben­e­fits.

That moment of reck­on­ing is approach­ing. Uncle Sam owes these tril­lions to Social Secu­ri­ty retirees and has to pay it back or look like just anoth­er dead­beat. That risk is the only “cri­sis” fac­ing Social Secu­ri­ty. It is the real rea­son pow­er­ful inter­ests are so anx­ious to cut ben­e­fits. Social Secu­ri­ty is not broke–not even close. It can sus­tain its oblig­a­tions for rough­ly forty years, accord­ing to the Con­gres­sion­al Bud­get Office, even if noth­ing is changed. Even reports by the system’s con­ser­v­a­tive trustees say it has no prob­lem until 2041 (that report is signed by for­mer Trea­sury Sec­re­tary Hen­ry Paul­son, the guy who bailed out the bankers). Dur­ing the com­ing decade, how­ev­er, the sys­tem will need to start draw­ing on its reserve sur­plus­es to pay for ben­e­fits as boomers retire in greater num­bers.

But if the gov­ern­ment cuts the ben­e­fits first, it can push off repay­ment far into the future, and pos­si­bly for­ev­er. Oth­er­wise, gov­ern­ment has to bor­row the mon­ey by sell­ing gov­ern­ment bonds or extend the Social Secu­ri­ty tax to cov­er incomes above the cur­rent $107,000 ceil­ing. Oba­ma endors­es the lat­ter option.

Fol­low the bounc­ing ball: Wash­ing­ton first cuts tax­es on the well-to-do, then off­sets the rev­enue loss by rais­ing tax­es on the work­ing class and tells folks it is sav­ing their mon­ey for future retire­ment. But Wash­ing­ton spends the mon­ey on oth­er stuff, so when work­ers need it for their retire­ment, they are told, Sor­ry, we can’t afford it.
...

And as we can see, a core ele­ment of this plan is to effec­tive­ly con­vince the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty to agree to a “bipar­ti­san fis­cal respon­si­bil­i­ty com­mis­sion” that will put togeth­er a ‘reform’ pack­age that would be put to an up-or-down vote to Con­gress, with no amend­ments allowed. A plan to effec­tive­ly keep in nego­ti­a­tions behind the closed doors of this com­mis­sion and out of the pub­lic’s eye where changes can be made. Then, the plan will be sud­den­ly sprung on con­gress and pre­sum­ably passed in an over­whelm­ing bipar­ti­san man­ner that allows both par­ties to deflect the pub­lic’s ire. That was the big plan get­ting pushed by Wall Street bil­lion­aires in the wake of the 2008 Wall Street melt­down. That broad­er con­text, of the finan­cial emer­gency that was tran­spir­ing, is a key part of the con­text of this plan. They were oppor­tunis­ti­cal­ly tak­ing advan­tage of a glob­al finan­cial dis­as­ter of Wall Street’s mak­ing. Well, Wall Street and the dereg­u­la­to­ry cor­po­ratist lamak­ers in DC who enabled the cri­sis in the first place:

...
Fed­er­al bud­get ana­lysts try to brush aside these facts by claim­ing the gov­ern­ment is mere­ly “bor­row­ing from itself” when it dips into Social Secu­ri­ty. But that is a sub­stan­tive false­hood. Gov­ern­ment doesn’t own this mon­ey. It essen­tial­ly acts as the fidu­cia­ry, hold­ing this wealth in trust for the “ben­e­fi­cial own­ers,” the peo­ple who paid the tax­es. This is the bait and switch the estab­lish­ment intends to exe­cute.

Peter Peter­son, a Repub­li­can financier who made a for­tune doing cor­po­rate takeover deals at Wall Street’s Black­stone Group, is the Dad­dy War­bucks of the “fis­cal respon­si­bil­i­ty” cru­sade. He has cam­paigned for decades against the dan­gers that old folks pose to the Repub­lic. Now 82 and retired, Peter­son claims he will spend near­ly one-third of his $2.8 bil­lion in wealth–he ranks 147 on the Forbes 400 list of rich­est Americans–alerting the pub­lic to this threat (leave aside the fact that old peo­ple have already paid for their retire­ment or that Social Security’s mod­est ben­e­fits are equiv­a­lent to min­i­mum-wage income). The major media treat him ador­ing­ly. Most reporters are too lazy (or dim) to check out the facts for them­selves, so they sim­ply repeat what Peter­son tells them about Social Secu­ri­ty.

...

Peter­son is financ­ing a media blitz. His ten­den­tious doc­u­men­tary–I.O.U.S.A.–opened in 400 the­aters and was broad­cast on CNN with appro­pri­ate solem­ni­ty. Last Sep­tem­ber Peter­son bought two full pages in the New York Times to urge the next pres­i­dent to cre­ate a “bipar­ti­san fis­cal respon­si­bil­i­ty com­mis­sion” once he was in office (Peter­son was for John McCain). This group of so-called experts would be autho­rized to design the reforms for Con­gress to enact. But Peter­son does not want Con­gress to have a full, free­wheel­ing debate on the par­tic­u­lars. The reform pack­age, he sug­gests, should be sub­mit­ted to a sin­gle “up-or-down vote by Con­gress, as is done with mil­i­tary base clos­ings.” That’s one of the gim­micks intend­ed to give politi­cians cov­er and pro­tect them from their con­stituents. It is pro­found­ly anti­de­mo­c­ra­t­ic. But that’s the idea–save the gov­ern­ment from the unruly pas­sions of cit­i­zens. Peterson’s pro­pos­al also resem­bles the noto­ri­ous fast-track pro­vi­sion, which for years enabled pres­i­dents to steam­roll Con­gress on trade agree­ments, no amend­ments allowed.

Peterson’s pro­pos­al would essen­tial­ly dis­man­tle the Social Secu­ri­ty enti­tle­ment enact­ed in the New Deal, much as Bill Clin­ton repealed the right to wel­fare. Peter­son has assem­bled influ­en­tial allies for this rad­i­cal step. They include a coali­tion of six major think tanks and four tax-exempt foun­da­tions.
...

Also note how the lump­ing of Social Secu­ri­ty with oth­er non-self-fund­ed enti­tle­ments like Medicare and Med­ic­aid serves the dual pur­pose of both fal­sly ampli­fy­ing the scale of the chal­lenges fac­ing Social Secu­ri­ty while simul­ta­ne­ous­ly obscur­ing the role out of con­trol health insur­ance and drug prices are play­ing in the explo­sion of the cost of the health care safe­ty-net. Which is a reminder that ‘enti­tle­ment reform’ that ends up focus­ing on find­ings ‘sav­ings’ through gut­ting social secu­ri­ty instead of deal­ing with the health insur­ance and phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal indus­tries is anoth­er major rea­son the estab­lish­ment is going to love Peter­son­’s approach. Wall Street isn’t the only part of the estab­lishlment win­ning big here:

...
It is a fright­ful mes­sage. Peter­son describes a “$53 tril­lion hole” in America’s fis­cal condition–but the claim assumes numer­ous art­ful fal­lac­i­es. His most bla­tant dis­tor­tion is lump­ing Social Secu­ri­ty, which is self-fund­ed and sound, with oth­er enti­tle­ments like Medicare and Med­ic­aid. Those pro­grams do face finan­cial crisis–not because the elder­ly and poor are greed­i­ly gam­ing the sys­tem but because the med­ical-indus­tri­al com­plex has the prof­it incen­tive to dri­ve health­care costs high­er and high­er. Health­care reform can solve the financ­ing prob­lem only if it impos­es cost con­trols on pri­vate play­ers like the insur­ance and phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal indus­tries.
...

And as we can see, there real­ly were quite an array of dif­fer­ent think tanks who were open­ly sign­ing on board to the “Tak­ing Back Our Fis­cal Future” ini­tia­tive. Osten­si­bly cen­ter-left groups like the Brook­ings Insti­tu­tion, the Pro­gres­sive Pol­i­cy Insti­tute and the Urban Insti­tute. Which, of course, is less of an indi­ca­tion of the ide­o­log­i­cal diver­si­ty of this ini­tia­tive and more a reflec­tion of the ide­o­log­i­cal diver­si­ty of the estab­lish­men­t’s pub­lic rela­tions and lob­by­ing activ­i­ties. A pati­na of estab­lish­ment-cre­at­ed ‘left-wing’ sup­port was ready to give its full throat­ed endorse­ment for this planned chain­saw­ing of US safe­ty-net:

...
Their report–Tak­ing Back Our Fis­cal Future, issued joint­ly by the Brook­ings Insti­tu­tion and the Her­itage Foun­da­tion–rec­om­mends that Con­gress put long-term bud­get caps on Social Secu­ri­ty and oth­er enti­tle­ment spend­ing, which would auto­mat­i­cal­ly trig­ger ben­e­fits cuts if need­ed to stay with­in the pre­scribed lim­its. The same anti­de­mo­c­ra­t­ic mechanisms–a com­mis­sion of tech­nocrats and lim­it­ed Con­gres­sion­al discretion–would shield politi­cians from pop­u­lar blow­back.

The authors of this plan are six­teen econ­o­mists from Brook­ings and Her­itage, joined by the Amer­i­can Enter­prise Insti­tute, the Con­cord Coali­tion, the New Amer­i­ca Foun­da­tion, the Pro­gres­sive Pol­i­cy Insti­tute and the Urban Insti­tute. “Our group cov­ers the ide­o­log­i­cal spec­trum,” they claim. This too is a false­hood. All these orga­ni­za­tions are cor­po­rate-friend­ly and depen­dent on big-mon­ey con­trib­u­tors. No lib­er­al or labor thinkers need apply, though the group includes some for­mer­ly lib­er­al econ­o­mists like Robert Reis­chauer, Alice Rivlin and Isabel Sawhill.

...

The real cri­sis, in any case, is not Social Secu­ri­ty but the colos­sal fail­ure of the pri­vate pen­sion sys­tem. Most peo­ple know this, either because their 401(k) account is piti­ful­ly inad­e­quate, or their com­pa­ny dumped its pen­sion plan, or the plum­met­ing stock mar­ket devoured their sav­ings. Oba­ma can pro­tect him­self with the pub­lic by speak­ing can­did­ly about this real­i­ty and propos­ing a force­ful, long-term solu­tion. He should expand the guar­an­tees that ordi­nary peo­ple need to get their fam­i­lies through these adverse times. Instead of tak­ing away old promis­es to peo­ple, the pres­i­dent should make some new ones. Health­care reform is obvi­ous­ly an impor­tant imper­a­tive, but so is retire­ment secu­ri­ty.
...

And as this arti­cle, from 2009, reminds us, the solu­tions Amer­i­cans should be look­ing at are big ideas like the cre­ation of a nation­al pen­sion sys­tem. One not at the mer­cy of Wall Street, a mod­el that looks all the more tempt­ing when we see the kind of woes faced by so many pen­sion funds scram­bling for returns the pri­vate-equi­ty sec­tor. The kind of solu­tion the forces behind the bal­anced bud­get con­sti­tu­tion­al amend­ment aren’t going to be very inter­est­ed to allow­ing under their new con­sti­tu­tion­al order:

...
The solu­tion to retire­ment inse­cu­ri­ty is the cre­ation of a nation­al pen­sion, along­side Social Secu­ri­ty, that would be the bedrock social insur­ance. Improv­ing Social Secu­ri­ty ben­e­fits is one step, but it can­not pos­si­bly restore what so many mid­dle-class fam­i­lies have lost. Tin­ker­ing with the 401(k) would be doomed, because it is basi­cal­ly a tax sub­sidy for the mid­dle and upper class­es, anoth­er way to avoid tax­es that failed utter­ly to pro­duce real sav­ings [see Grei­der, “Rid­ing Into the Sun­set,” June 27, 2005].

The new uni­ver­sal pen­sion would be main­ly self-financing–that is, fund­ed by manda­to­ry savings–but the sys­tem would oper­ate as a gov­ern­ment-super­vised non­prof­it, not manip­u­lat­ed by cor­po­rate exec­u­tives or Wall Street firms. A nation­al pen­sion would com­bine the best qual­i­ties of defined-ben­e­fit plans and indi­vid­ual accounts. Each worker’s pen­sion would be indi­vid­u­al­ized and portable, mov­ing with job changes, but the sav­ings would be pooled with oth­ers for diver­si­fied invest­ment.
...

What are the odds some­thing like a nation­al pen­sion sys­tem would be tech­ni­cal­ly fea­si­ble at all under the ‘new con­sti­tu­tion’ this move­ment has in mind? Pret­ty much zero, obvi­ous­ly. That’s the point.

David Walker’s 2009 Austerity Lobby Defense: Stop Saying We’re Going to Loot Social Security...It’s Already Been Looted!

As we saw in the above Nation arti­cle from Feb­ru­ary of 2009, the aus­ter­i­ty lob­by — heav­i­ly financed by Wall Street bil­lion­aire Pete Peter­son — was already orga­niz­ing and prepar­ing for a major pub­lic rela­tions push. With Wall Street bil­lion­aire Pete Peter­son large­ly financ­ing the whole effort. And effort that includ­ed an array of estab­lish­ment DC fig­ures like David Walk­er, then the Pres­i­dent and CEO of the Pete Peter­son Foun­da­tion. So per­haps we should­n’t be sur­prised that it was Walk­er who respond­ed to what William Grieder laid out in that above Feb­ru­ary 2009 Nation piece. Nor should we be sur­prised that Walk­er’s argu­ments includ­ed unsourced fear-mon­ger­ing state­ments like the asser­tion that the US fed­er­al gov­ern­ment face a $56 tril­lion-plus fis­cal hole. Which hap­pened to be $3 tril­lion more than the $53 tril­lion fis­cal hole Walk­er cal­cu­lat­ed at the end of Sep­tem­ber 2008 when the Wall Street meltdown/bailout was just get­ting under­way. A fis­cal hole Walk­er attrib­uted almost entire­ly to long-term unfund­ed enti­tle­ment costs, a form of fear-mon­ger­ing that com­plete­ly ignores the dis­as­trous fis­cal impact of the tax cuts for the wealthy and big busi­ness­es the US has been indulging in since Ronald Rea­gan or the out-of-con­trol prof­i­teer­ing still ram­pant in the US health care sec­tor. In fair­ness, Walk­er does men­tion in pass­ing that “Both Repub­li­cans and Democ­rats in Wash­ing­ton have charged every­thing to the nation’s cred­it card, includ­ing tax cuts and spend­ing increas­es, with­out pay­ing for them.” But that’s the kind of ‘both-sideism’ that com­plete­ly ignores how its the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty that was force for expand­ing and pro­tect­ing enti­tle­ments that are vital for aver­age Amer­i­cans while it’s almost exclu­sive­ly the Repub­li­can Par­ty vot­ing for mas­sive bud­get-bust­ing sup­ply-side tax cuts for the wealthy and big busi­ness­es. It’s a rather asym­met­ric ‘both-sides’ sit­u­a­tion when you look a lit­tle clos­er. But that’s how the aus­ter­i­ty lob­by oper­ates, in the ser­vice of major long-term right-wing pol­i­cy goals.

Now, it’s also tech­ni­cal­ly true that the Social Secu­ri­ty trust fund has already been ‘raid­ed’ in the sense that it con­sists of gov­ern­ment bonds (or “IOUs” as Walk­er put it). But that real­ly should­n’t be a cause for major alarm unless we’re talk­ing about the US default­ing on its debt. Sure, it would be bet­ter if the Trust Fund con­sist­ed of cash instead of bonds, but it’s not like the Trust Fund lacks assets. Its assets are US gov­ern­ment bonds, which are gen­er­al­ly con­sid­ered among the safest assets on the plan­et. And, again, any ‘raid­ing’ of the trust fund was implic­it­ly done in the ser­vice of financ­ing all those Repub­li­can-led tax cuts for the rich. That Walk­er was selec­tive­ly deployed pro-aus­ter­i­ty argu­ments was sad­ly to be expect­ed. Although we could be a lit­tle sur­prised that Walk­er’s reply to the alle­ga­tions by Grei­der that this aus­ter­i­ty move­ment was plan­ning on raid­ing enti­tle­ments like Social Secu­ri­ty by declar­ing that was­n’t true because Social Secu­ri­ty had already been raid­ed. It’s not exact­ly a denial of intent:

The Nation

The Peter­son Foun­da­tion Responds

Feb­ru­ary 13, 2009

To the Edi­tor:

William Grei­der’s essay, “Loot­ing Social Secu­ri­ty” (March 2 issue), gross­ly mis­rep­re­sents Pete Peter­son and the Peter G. Peter­son Foun­da­tion’s views on Social Secu­ri­ty reform and over­looks some large and inescapable truths.

Both Repub­li­cans and Democ­rats in Wash­ing­ton have charged every­thing to the nation’s cred­it card, includ­ing tax cuts and spend­ing increas­es, with­out pay­ing for them. Wash­ing­ton’s impru­dent, uneth­i­cal and even immoral behav­ior is facil­i­tat­ed by a lack of trans­paren­cy and account­abil­i­ty. As of Sep­tem­ber 30, 2008, the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment was in a $56 tril­lion-plus fis­cal hole based on the offi­cial finan­cial con­sol­i­dat­ed state­ments of the US gov­ern­ment. This amount is equal to $483,000 per house­hold and $184,000 per Amer­i­can. Left unchecked, this bur­den ris­es every year by $6,600 to $9,900 per per­son, even with a bal­anced fed­er­al bud­get.

The nation’s bedrock social safe­ty pro­grams, Medicare and Social Secu­ri­ty, are not in dan­ger of being looted–they already have been loot­ed. The fed­er­al gov­ern­ment already has spent any relat­ed sur­plus and replaced it with non-mar­ketable IOUs that aren’t even con­sid­ered lia­bil­i­ties by the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment. In addi­tion, Medicare is already draw­ing down on these IOUs and Social Secu­ri­ty will start doing so with­in ten years.

...

As a for­mer Comp­trol­ler Gen­er­al of the Unit­ed States from 1998 to 2008 and a for­mer pub­lic trustee of Social Secu­ri­ty and Medicare, I share Pete Peter­son­’s deep com­mit­ment to pre­serv­ing a strong, sus­tain­able safe­ty net for all Amer­i­cans, includ­ing seniors. And con­trary to the impres­sion that one could draw from Mr. Grei­der’s essay, Pete and I both sup­port the con­cept of a sound, defined-ben­e­fit pro­gram for Social Secu­ri­ty sup­ple­ment­ed by addi­tion­al auto­mat­ic sav­ings accounts for indi­vid­u­als.

At the same time, Pete and I also believe that the process one employs is crit­i­cal­ly impor­tant when trans­for­ma­tion­al changes are need­ed. We have sad­ly con­clud­ed that the “reg­u­lar order” in Con­gress is bro­ken and that achiev­ing progress on mul­ti­ple fronts with­in a short time­frame is not pos­si­ble on a piece­meal basis.

What does this mean? The pres­i­dent and the Con­gress need to work togeth­er to estab­lish a “Fis­cal Future Com­mis­sion” (or task force) which, unlike most Wash­ing­ton com­mis­sions, would be designed to accel­er­ate action and get the ball across the goal line rather than punt it down the field. Ide­al­ly, this bipar­ti­san com­mis­sion would be cre­at­ed by statute to ensure buy-in from both the Con­gress and the pres­i­dent. It should include select­ed and diverse mem­bers of Con­gress and of the admin­is­tra­tion as well as non-gov­ern­men­tal offi­cials. It should engage the pub­lic out­side Wash­ing­ton’s Belt­way, includ­ing by lever­ag­ing dig­i­tal tech­nol­o­gy and the web. Every­thing, includ­ing bud­get con­trols, enti­tle­ment reforms, spend­ing con­straints and tax increas­es, would be on the table. After engag­ing the pub­lic and key stake­hold­ers, it would make a range of rec­om­men­da­tions that would be sub­ject to an up-or-down vote in Con­gress.

Mr. Grei­der is incor­rect in claim­ing that such a com­mis­sion would be a back-door attempt to cut ben­e­fits or “dis­man­tle the Social Secu­ri­ty enti­tle­ment.” A com­mis­sion, and ulti­mate­ly the Con­gress and the pres­i­dent, would be required to look at many alter­na­tive solu­tions to these struc­tur­al fis­cal chal­lenges and make rec­om­men­da­tions designed to put us on a more pru­dent and sus­tain­able path.

It is dis­ap­point­ing that Mr. Grei­der and The Nation in its mis­lead­ing cov­er pic­to­r­i­al seem to have used hyper­bole to false­ly impress upon read­ers that Pete Peter­son is try­ing to “loot Social Secu­ri­ty,” or that he is alone in try­ing to address Social Secu­ri­ty’s finan­cial chal­lenges. Indeed, a grow­ing num­ber of promi­nent indi­vid­u­als span­ning the ide­o­log­i­cal spec­trum sup­port the need for dra­mat­ic and fun­da­men­tal reforms of sev­er­al of our nation’s cur­rent pro­grams and poli­cies.

Why is a diverse coali­tion sup­port­ing this grow­ing move­ment? Because there is a increas­ing con­sen­sus that our pol­i­cy of ignor­ing our fis­cal real­i­ties, by spend­ing the Social Secu­ri­ty sur­plus, ignor­ing out-of-con­trol health­care costs, run­ning oper­at­ing deficits and rely­ing increas­ing­ly on for­eign lenders, serve to threat­en our col­lec­tive future.

...

Sin­cere­ly,

David M. Walk­er
Pres­i­dent and CEO
Peter G. Peter­son Foun­da­tion

———–

“The Peter­son Foun­da­tion Responds” by David M. Walk­er; The Nation; 02/13/2009

“Mr. Grei­der is incor­rect in claim­ing that such a com­mis­sion would be a back-door attempt to cut ben­e­fits or “dis­man­tle the Social Secu­ri­ty enti­tle­ment.” A com­mis­sion, and ulti­mate­ly the Con­gress and the pres­i­dent, would be required to look at many alter­na­tive solu­tions to these struc­tur­al fis­cal chal­lenges and make rec­om­men­da­tions designed to put us on a more pru­dent and sus­tain­able path.”

LOL, well, Peter G. Peter­son Foun­da­tion CEO David M. Walk­er’s rebut­tal is tech­ni­cal­ly true. Walk­er isn’t propos­ing a com­mis­sion that would nec­es­sar­i­ly oper­ate as a back-door attempt to cut Social Secu­ri­ty ben­e­fits. A range of options would undoubt­ed­ly be for­mal­ly exam­ined. It’s just that we know which options they would have kept and which options would have been deem ‘eco­nom­i­cal­ly unfea­si­ble’ or ‘too expen­sive’. Would options like rais­ing the cap on the Social Secu­ri­ty tax so mil­lion­aires and bil­lion­aires have to pay the Social Secu­ri­ty on their entire income be seri­ous­ly exam­ined? How about the cre­ation of a nation­al pen­sion like Grei­der pro­posed? Of course not. We know how such a com­mis­sion would be stacked. But yes, tech­ni­cal­ly speak­ing, a range of options would be looked at. But also note how Walk­er is quite explic­it about how he views Wash­ing­ton as “bro­ken” and there­fore real­ly does want to see some sort of com­mis­sion that “would be designed to accel­er­ate action and get the ball across the goal line rather than punt it down the field,” which is essen­tial­ly code for a com­mis­sion where mem­bers of con­gress and mem­bers of the pub­lic have lim­it­ed input. Every­one basi­cal­ly agrees to accept a poten­tial­ly rad­i­cal out­come in advance of the ‘nego­ti­at­ing’. Which sure sounds a lot like the Con­sti­tu­tion­al Con­ven­tion scheme Walk­er is now try­ing to make real­i­ty:

...
At the same time, Pete and I also believe that the process one employs is crit­i­cal­ly impor­tant when trans­for­ma­tion­al changes are need­ed. We have sad­ly con­clud­ed that the “reg­u­lar order” in Con­gress is bro­ken and that achiev­ing progress on mul­ti­ple fronts with­in a short time­frame is not pos­si­ble on a piece­meal basis.

What does this mean? The pres­i­dent and the Con­gress need to work togeth­er to estab­lish a “Fis­cal Future Com­mis­sion” (or task force) which, unlike most Wash­ing­ton com­mis­sions, would be designed to accel­er­ate action and get the ball across the goal line rather than punt it down the field. Ide­al­ly, this bipar­ti­san com­mis­sion would be cre­at­ed by statute to ensure buy-in from both the Con­gress and the pres­i­dent. It should include select­ed and diverse mem­bers of Con­gress and of the admin­is­tra­tion as well as non-gov­ern­men­tal offi­cials. It should engage the pub­lic out­side Wash­ing­ton’s Belt­way, includ­ing by lever­ag­ing dig­i­tal tech­nol­o­gy and the web. Every­thing, includ­ing bud­get con­trols, enti­tle­ment reforms, spend­ing con­straints and tax increas­es, would be on the table. After engag­ing the pub­lic and key stake­hold­ers, it would make a range of rec­om­men­da­tions that would be sub­ject to an up-or-down vote in Con­gress.
...

And note how Walk­er’s rebut­tal con­tains the very decep­tions Grei­der was decry­ing: lump­ing the self-fund­ed Social Secu­ri­ty — which faces the prob­lem of get­ting the trust fund ful­ly respect­ed by Con­gress and treat­ed like con­trac­tu­al guar­an­tee with the pub­lic — into the same pool of prob­lems fac­ing Med­ic­aid and Medicare, which aren’t self-fund­ed and are enmeshed in the larg­er bro­ken US health­care sys­tem. A health­care sys­tem that remains large­ly cap­tured by wild­ly prof­itably pri­vate inter­ests, despite the improve­ments of Oba­macare (which did­n’t exist which Walk­er wrote this rebut­tal). As Walk­er framed it, Social Secu­ri­ty, Medicare, and Med­ic­aid are all just at risk of being loot­ed. They already have been loot­ed and we just need to fig­ure out how to accept it and deal with it. That’s the fram­ing he’s work­ing with. The kind of fram­ing that allows us to con­ve­nient­ly ignore the real­i­ty that the ‘loot­ing’ only hap­pens if the gov­ern­ment decides the bonds in trust fund don’t need to be rec­og­nized as valid and was only ‘spent’ in the first place to pay for the bud­get con­se­quences of all those tax cuts for the rich and big cor­po­ra­tions. Tax cuts that hap­pened under Rea­gan, at the same time the his­toric Social Secu­ri­ty tax­es were imposed on the rest of the pub­lic to finance the trust fund. It’s rhetor­i­cal sub­terfuge:

...
Both Repub­li­cans and Democ­rats in Wash­ing­ton have charged every­thing to the nation’s cred­it card, includ­ing tax cuts and spend­ing increas­es, with­out pay­ing for them. Wash­ing­ton’s impru­dent, uneth­i­cal and even immoral behav­ior is facil­i­tat­ed by a lack of trans­paren­cy and account­abil­i­ty. As of Sep­tem­ber 30, 2008, the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment was in a $56 tril­lion-plus fis­cal hole based on the offi­cial finan­cial con­sol­i­dat­ed state­ments of the US gov­ern­ment. This amount is equal to $483,000 per house­hold and $184,000 per Amer­i­can. Left unchecked, this bur­den ris­es every year by $6,600 to $9,900 per per­son, even with a bal­anced fed­er­al bud­get.

The nation’s bedrock social safe­ty pro­grams, Medicare and Social Secu­ri­ty, are not in dan­ger of being looted–they already have been loot­ed. The fed­er­al gov­ern­ment already has spent any relat­ed sur­plus and replaced it with non-mar­ketable IOUs that aren’t even con­sid­ered lia­bil­i­ties by the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment. In addi­tion, Medicare is already draw­ing down on these IOUs and Social Secu­ri­ty will start doing so with­in ten years.

...

As a for­mer Comp­trol­ler Gen­er­al of the Unit­ed States from 1998 to 2008 and a for­mer pub­lic trustee of Social Secu­ri­ty and Medicare, I share Pete Peter­son­’s deep com­mit­ment to pre­serv­ing a strong, sus­tain­able safe­ty net for all Amer­i­cans, includ­ing seniors. And con­trary to the impres­sion that one could draw from Mr. Grei­der’s essay, Pete and I both sup­port the con­cept of a sound, defined-ben­e­fit pro­gram for Social Secu­ri­ty sup­ple­ment­ed by addi­tion­al auto­mat­ic sav­ings accounts for indi­vid­u­als.
...

But it’s not just rhetor­i­cal sub­terfuge by the CEO of the Pete Peter­son Foun­da­tion. David Walk­er was Bill Clin­ton’s Comp­trol­ler Gen­er­al of the Unit­ed States and a for­mer pub­lic trustee of Social Secu­ri­ty and Medicare. The guy is an estab­lish­ment fig­ure. Some­one who speaks the lan­guage of DC. And as William Grei­der warns in his brief response to Walk­er, a core part of Walk­er’s argu­ment isn’t just that major ‘reforms’ (cuts) to enti­tle­ments need to hap­pen. He’s also argu­ing that this ‘reform’ should be han­dled by a spe­cial­ly appoint­ed com­mis­sion because ‘con­gress is bro­ken’. It’s like a pre­lude to the Arti­cle V ambi­tions we’re see­ing play out today:

The Nation

William Grei­der Responds

By William Grei­der
Feb­ru­ary 13, 2009

David Walk­er is offend­ed but, if you read his let­ter close­ly, he more or less con­firms what I wrote about the estab­lish­men­t’s assault on Social Secu­ri­ty and oth­er enti­tle­ment pro­grams.

I said they want to loot Social Secu­ri­ty. He says it’s already been loot­ed. I said they are try­ing to evade the reg­u­lar process­es of rep­re­sen­ta­tive democ­ra­cy. He says Con­gress is “bro­ken” and so can­not be trust­ed to make sound deci­sions in a time­ly man­ner.

Do they want to whack ben­e­fits for Social Secu­ri­ty recip­i­ents, as I claimed, or don’t they? Walk­er declines to answer the ques­tion. Read­ers may decide for them­selves whom to believe.

———-

“William Grei­der Responds” By William Grei­der; The Nation; 02/13/2009

William Grei­der could see the writ­ing on the wall. And this was in Feb­ru­ary of 2009, just months into the unfold­ing of the Great Reces­sion.

The Austerity Lobby Great Recession Grip on DC: 3 Years in with ‘the Sequester’ Secured and Growing Plans for a “Supercommittee” that can “Go Big”.

Flash for­ward to the fol­low­ing Nation piece from Octo­ber 2011 — three years after the Wall Street melt­downs — and we can see how the Peter­son Foun­da­tion aus­ter­i­ty crew real­ly had suc­cess­ful­ly dom­i­nat­ed the DC debate over how to rebuild from the finan­cial after­math. So much so that the Peter­son-financed CRFB was hold­ing a high-pro­file sym­po­sium to urge Con­gress to estab­lish a “super­com­mit­tee” that would be empow­ered to “go big”. In oth­er words, the same ‘solu­tion’ David Walk­er was advo­cat­ing back in Feb­ru­ary of 2009. The “very seri­ous peo­ple,” as Paul Krug­man dubbed them, con­tin­ued to dom­i­nate the dis­course. And as we can see, they were por­tray­ing the US nation­al debt as “the most seri­ous threat that this coun­try has ever had” and “a threat to the whole idea of self-gov­ern­ment”. Beyond that, they had already suc­ceed­ed in the 2010 for­ma­tion of the Bowles-Simp­son com­mis­sion, which ulti­mate­ly real­ly did put for­ward a slew of rec­om­mend­ed mas­sive enti­tle­ment cuts and even a 10 per­cent reduc­tion in the fed­er­al work­force. Now, as we’re going to see, those rec­om­men­da­tions weren’t ulti­mate­ly imple­ment­ed, large­ly due to the Repub­li­can-led House get­ting over­ly aggres­sive in its nego­ti­a­tions with the Oba­ma admin­is­tra­tion. Yes, the Oba­ma admin­is­tra­tion had actu­al­ly agreed to a shock­ing­ly bad ‘grand bar­gain’ of $3 tril­lion in cuts in exchange for $800 bil­lion in new tax­es. It was a deal NY Times colum­nist David Brooks char­ac­ter­ized as “the deal of the cen­tu­ry” for the GOP. But when Oba­ma asked for an addi­tion­al $400 bil­lion in addi­tion­al rev­enue the House GOP balked and the ‘grand bar­gain’ fell apart. Instead, a new small­er ‘com­pro­mise’ was reached: $917 bil­lion in cuts over the next decade, along with a super­com­mit­tee that would be tasked with find­ing $1.2 tril­lion in addi­tion­al sav­ings, aka “the sequester”. It was­n’t the “go big” plan the Peter­son Foun­da­tion had been hop­ing for. But the fact that the aus­ter­i­ty lob­by had main­tained a strong enough grip on the DC dis­course to pre­vent the sort of major gov­ern­ment stim­u­lus the eco­nom­ic cri­sis called for and still man­aged to get the “sequester” was still a mas­sive ‘win’. And, of course, a mas­sive loss for the pub­lic:

The Nation

How the Aus­ter­i­ty Class Rules Wash­ing­ton

A pow­er­ful, bipar­ti­san coali­tion of deficit hawks has man­u­fac­tured a cen­ter-right con­sen­sus that dom­i­nates the Belt­way.

Ari Berman
Octo­ber 19, 2011
This arti­cle appears in the Novem­ber 7, 2011 issue.

In Sep­tem­ber the Com­mit­tee for a Respon­si­ble Fed­er­al Bud­get (CRFB), a bipar­ti­san deficit-hawk group based at the New Amer­i­ca Foun­da­tion, held a high-pro­file sym­po­sium urg­ing the Con­gres­sion­al “super­com­mit­tee” to “go big” and approve a $4 tril­lion deficit reduc­tion plan over the next decade, which is well beyond its $1.2 tril­lion man­date. The hear­ing began with an alarm­ing video of top pol­i­cy-mak­ers describ­ing the nation­al debt as “the most seri­ous threat that this coun­try has ever had” (Alan Simp­son) and “a threat to the whole idea of self-gov­ern­ment” (Mitch Daniels). If the debt con­tin­ues to rise, pre­dict­ed for­mer New Mex­i­co Sen­a­tor Pete Domeni­ci, there would be “strikes, riots, who knows what?” A loom­ing fis­cal cri­sis was por­trayed as being just around the cor­ner.

The event spot­light­ed a cen­tral para­dox in Amer­i­can pol­i­tics over the past two years: how, in the midst of a mas­sive unem­ploy­ment crisis—when it’s painful­ly obvi­ous that not enough jobs are being cre­at­ed and the pub­lic over­whelm­ing­ly wants pol­i­cy-mak­ers to focus on cre­at­ing them—did the deficit emerge as the most press­ing issue in the coun­try? And why, when the glob­al evi­dence clear­ly indi­cates that aus­ter­i­ty mea­sures will raise unem­ploy­ment and hin­der, not accel­er­ate, growth, do advo­cates of aus­ter­i­ty retain such dis­tinc­tion today?

An expla­na­tion can be found in the promi­nence of an influ­en­tial and aggres­sive aus­ter­i­ty class—an alleged­ly cen­trist coali­tion of politi­cians, wonks and pun­dits who are con­sid­ered indis­putably wise cus­to­di­ans of US eco­nom­ic pol­i­cy. These “very seri­ous peo­ple,” as New York Times colum­nist Paul Krug­man wry­ly dubs them, have achieved what Uni­ver­si­ty of Cal­i­for­nia, Berke­ley, econ­o­mist Brad DeLong calls “intel­lec­tu­al hege­mo­ny over the course of the debate in Wash­ing­ton, from 2009 until today.”

Its mem­bers include Wall Street titans like Pete Peter­son and Robert Rubin; deficit-hawk groups like the CRFB, the Con­cord Coali­tion, the Hamil­ton Project, the Com­mit­tee for Eco­nom­ic Devel­op­ment, Third Way and the Bipar­ti­san Pol­i­cy Cen­ter; bud­get wonks like Peter Orszag, Alice Rivlin, David Walk­er and Dou­glas Holtz-Eakin; red state Democ­rats in Con­gress like Mark Warn­er and Kent Con­rad, the bipar­ti­san “Gang of Six” and what’s left of the Blue Dog Coali­tion; influ­en­tial pun­dits like Tom Fried­man and David Brooks of the New York Times, Niall Fer­gu­son and the Wash­ing­ton Post edi­to­r­i­al page; and a parade of blue rib­bon com­mis­sions, most notably Bowles-Simp­son, whose mem­bers formed the all-star team of the aus­ter­i­ty class.

The aus­ter­i­ty class tes­ti­fies fre­quent­ly before Con­gress, is quot­ed con­stant­ly in the media by sym­pa­thet­ic jour­nal­ists and influ­ences pol­i­cy-mak­ers and elites at the high­est lev­els of pow­er. They man­u­fac­ture a cen­ter-right con­sen­sus by deter­min­ing the para­me­ters of accept­able debate and pol­i­cy pri­or­i­ties, decid­ing who is and is not con­sid­ered a respectable voice on fis­cal mat­ters. The “bal­anced” solu­tions they advo­cate are often wild­ly out of step with pub­lic opin­ion and rep­utable eco­nom­ic pol­i­cy, yet their influ­ence endures, thanks to an abun­dance of mon­ey, the ear of the media, the anti-Key­ne­sian bias of sup­ply-side eco­nom­ics and a polit­i­cal sys­tem con­sis­tent­ly skewed to favor Wall Street over Main Street.

Tak­en togeth­er, the var­i­ous strands of the aus­ter­i­ty class form a rein­forc­ing web that is dif­fi­cult to break. Its think tanks and wonks pro­duce a relent­less stream of dis­turb­ing sta­tis­tics warn­ing of sky­rock­et­ing debt and loom­ing bank­rupt­cy, which in turn is trum­pet­ed by politi­cians and the press and inter­nal­ized by the pub­lic. Thus forms what Wash­ing­ton Post blog­ger Greg Sar­gent calls a Belt­way Deficit Feed­back Loop, where­in the hypo­thet­i­cal pos­si­bil­i­ty of a US debt cri­sis some­where in the future takes prece­dence over the very real jobs cri­sis now.

...

* * *

Groups like the CRFB and the Con­cord Coali­tion, found­ed by for­mer Con­gress mem­bers in the 1980s and ’90s, have long pre­sent­ed them­selves as non­par­ti­san, pen­ny-pinch­ing crit­ics of waste­ful gov­ern­ment spend­ing, when real­ly they are anti-gov­ern­ment, pro-cor­po­rate ide­o­logues whose boards are filled with K Street lob­by­ists and finan­cial exec­u­tives. The goal of much of the aus­ter­i­ty class is to see gov­ern­ment funds redi­rect­ed to the pri­vate sec­tor. (Their ide­ol­o­gy, which accepts the accu­mu­la­tion of pri­vate debt but oppos­es gov­ern­ment debt, explains why the aus­ter­i­ty class ignored the mas­sive hous­ing and cred­it bub­ble, which more than any sin­gle fac­tor con­tributed to an explo­sion of debt world­wide.)

The aus­ter­i­ty class’s reach has expand­ed in the Oba­ma era, boost­ed by lead­ers of both par­ties and an influx of new fund­ing. After con­sis­tent­ly approv­ing mas­sive deficit spend­ing under the Bush admin­is­tra­tion, Repub­li­cans sud­den­ly found true reli­gion under Oba­ma (iron­i­cal­ly, at a time when pre­cise­ly the oppo­site of aus­ter­i­ty was most need­ed). And with­in the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty, what Nobel lau­re­ate econ­o­mist Joe Stiglitz calls “deficit fetishism” is viewed as the gold stan­dard for respon­si­ble eco­nom­ics. Democ­rats revered Bill Clinton’s bal­anc­ing of the bud­get as good pol­i­cy and good pol­i­tics, not to men­tion a shrewd way to tap Wall Street’s end­less fundrais­ing stream.

Oba­ma and his main eco­nom­ic advis­ers (Tim Gei­th­n­er, Orszag, Lar­ry Sum­mers) were devo­tees of for­mer Clin­ton Trea­sury Sec­re­tary and Gold­man Sachs/Citigroup alum Rubin, who co-found­ed the pro–Wall Street Hamil­ton Project think tank at the Brook­ings Insti­tu­tion in 2006. The Hamil­to­ni­ans had warned of “the adverse con­se­quences of sus­tained large bud­get deficits” dur­ing the Bush admin­is­tra­tion and advo­cat­ed “painful adjust­ments,” name­ly cuts to social insur­ance pro­grams like Social Secu­ri­ty and Medicare in exchange for more lib­er­al poli­cies like tax increas­es and health­care reform. Oba­ma entered office with the Hamil­ton plan in his back pock­et.

...

In Feb­ru­ary 2009, just weeks after the stim­u­lus passed, Oba­ma piv­ot­ed to the deficit, hold­ing a Fis­cal Respon­si­bil­i­ty Sum­mit at the White House and assur­ing Blue Dog Democ­rats he sup­port­ed a spe­cial deficit-reduc­tion com­mis­sion. “We feel like we’ve found a part­ner in the White House,” said Blue Dog co-chair Char­lie Melan­con. The aus­ter­i­ty class swift­ly co-opt­ed the new admin­is­tra­tion. The CRFB, the Peter G. Peter­son Foun­da­tion and Pew Char­i­ta­ble Trusts launched a spe­cial com­mis­sion in 2009 call­ing for manda­to­ry spend­ing caps and debt lim­its to put the Unit­ed States in an “auto­mat­ic, fis­cal strait­jack­et.” Its rec­om­men­da­tions formed the basis for last year’s Bowles-Simp­son com­mis­sion.

The aus­ter­i­ty class’s deep pock­ets can be traced back to Peter­son, a GOP bil­lion­aire who served as Nixon’s com­merce sec­re­tary and found­ed the pri­vate equi­ty Black­stone Group. Since 2008 his foun­da­tion has doled out $383 mil­lion of his promised $1 bil­lion pledge to a seem­ing­ly end­less num­ber of think tanks, media orga­ni­za­tions, advo­ca­cy groups and edu­ca­tion­al insti­tu­tions to advance his debt obses­sion [see William Grei­der, “The Man Who Wants to Loot Social Secu­ri­ty,” March 2, 2009]. This includes six- and sev­en-fig­ure dona­tions to groups like the CRFB, the Con­cord Coali­tion, the Com­mit­tee for Eco­nom­ic Devel­op­ment and the Peter­son Insti­tute for Inter­na­tion­al Eco­nom­ics. It’s large­ly because of Peter­son that pro­grams like Social Secu­ri­ty and Medicare, favored by near­ly 90 per­cent of the pub­lic, are sav­aged as bloat­ed “enti­tle­ments” and are con­sis­tent­ly on the chop­ping block.

Among the Peter­son­ites, there was stiff oppo­si­tion to a larg­er stim­u­lus or addi­tion­al recov­ery mea­sures. “If we think about mas­sive deficit spend­ing as med­i­cine for a sick econ­o­my, we also need to rec­og­nize that too much med­i­cine can ulti­mate­ly kill the patient,” said Maya MacGuineas, pres­i­dent of the CRFB (which received $656,000 from Peterson’s foun­da­tion last year), in Jan­u­ary 2009. MacGuineas, a for­mer stock ana­lyst at Paine Web­ber and self-described “bond vig­i­lante,” did stints at the Brook­ings Insti­tu­tion, the Con­cord Coali­tion and the 2000 McCain cam­paign before mov­ing to the CRFB in 2003. She’s now one of the cen­tral orga­niz­ers behind the aus­ter­i­ty class.

Her min­i­mal­ist take on the reces­sion, though com­plete­ly at odds with the views of top econ­o­mists, quick­ly became con­ven­tion­al wis­dom in elite Wash­ing­ton pol­i­cy cir­cles. “Con­cerns about the deficit lim­it­ed the size of the stim­u­lus act in 2009 and are a main rea­son that Con­gress has refused to take addi­tion­al mea­sures to cut our painful­ly high rate of unem­ploy­ment,” wrote Christi­na Romer, for­mer chair of Obama’s Coun­cil of Eco­nom­ic Advis­ers.

In his State of the Union address in 2010, the pres­i­dent announced a three-year freeze on non­de­fense dis­cre­tionary spend­ing (a posi­tion he’d crit­i­cized in all three pres­i­den­tial debates with John McCain as an “exam­ple of unfair bur­den shar­ing” and “using a hatch­et when you need a scalpel”), along with the cre­ation of Bowles-Simp­son. “Fam­i­lies across the coun­try are tight­en­ing their belts and mak­ing tough deci­sions,” Oba­ma said. “The fed­er­al gov­ern­ment should do the same.”

This line proved to be one of the most repeat­ed talk­ing points of the aus­ter­i­ty class. “That’s a very intu­itive argu­ment, but it’s total­ly back­ward,” says Jared Bern­stein, for­mer chief econ­o­mist to Vice Pres­i­dent Biden. “When fam­i­lies are tight­en­ing their belt in a reces­sion, the gov­ern­ment has to loosen its belt.” The con­stant drum­beat against “exces­sive” gov­ern­ment spend­ing from the aus­ter­i­ty class and oppor­tunis­tic Repub­li­cans caused the admin­is­tra­tion to “piv­ot too soon,” says Bern­stein.

“Hav­ing got­ten a stim­u­lus that he knew was too small, Oba­ma should have said, This is a good first step, but we’re like­ly going to need more,” says Dean Bak­er, co-direc­tor of the Cen­ter for Eco­nom­ic and Pol­i­cy Research. “And gone on the offen­sive. Instead he turned to bal­anc­ing the bud­get. That set the stage for the Tea Par­ty and the Peter­son crowd, because ‘deficits’ were all any­one heard.” Indeed, con­ser­v­a­tives were embold­ened by Obama’s speech. “If the argu­ments in the com­ing years are between spend­ing freezes and spend­ing cuts, then we’ve already won,” wrote Jim Ger­aghty of Nation­al Review in Jan­u­ary 2010.

By June 2010, aus­ter­i­ty had gripped the globe, as the G‑20 nations agreed to cut their deficits in half by 2013 and pur­sue “growth friend­ly” fis­cal con­sol­i­da­tion. In the midst of the reces­sion, the notion of “expan­sion­ary aus­ter­i­ty” became a kind of mag­i­cal elixir for the deficit hawks, much as the Laf­fer Curve did for Reaganomics. Har­vard econ­o­mist Alber­to Alesina pio­neered the the­o­ry, argu­ing in 2009 that “spend­ing cuts adopt­ed to reduce deficits have been asso­ci­at­ed with eco­nom­ic expan­sions rather than reces­sions.” The CRFB, David Brooks, the Amer­i­can Enter­prise Insti­tute and the House Repub­li­can lead­er­ship quick­ly ampli­fied his view. “Alesina has pro­vid­ed the the­o­ret­i­cal ammu­ni­tion fis­cal con­ser­v­a­tives want,” wrote Bloomberg Busi­ness­week. It seem­ing­ly made no dif­fer­ence that his find­ings had been thor­ough­ly debunked by the likes of The Econ­o­mist, the IMF and the Cen­ter for Bud­get and Pol­i­cy Pri­or­i­ties (CBPP), which found that in only nine of the 107 cas­es sur­veyed by Alesina had aus­ter­i­ty mea­sures led to increased growth. Yet to this day, lead­ers like Texas Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Jeb Hen­sar­ling (co-chair of the super­com­mit­tee) insist that “deficit reduc­tion will be a jobs plan.”

The aus­ter­i­ty-class cho­rus grew loud­er fol­low­ing the release of the Bowles-Simp­son report short­ly after the 2010 midterm elec­tions and framed the debate for 2011. (It was led by a con­ser­v­a­tive Demo­c­rat and a con­ser­v­a­tive Repub­li­can, evi­dent­ly the def­i­n­i­tion of “bal­ance” in Wash­ing­ton. Few in the media not­ed that Peter­son-backed groups had staffed the com­mis­sion and orga­nized town hall events on its behalf, osten­si­bly under­writ­ing what was pur­port­ed to be an inde­pen­dent gov­ern­ment enti­ty.)

“Bowles-Simp­son was not a deficit-reduc­tion pack­age,” says Stiglitz, “but a down­siz­ing-gov­ern­ment pack­age.” Instead of rolling back the Bush admin­is­tra­tion poli­cies that had turned Clinton’s sur­plus into a deficit—such as the Bush tax cuts, Medicare Part D plan and cost­ly wars in Afghanistan and Iraq—the com­mis­sion took aim at the social safe­ty net and pro­mot­ed pet con­ser­v­a­tive caus­es, like cut­ting the fed­er­al work­force by 10 per­cent, cut­ting funds for the Cor­po­ra­tion for Pub­lic Broad­cast­ing and cap­ping med­ical mal­prac­tice law­suits. It called for “seri­ous belt tight­en­ing” begin­ning in 2012, when few econ­o­mists believed the econ­o­my would have recov­ered from the reces­sion.

...

The tri­umph of the aus­ter­i­ty class set the stage for Obama’s “grand bar­gain” offer to House Speak­er John Boehn­er, which includ­ed $3 tril­lion in spend­ing cuts in exchange for $800 bil­lion in new rev­enue (rough­ly the equiv­a­lent of let­ting the Bush tax cuts for the rich expire). Times colum­nist Brooks called it “an aston­ish­ing con­ces­sion” by the White House and “the deal of the cen­tu­ry” for the GOP. Yet Boehn­er balked when Oba­ma asked for $400 bil­lion in addi­tion­al rev­enue to help bal­ance the lop­sided plan. The par­ties agreed instead to $917 bil­lion in cuts over the next decade, with the super­com­mit­tee tasked with find­ing $1.2 tril­lion in addi­tion­al sav­ings. The aus­ter­i­ty debate is guar­an­teed to last until Christ­mas, at the very least.

* * *

The unholy alliance between the aus­ter­i­ty class and sup­ply-side con­ser­v­a­tives, who talk a good game about deficits but in fact care prin­ci­pal­ly about cut­ting tax­es and gov­ern­ment spend­ing, has shift­ed the debate over the econ­o­my and the deficit far to the right since Oba­ma took office. By pro­mot­ing an age of aus­ter­i­ty, the deficit hawks have enhanced the pow­er of “starve the beast” con­ser­v­a­tives like Grover Norquist, whose goal for years has been to shred the New Deal. The aus­ter­i­ty class’s infat­u­a­tion with Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Paul Ryan is a prime exam­ple of this addled love affair.

In 2008, when Ryan intro­duced his rad­i­cal bud­get road map—which called for turn­ing Medicare into a vouch­er sys­tem, pri­va­tiz­ing Social Secu­ri­ty and redis­trib­ut­ing income upward by dras­ti­cal­ly cut­ting tax­es for the wealth­i­est Amer­i­cans and largest cor­po­ra­tions—MacGuineas praised his “tremen­dous courage and lead­er­ship.” When Ryan rein­tro­duced his plan in 2010, the CRFB laud­ed his “thought­ful­ness and courage.” The CRFB failed to men­tion that Ryan’s plan would increase the deficit, from a debt-to-GDP ratio of 60 per­cent in 2010 to 175 per­cent by 2050. “Paul Ryan added a huge amount to the deficit,” says John Irons, pol­i­cy direc­tor at the Eco­nom­ic Pol­i­cy Insti­tute (EPI). “To call that even remote­ly fis­cal­ly respon­si­ble was not a cor­rect analy­sis. It’s almost as if they said, We don’t care what your plan does—as long as you talk tough on deficits we’re going to sup­port you.”

Indeed, in Jan­u­ary the CRFB, the Con­cord Coali­tion and the Come­back Amer­i­ca Ini­tia­tive (all fund­ed by the Peter­son Foun­da­tion) gave Ryan a cher­ished fis­cal respon­si­bil­i­ty award, despite his deficit-explod­ing bud­get, hos­til­i­ty to tax increas­es and votes in favor of the Bush administration’s deficit spend­ing. Bob Bix­by, exec­u­tive direc­tor of the Con­cord Coali­tion, intro­duced Ryan by quot­ing Time mag­a­zine: “The irony of Ryan’s rise is that he has vault­ed to pop­u­lar­i­ty by embrac­ing his­tor­i­cal­ly unpop­u­lar ideas.” Said Bix­by, “And I thought to myself, now there is a deficit hawk…. If we lim­it our­selves to pop­u­lar ideas, we’re nev­er going to solve the prob­lem.”

MacGuineas said the award hon­ored Ryan for being the first politi­cian to put forth a bud­get plan in 2011, which she called “the most fis­cal­ly respon­si­ble of any of the plans.” Tech­ni­cal­ly, that’s true. Ryan’s bud­get, a mod­i­fied ver­sion of his road map, achieves a mod­est $155 bil­lion in sav­ings over ten years by propos­ing what the CBPP calls “the most severe and wrench­ing bud­get cuts in US history—two-thirds of which would come from pro­grams for peo­ple of low or mod­er­ate incomes” (i.e., Med­ic­aid, Pell grants, food stamps and low-income hous­ing).

The award to Ryan illus­trates just how dan­ger­ous­ly obtuse the aus­ter­i­ty class’s def­i­n­i­tion of fis­cal respon­si­bil­i­ty is. The deficit hawks suc­ceed by mak­ing the debate over the deficit a pure account­ing game, with no acknowl­edg­ment of the adverse impact a plan like Ryan’s would have on the broad­er econ­o­my and on so many Amer­i­cans if it became law. “If [you’re] will­ing to slash spend­ing so that long-run deficits are brought under con­trol, then it’s fis­cal­ly respon­si­ble,” Jim Hor­ney, vice pres­i­dent for fed­er­al fis­cal pol­i­cy at CBPP, says of the Ryan plan. “But if by fis­cal­ly respon­si­ble you mean putting the bud­get on a sus­tain­able path but mak­ing sure that gov­ern­ment is able to meet the needs of the peo­ple of the Unit­ed States, then I think it’s a ter­ri­bly irre­spon­si­ble plan.”

...

When Stan­dard & Poor’s down­grad­ed the US cred­it rat­ing in August, MacGuineas called it a “heck of a wake-up call” and once again urged Con­gress to enact “at least a $4 tril­lion deficit reduc­tion plan—probably more” with­out acknowl­edg­ing her group’s role in per­pet­u­at­ing the man­u­fac­tured cri­sis or the utter unfea­si­bil­i­ty of achiev­ing the sort of grand bar­gain that Repub­li­cans had just reject­ed. As econ­o­mists increas­ing­ly called for more, not less, stim­u­lus to boost the slug­gish econ­o­my, the CRFB refused to budge from its hard line. Just a month lat­er, the group backed the House Repub­li­can lead­er­ship by demand­ing that emer­gency dis­as­ter relief spend­ing in the wake of Hur­ri­cane Irene be off­set by spend­ing cuts, which almost forced yet anoth­er gov­ern­ment shut­down.

“I am about as frus­trat­ed with the CRFB as you can get,” says Col­len­der, who has con­sult­ed for the group in the past. “They’ve become zealots and fanat­ics, as opposed to real­ists and prag­ma­tists. It’s one thing to be a coun­ter­bal­ance to those who always want to spend more and tax less. It’s anoth­er thing to be push­ing deficit reduc­tion no mat­ter what the eco­nom­ic sit­u­a­tion is and whether it makes sense or not.”

* * *

It was only after Boehn­er reject­ed Obama’s grand bar­gain and the econ­o­my slowed to a halt that the pres­i­dent final­ly bowed to real­i­ty and intro­duced a new jobs plan. It may well be too lit­tle, too late, but Obama’s ener­getic cam­paign in sup­port of the leg­is­la­tion has begun to redi­rect the debate over the econ­o­my away from aus­ter­i­ty and back toward jobs.

Much of the main­stream media, how­ev­er, remain enthu­si­as­tic cheer­lead­ers for aus­ter­i­ty. A recent sto­ry in the Wash­ing­ton Post, Experts Dubi­ous of Oba­ma Deficit Plan, fea­tured crit­i­cism from MacGuineas, Bix­by, an unnamed GOP aide and a cor­po­rate tax lob­by­ist as its lone sources. “That’s fair and bal­anced bud­get report­ing at the Wash­ing­ton Post,” joked Dean Bak­er.

Aus­ter­i­ty-class pun­dits have also advanced the myth that both par­ties are equal­ly respon­si­ble for, and equal­ly unwill­ing to fix, the deficit prob­lem. Colum­nists like Brooks and Fried­man at the Times and Fred Hiatt at the Post have gone to extra­or­di­nary lengths to make this argu­ment, seem­ing­ly for­get­ting that not so long ago Oba­ma offered Boehn­er exact­ly the kind of grand bar­gain they’re now advo­cat­ing. “I keep think­ing he’s a few weeks away from propos­ing seri­ous tax reform and enti­tle­ment reform,” Brooks wrote of Oba­ma. “But each time he gets close, he rips the foot­ball away.”

One won­ders why it’s so dif­fi­cult for the Brook­ses of the world to acknowl­edge real­i­ty. “There is no equiv­a­len­cy,” says the CBPP’s Hor­ney. “It is absolute­ly the Repub­li­cans’ refusal to con­sid­er mean­ing­ful changes in rev­enues that is block­ing real deficit reduc­tion at this point.” A clear illus­tra­tion: Oba­ma pro­posed a plan that was weight­ed three-to-one on a ratio of spend­ing cuts to tax increas­es, but at a recent GOP pres­i­den­tial debate, all the can­di­dates said they would oppose a plan that was even ten-to-one.

Indeed, the aus­ter­i­ty class has done such a good job of sidelin­ing dis­si­dent voices—with the excep­tion of the Times’s Krug­man and a few oth­er high-pro­file Key­ne­sian economists—that the Wash­ing­ton debate seems per­ma­nent­ly skewed to the right. “On one side you have deficit obses­sion to the point where Repub­li­cans use this as an excuse to threat­en to shut the gov­ern­ment down over a cou­ple bil­lion dol­lars,” says Bern­stein. “On the oth­er side you pret­ty much have peo­ple talk­ing bal­ance. You have no one on the oth­er extreme say­ing, Our main wor­ry about the deficit, with unem­ploy­ment at 9 per­cent, should be: Is it large enough to pro­vide the boost that the pri­vate sec­tor is not capa­ble of pro­vid­ing right now?”

...

“Right now, front-loaded deficit reduc­tion would be a dis­as­ter,” says Stiglitz. “But a com­mit­ment to future deficit reduc­tion, if it’s out of tune with the eco­nom­ic recov­ery, as Bowles-Simp­son was, would also be a dis­as­ter. Even if it hap­pens in the future, it could have an adverse effect today. Peo­ple will say, If I’m going to be poor­er in the future, I’m going to have to put more mon­ey away today.” Trad­ing unem­ploy­ment insur­ance now for Social Secu­ri­ty cuts lat­er, for exam­ple, is not exact­ly going to reas­sure an anx­ious pub­lic. “I’ll feel progress when this notion that short-term spend­ing has to be off­set by cuts to Social Secu­ri­ty and Medicare gets the boot,” says Uni­ver­si­ty of Texas econ­o­mist James Gal­braith.

The aus­ter­i­ty class has done such a good job of demo­niz­ing deficits that it’s dif­fi­cult to make the case for their neces­si­ty, even in the short term. “The damn thing has such a bad rap, it’s almost unimag­in­able for a pol­i­cy-mak­er to argue that we need a big­ger deficit,” says Bern­stein. “But there are times when that argu­ment is absolute­ly cor­rect.” Now is one of those times.

———-

“How the Aus­ter­i­ty Class Rules Wash­ing­ton” by Ari Berman; The Nation; 10/19/2011

“Tak­en togeth­er, the var­i­ous strands of the aus­ter­i­ty class form a rein­forc­ing web that is dif­fi­cult to break. Its think tanks and wonks pro­duce a relent­less stream of dis­turb­ing sta­tis­tics warn­ing of sky­rock­et­ing debt and loom­ing bank­rupt­cy, which in turn is trum­pet­ed by politi­cians and the press and inter­nal­ized by the pub­lic. Thus forms what Wash­ing­ton Post blog­ger Greg Sar­gent calls a Belt­way Deficit Feed­back Loop, where­in the hypo­thet­i­cal pos­si­bil­i­ty of a US debt cri­sis some­where in the future takes prece­dence over the very real jobs cri­sis now.”

By the Fall of 2011, a “Belt­way Deficit Feed­back Loop” was in full swing. The fear­mon­ger­ing, which start­ed in 2009 right at the start of the cri­sis at the begin­ning of Oba­ma’s first term, had won. Fears of hypo­thet­i­cal debt crises dom­i­nat­ed in DC nar­ra­tive over how to best respond to an eco­nom­ic cri­sis that was, at that point, three years old. A deep jobs and hous­ing cri­sis that was large­ly allowed to fes­ter in the face of such fears. While Wall Street got bailed out. It was a seri­ous­ly destruc­tive feed­back loop. With not just Repub­li­cans but Wall Street-friend­ly Democ­rats like Robert Rubin and Alice Rivlin push­ing the nar­ra­tive along­side the slew of Pete Peter­son-fund­ed ‘think tanks’ like the CRFB. Along with ‘bud­get wonks’ like David Walk­er. The “very seri­ous peo­ple”, as Paul Krug­man described the sprawl­ing net­work of ‘deficit hawks’ who were work­ing to ensure this deficit fear­mon­ger­ing feed­back loop remains in place:

...
In Sep­tem­ber the Com­mit­tee for a Respon­si­ble Fed­er­al Bud­get (CRFB), a bipar­ti­san deficit-hawk group based at the New Amer­i­ca Foun­da­tion, held a high-pro­file sym­po­sium urg­ing the Con­gres­sion­al “super­com­mit­tee” to “go big” and approve a $4 tril­lion deficit reduc­tion plan over the next decade, which is well beyond its $1.2 tril­lion man­date. The hear­ing began with an alarm­ing video of top pol­i­cy-mak­ers describ­ing the nation­al debt as “the most seri­ous threat that this coun­try has ever had” (Alan Simp­son) and “a threat to the whole idea of self-gov­ern­ment” (Mitch Daniels). If the debt con­tin­ues to rise, pre­dict­ed for­mer New Mex­i­co Sen­a­tor Pete Domeni­ci, there would be “strikes, riots, who knows what?” A loom­ing fis­cal cri­sis was por­trayed as being just around the cor­ner.

The event spot­light­ed a cen­tral para­dox in Amer­i­can pol­i­tics over the past two years: how, in the midst of a mas­sive unem­ploy­ment crisis—when it’s painful­ly obvi­ous that not enough jobs are being cre­at­ed and the pub­lic over­whelm­ing­ly wants pol­i­cy-mak­ers to focus on cre­at­ing them—did the deficit emerge as the most press­ing issue in the coun­try? And why, when the glob­al evi­dence clear­ly indi­cates that aus­ter­i­ty mea­sures will raise unem­ploy­ment and hin­der, not accel­er­ate, growth, do advo­cates of aus­ter­i­ty retain such dis­tinc­tion today?

An expla­na­tion can be found in the promi­nence of an influ­en­tial and aggres­sive aus­ter­i­ty class—an alleged­ly cen­trist coali­tion of politi­cians, wonks and pun­dits who are con­sid­ered indis­putably wise cus­to­di­ans of US eco­nom­ic pol­i­cy. These “very seri­ous peo­ple,” as New York Times colum­nist Paul Krug­man wry­ly dubs them, have achieved what Uni­ver­si­ty of Cal­i­for­nia, Berke­ley, econ­o­mist Brad DeLong calls “intel­lec­tu­al hege­mo­ny over the course of the debate in Wash­ing­ton, from 2009 until today.”

Its mem­bers include Wall Street titans like Pete Peter­son and Robert Rubin; deficit-hawk groups like the CRFB, the Con­cord Coali­tion, the Hamil­ton Project, the Com­mit­tee for Eco­nom­ic Devel­op­ment, Third Way and the Bipar­ti­san Pol­i­cy Cen­ter; bud­get wonks like Peter Orszag, Alice Rivlin, David Walk­er and Dou­glas Holtz-Eakin; red state Democ­rats in Con­gress like Mark Warn­er and Kent Con­rad, the bipar­ti­san “Gang of Six” and what’s left of the Blue Dog Coali­tion; influ­en­tial pun­dits like Tom Fried­man and David Brooks of the New York Times, Niall Fer­gu­son and the Wash­ing­ton Post edi­to­r­i­al page; and a parade of blue rib­bon com­mis­sions, most notably Bowles-Simp­son, whose mem­bers formed the all-star team of the aus­ter­i­ty class.

The aus­ter­i­ty class tes­ti­fies fre­quent­ly before Con­gress, is quot­ed con­stant­ly in the media by sym­pa­thet­ic jour­nal­ists and influ­ences pol­i­cy-mak­ers and elites at the high­est lev­els of pow­er. They man­u­fac­ture a cen­ter-right con­sen­sus by deter­min­ing the para­me­ters of accept­able debate and pol­i­cy pri­or­i­ties, decid­ing who is and is not con­sid­ered a respectable voice on fis­cal mat­ters. The “bal­anced” solu­tions they advo­cate are often wild­ly out of step with pub­lic opin­ion and rep­utable eco­nom­ic pol­i­cy, yet their influ­ence endures, thanks to an abun­dance of mon­ey, the ear of the media, the anti-Key­ne­sian bias of sup­ply-side eco­nom­ics and a polit­i­cal sys­tem con­sis­tent­ly skewed to favor Wall Street over Main Street.
...

And as the arti­cle points out, the aus­ter­i­ty demands in the mid­dle of this deep eco­nom­ic cri­sis were com­ing not too long after the GOP’s Bush tax cuts. Because it was nev­er real­ly about reduc­ing deficits. It was about using fear­mon­ger­ing over deficits to shrink and pri­va­tize gov­ern­ment:

...
Groups like the CRFB and the Con­cord Coali­tion, found­ed by for­mer Con­gress mem­bers in the 1980s and ’90s, have long pre­sent­ed them­selves as non­par­ti­san, pen­ny-pinch­ing crit­ics of waste­ful gov­ern­ment spend­ing, when real­ly they are anti-gov­ern­ment, pro-cor­po­rate ide­o­logues whose boards are filled with K Street lob­by­ists and finan­cial exec­u­tives. The goal of much of the aus­ter­i­ty class is to see gov­ern­ment funds redi­rect­ed to the pri­vate sec­tor. (Their ide­ol­o­gy, which accepts the accu­mu­la­tion of pri­vate debt but oppos­es gov­ern­ment debt, explains why the aus­ter­i­ty class ignored the mas­sive hous­ing and cred­it bub­ble, which more than any sin­gle fac­tor con­tributed to an explo­sion of debt world­wide.)

The aus­ter­i­ty class’s reach has expand­ed in the Oba­ma era, boost­ed by lead­ers of both par­ties and an influx of new fund­ing. After con­sis­tent­ly approv­ing mas­sive deficit spend­ing under the Bush admin­is­tra­tion, Repub­li­cans sud­den­ly found true reli­gion under Oba­ma (iron­i­cal­ly, at a time when pre­cise­ly the oppo­site of aus­ter­i­ty was most need­ed). And with­in the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty, what Nobel lau­re­ate econ­o­mist Joe Stiglitz calls “deficit fetishism” is viewed as the gold stan­dard for respon­si­ble eco­nom­ics. Democ­rats revered Bill Clinton’s bal­anc­ing of the bud­get as good pol­i­cy and good pol­i­tics, not to men­tion a shrewd way to tap Wall Street’s end­less fundrais­ing stream.

Oba­ma and his main eco­nom­ic advis­ers (Tim Gei­th­n­er, Orszag, Lar­ry Sum­mers) were devo­tees of for­mer Clin­ton Trea­sury Sec­re­tary and Gold­man Sachs/Citigroup alum Rubin, who co-found­ed the pro–Wall Street Hamil­ton Project think tank at the Brook­ings Insti­tu­tion in 2006. The Hamil­to­ni­ans had warned of “the adverse con­se­quences of sus­tained large bud­get deficits” dur­ing the Bush admin­is­tra­tion and advo­cat­ed “painful adjust­ments,” name­ly cuts to social insur­ance pro­grams like Social Secu­ri­ty and Medicare in exchange for more lib­er­al poli­cies like tax increas­es and health­care reform. Oba­ma entered office with the Hamil­ton plan in his back pock­et.
...

And note how the demands for aus­ter­i­ty in the face of the his­toric 2008 finan­cial melt­down were already being made by this net­work all the way back in Jan­u­ary of 2009. As we can see, CRFB pres­i­dent Maya MacGuineas was warn­ing about the dan­gers of “too much med­i­cine”. As Christi­na Romer, for­mer chair of Obama’s Coun­cil of Eco­nom­ic Advis­ers, lament­ed, “Con­cerns about the deficit lim­it­ed the size of the stim­u­lus act in 2009 and are a main rea­son that Con­gress has refused to take addi­tion­al mea­sures to cut our painful­ly high rate of unem­ploy­ment.” In oth­er words, the aus­ter­i­ty hawks won the debate right out of the gate. In the wake of a his­toric finan­cial melt­down. It’s a pow­er­ful reminder of the pro­found influ­ence the aus­ter­i­ty net­work has in DC. Pete Peter­son may not be a house­hold name for the Amer­i­can pub­lic, but the DC elites know exact­ly who he is and what he wants. He spent $1 bil­lion start­ing in 2008 to make sure of it:

...
The aus­ter­i­ty class’s deep pock­ets can be traced back to Peter­son, a GOP bil­lion­aire who served as Nixon’s com­merce sec­re­tary and found­ed the pri­vate equi­ty Black­stone Group. Since 2008 his foun­da­tion has doled out $383 mil­lion of his promised $1 bil­lion pledge to a seem­ing­ly end­less num­ber of think tanks, media orga­ni­za­tions, advo­ca­cy groups and edu­ca­tion­al insti­tu­tions to advance his debt obses­sion [see William Grei­der, “The Man Who Wants to Loot Social Secu­ri­ty,” March 2, 2009]. This includes six- and sev­en-fig­ure dona­tions to groups like the CRFB, the Con­cord Coali­tion, the Com­mit­tee for Eco­nom­ic Devel­op­ment and the Peter­son Insti­tute for Inter­na­tion­al Eco­nom­ics. It’s large­ly because of Peter­son that pro­grams like Social Secu­ri­ty and Medicare, favored by near­ly 90 per­cent of the pub­lic, are sav­aged as bloat­ed “enti­tle­ments” and are con­sis­tent­ly on the chop­ping block..

...

Among the Peter­son­ites, there was stiff oppo­si­tion to a larg­er stim­u­lus or addi­tion­al recov­ery mea­sures. “If we think about mas­sive deficit spend­ing as med­i­cine for a sick econ­o­my, we also need to rec­og­nize that too much med­i­cine can ulti­mate­ly kill the patient,” said Maya MacGuineas, pres­i­dent of the CRFB (which received $656,000 from Peterson’s foun­da­tion last year), in Jan­u­ary 2009. MacGuineas, a for­mer stock ana­lyst at Paine Web­ber and self-described “bond vig­i­lante,” did stints at the Brook­ings Insti­tu­tion, the Con­cord Coali­tion and the 2000 McCain cam­paign before mov­ing to the CRFB in 2003. She’s now one of the cen­tral orga­niz­ers behind the aus­ter­i­ty class.

Her min­i­mal­ist take on the reces­sion, though com­plete­ly at odds with the views of top econ­o­mists, quick­ly became con­ven­tion­al wis­dom in elite Wash­ing­ton pol­i­cy cir­cles. “Con­cerns about the deficit lim­it­ed the size of the stim­u­lus act in 2009 and are a main rea­son that Con­gress has refused to take addi­tion­al mea­sures to cut our painful­ly high rate of unem­ploy­ment,” wrote Christi­na Romer, for­mer chair of Obama’s Coun­cil of Eco­nom­ic Advis­ers.
...

The aus­ter­i­ty lob­by was so effec­tive that by the time of Pres­i­dent Oba­ma’s 2010 State of the Union address he was ready to announce not just a three-year freeze on non-defense dis­cre­tionary spend­ing but also the for­ma­tion of the Bowles-Simp­son com­mis­sion, which end­ed up pret­ty much fol­low­ing the aus­ter­i­ty advice Pete Peter­son was pay­ing all that mon­ey to pro­mote. And yes, the Bowles-Simp­son com­mis­sion’s rec­om­men­da­tions weren’t ulti­mate­ly fol­lowed as the ‘grand bar­gain’ talks even­tu­al­ly broke down. But, again, the fact that these debates were so effec­tive at pre­vent­ing a pru­dent gov­ern­ment stim­u­lus response in the first place under­scores how these high-pro­file PR cam­paigns can suc­ceed even when they seem­ing­ly fail in the end. The Bowles-Simp­son com­mis­sion suc­ceed­ed at keep­ing the pro-aus­ter­i­ty momen­tum going in place of a pro­gres­sive stim­u­lus response. That’s a major ‘suc­cess’:

...
In Feb­ru­ary 2009, just weeks after the stim­u­lus passed, Oba­ma piv­ot­ed to the deficit, hold­ing a Fis­cal Respon­si­bil­i­ty Sum­mit at the White House and assur­ing Blue Dog Democ­rats he sup­port­ed a spe­cial deficit-reduc­tion com­mis­sion. “We feel like we’ve found a part­ner in the White House,” said Blue Dog co-chair Char­lie Melan­con. The aus­ter­i­ty class swift­ly co-opt­ed the new admin­is­tra­tion. The CRFB, the Peter G. Peter­son Foun­da­tion and Pew Char­i­ta­ble Trusts launched a spe­cial com­mis­sion in 2009 call­ing for manda­to­ry spend­ing caps and debt lim­its to put the Unit­ed States in an “auto­mat­ic, fis­cal strait­jack­et.” Its rec­om­men­da­tions formed the basis for last year’s Bowles-Simp­son com­mis­sion.

...

In his State of the Union address in 2010, the pres­i­dent announced a three-year freeze on non­de­fense dis­cre­tionary spend­ing (a posi­tion he’d crit­i­cized in all three pres­i­den­tial debates with John McCain as an “exam­ple of unfair bur­den shar­ing” and “using a hatch­et when you need a scalpel”), along with the cre­ation of Bowles-Simp­son. “Fam­i­lies across the coun­try are tight­en­ing their belts and mak­ing tough deci­sions,” Oba­ma said. “The fed­er­al gov­ern­ment should do the same.”

This line proved to be one of the most repeat­ed talk­ing points of the aus­ter­i­ty class. “That’s a very intu­itive argu­ment, but it’s total­ly back­ward,” says Jared Bern­stein, for­mer chief econ­o­mist to Vice Pres­i­dent Biden. “When fam­i­lies are tight­en­ing their belt in a reces­sion, the gov­ern­ment has to loosen its belt.” The con­stant drum­beat against “exces­sive” gov­ern­ment spend­ing from the aus­ter­i­ty class and oppor­tunis­tic Repub­li­cans caused the admin­is­tra­tion to “piv­ot too soon,” says Bern­stein.

“Hav­ing got­ten a stim­u­lus that he knew was too small, Oba­ma should have said, This is a good first step, but we’re like­ly going to need more,” says Dean Bak­er, co-direc­tor of the Cen­ter for Eco­nom­ic and Pol­i­cy Research. “And gone on the offen­sive. Instead he turned to bal­anc­ing the bud­get. That set the stage for the Tea Par­ty and the Peter­son crowd, because ‘deficits’ were all any­one heard.” Indeed, con­ser­v­a­tives were embold­ened by Obama’s speech. “If the argu­ments in the com­ing years are between spend­ing freezes and spend­ing cuts, then we’ve already won,” wrote Jim Ger­aghty of Nation­al Review in Jan­u­ary 2010.
Come­back Amer­i­ca Ini­tia­tive
* * *

It was only after Boehn­er reject­ed Obama’s grand bar­gain and the econ­o­my slowed to a halt that the pres­i­dent final­ly bowed to real­i­ty and intro­duced a new jobs plan. It may well be too lit­tle, too late, but Obama’s ener­getic cam­paign in sup­port of the leg­is­la­tion has begun to redi­rect the debate over the econ­o­my away from aus­ter­i­ty and back toward jobs.

Much of the main­stream media, how­ev­er, remain enthu­si­as­tic cheer­lead­ers for aus­ter­i­ty. A recent sto­ry in the Wash­ing­ton Post, Experts Dubi­ous of Oba­ma Deficit Plan, fea­tured crit­i­cism from MacGuineas, Bix­by, an unnamed GOP aide and a cor­po­rate tax lob­by­ist as its lone sources. “That’s fair and bal­anced bud­get report­ing at the Wash­ing­ton Post,” joked Dean Bak­er.

...

Indeed, the aus­ter­i­ty class has done such a good job of sidelin­ing dis­si­dent voices—with the excep­tion of the Times’s Krug­man and a few oth­er high-pro­file Key­ne­sian economists—that the Wash­ing­ton debate seems per­ma­nent­ly skewed to the right. “On one side you have deficit obses­sion to the point where Repub­li­cans use this as an excuse to threat­en to shut the gov­ern­ment down over a cou­ple bil­lion dol­lars,” says Bern­stein. “On the oth­er side you pret­ty much have peo­ple talk­ing bal­ance. You have no one on the oth­er extreme say­ing, Our main wor­ry about the deficit, with unem­ploy­ment at 9 per­cent, should be: Is it large enough to pro­vide the boost that the pri­vate sec­tor is not capa­ble of pro­vid­ing right now?”
...

The ‘Grand Bar­gain’ may not have been reached, but it was ulti­mate­ly an unam­bigu­ous ‘win’ for the aus­ter­i­ty lob­by. Tril­lions of dol­lars in spend­ing cuts were still agreed to, pos­ing a major obsta­cle to the kind of gov­ern­ment stim­u­lus the Oba­ma admin­is­tra­tion should have been pur­su­ing all along.

The Austerity Lobby in 2013: with Deficits Plummeting and No “Grand Bargain”, David Walker’s Comeback America Initiative Closes Up Shop

And while that restrained gov­ern­ment stim­u­lus may have dra­mat­i­cal­ly exac­er­bat­ed the length and depth of the Great Reces­sion’s impact on the US econ­o­my, by 2013 the real­i­ty was that US deficits had dropped sig­nif­i­cant­ly — con­trary to the aus­ter­i­ty lob­by’s dire pre­dic­tions — and under­ly­ing pre­text for the aus­ter­i­ty lob­by’s whole agen­da was increas­ing­ly irrel­e­vant. A “grand bar­gain” that would “go big” was­n’t actu­al­ly nec­es­sary. And while the sequester that was put in place at the end of 2011, with its $2 tril­lion+ in cuts, would have been a fac­tor in those declin­ing deficits, keep in mind how the under­whelm­ing nature of the eco­nom­ic recov­ery com­ing out of the Great Reces­sion simul­ta­ne­ous­ly exac­er­bat­ed the deficits as the US eschewed the pow­er­ful impact stim­u­lus spend­ing could have had on eco­nom­ic growth and jobs cre­ation. Not that the falling deficits were pre­vent­ing the usu­al sus­pects from con­tin­u­ing their dire warn­ings about explod­ing deficits. But by the fall of 2013 it was clear that the major goals of the aus­ter­i­ty lob­by — like rolling back Oba­macare or block-grant­i­ng Med­ic­aid — weren’t going to hap­pen any­time soon. David Walk­er’s Come­back Amer­i­ca Ini­tia­tive — one arm of the Pete Peter­son-fund­ed aus­ter­i­ty octo­pus — was no longer need­ed. For the time being, at least:

Stam­ford Advo­cate

The demise of the Come­back Amer­i­ca Ini­tia­tive

Bill Gas­ton is a vice chair­man of the Green­wich Demo­c­ra­t­ic Town Com­mit­tee.
Oct 9, 2013

Unbe­known to most vot­ers, the fed­er­al bud­get deficit has been drop­ping like a stone, plum­met­ing to its low­est lev­el since 2009, accord­ing to recent­ly released data from the Con­gres­sion­al Bud­get Office (CBO). Depend­ing on whom you ask, this rapid plunge may or may not be good news for our econ­o­my. But amongst the deficit scare-mon­gers that pop­u­late Wash­ing­ton, D.C., this news may have cre­at­ed its first high-pro­file casu­al­ty.

End­ing with a faint whim­per rather than a bang, the Come­back Amer­i­ca Ini­tia­tive (CAI), found­ed by for­mer U.S. Comp­trol­ler Gen­er­al David Walk­er and ded­i­cat­ed to get­ting Amer­i­ca’s fis­cal house in order, abrupt­ly closed up shop Sept. 20. In an e‑mail to his fol­low­ers, Mr. Walk­er said his orga­ni­za­tion was dis­con­tin­u­ing oper­a­tions so he could “spend some time with my fam­i­ly and con­sid­er future options.”

...

Much like the Syr­i­an war fever that recent­ly sub­sided on Capi­tol Hill, it was only a cou­ple of years ago that Con­gress was gripped by dooms­day sce­nar­ios about the threat to our coun­try from mush­room­ing bud­get deficits and unsus­tain­able debt “as far as the eye can see.” One of the most promi­nent Cas­san­dras was Mr. Walk­er, a Bridge­port res­i­dent and — until Lin­da McMa­hon with her mil­lions came along — wide­ly tout­ed as a poten­tial GOP Sen­ate can­di­date in 2012.

It may seem like ancient his­to­ry now, but it was the drum­beat of alarmist prog­nos­ti­ca­tions from the likes of Mr. Walk­er, CEO of CAI, and the duo of Simp­son-Bowles that led Con­gress­men from both sides of the aisle to warn their con­stituents that our econ­o­my was going to hell in a hand­bas­ket unless the debt and deficit drag­ons were slain. To put our house in order, Mr. Walk­er and his con­fr­eres had their sac­ri­fi­cial lambs all lined up: repeal­ing the Afford­able Care Act, block-grant­i­ng Med­ic­aid, rais­ing tax­es on Amer­i­cans just above the pover­ty line, and fur­ther means-test­ing enti­tle­ments.

Even today, an out­fit call­ing itself Cam­paign to Fix the Debt, con­sist­ing of busi­ness and finan­cial elites, is sound­ing the warn­ing that any debt ceil­ing agree­ment reached by Con­gress must include steep cuts to enti­tle­ment pro­grams, and deficit-increas­ing reduc­tions to Oba­macare.

It should be no sur­prise that CAI came a crop­per. After all, Walk­er’s pro­posed reme­dies for con­quer­ing the deficit dis­played a lev­el of polit­i­cal clue­less­ness and blind­ness to eco­nom­ic real­i­ty. In addi­tion to being wild­ly unpop­u­lar, these reme­dies took for grant­ed esti­mates of sky­rock­et­ing bud­get deficits that have proved to be dead wrong. Indeed, in addi­tion to plum­met­ing deficits, CBO’s long-term bud­get pro­jec­tions don’t show cri­sis lev­els of debt, even look­ing out for the next 25 years. That’s not to say we don’t face fis­cal chal­lenges. But it cer­tain­ly rep­re­sents a repu­di­a­tion of the “sky is falling” debt and deficit alarmism that Mr. Walk­er’s now defunct out­fit irre­spon­si­bly ped­dled for years. The con­se­quence of this obses­sion was that it dom­i­nat­ed — and dis­tort­ed — pol­i­cy dis­cus­sions for the past few years, with far too much empha­sis paid to (now shrink­ing) deficits and not enough atten­tion to (slug­gish) jobs and growth.

The skewed nature of the debate in Wash­ing­ton had anoth­er tru­ly per­ni­cious effect: it allowed Mr. Walk­er’s men­tor and bene­fac­tor, wealthy, anti-gov­ern­ment con­ser­v­a­tive Pete Peter­son, to fright­en Amer­i­cans into think­ing that unless seniors gave up their “gen­er­ous” Social Secu­ri­ty and Medicare ben­e­fits, their grand­chil­dren would be doomed. And this kind of irre­spon­si­ble fear-mon­ger­ing still haunts some of the “seri­ous” pol­i­cy dis­cus­sions heard today in Wash­ing­ton, D.C.

There was no secret to this man­u­fac­tured obses­sion. It was Pres­i­dent Rea­gan’s bud­get chief David Stock­man who said years ago: “The pur­pose of gin­ning up the Social Secu­ri­ty cri­sis was to per­mit the politi­cians to make it look like they are doing some­thing for the ben­e­fi­cia­ry pop­u­la­tion when they are doing some­thing to it, which they nor­mal­ly would not have the courage to under­take.”

...

————–

“The demise of the Come­back Amer­i­ca Ini­tia­tive” by Bill Gas­ton; Stam­ford Advo­cate; 10/09/2013

“End­ing with a faint whim­per rather than a bang, the Come­back Amer­i­ca Ini­tia­tive (CAI), found­ed by for­mer U.S. Comp­trol­ler Gen­er­al David Walk­er and ded­i­cat­ed to get­ting Amer­i­ca’s fis­cal house in order, abrupt­ly closed up shop Sept. 20. In an e‑mail to his fol­low­ers, Mr. Walk­er said his orga­ni­za­tion was dis­con­tin­u­ing oper­a­tions so he could “spend some time with my fam­i­ly and con­sid­er future options.””

Yes, the Come­back Amer­i­ca Ini­tia­tive (CAI) — the same group that co-issued that 2011 award to Paul Ryan for his fer­vent aus­ter­i­ty pro­mo­tion — was found­ed by David Walk­er, the same fig­ure now push­ing the Arti­cle V law­suit. As we saw about, the CAI was effec­tive­ly fund­ed by the Pete Peter­son Foun­da­tion. But it’s Walk­er who tech­ni­cal­ly found­ed it and used it as anoth­er rhetor­i­cal cud­gel in the DC aus­ter­i­ty debates. Sure, the aus­ter­i­ty lob­by may not have suc­ceed­ed in get­ting the Oba­ma admin­is­tra­tion to sign off on some sort of enti­tle­ment-shred­ding ‘grand bar­gain’. But there’s no deny­ing the aus­ter­i­ty lob­by over­whelm­ing­ly won dur­ing those cru­cial ear­ly years of the finan­cial cri­sis when stim­u­lus spend­ing could have made a huge dif­fer­ence. Still, by the fall of 2013, the CAI was ready to pack it up. It’s job was arguably done, at least for the moment. The fact that deficits were final­ly plum­met­ing after the Oba­ma admin­is­tra­tion reject­ed the ‘grand bar­gain’ was pre­sum­ably also a fac­tor:

...
It may seem like ancient his­to­ry now, but it was the drum­beat of alarmist prog­nos­ti­ca­tions from the likes of Mr. Walk­er, CEO of CAI, and the duo of Simp­son-Bowles that led Con­gress­men from both sides of the aisle to warn their con­stituents that our econ­o­my was going to hell in a hand­bas­ket unless the debt and deficit drag­ons were slain. To put our house in order, Mr. Walk­er and his con­fr­eres had their sac­ri­fi­cial lambs all lined up: repeal­ing the Afford­able Care Act, block-grant­i­ng Med­ic­aid, rais­ing tax­es on Amer­i­cans just above the pover­ty line, and fur­ther means-test­ing enti­tle­ments.

...

It should be no sur­prise that CAI came a crop­per. After all, Walk­er’s pro­posed reme­dies for con­quer­ing the deficit dis­played a lev­el of polit­i­cal clue­less­ness and blind­ness to eco­nom­ic real­i­ty. In addi­tion to being wild­ly unpop­u­lar, these reme­dies took for grant­ed esti­mates of sky­rock­et­ing bud­get deficits that have proved to be dead wrong. Indeed, in addi­tion to plum­met­ing deficits, CBO’s long-term bud­get pro­jec­tions don’t show cri­sis lev­els of debt, even look­ing out for the next 25 years. That’s not to say we don’t face fis­cal chal­lenges. But it cer­tain­ly rep­re­sents a repu­di­a­tion of the “sky is falling” debt and deficit alarmism that Mr. Walk­er’s now defunct out­fit irre­spon­si­bly ped­dled for years. The con­se­quence of this obses­sion was that it dom­i­nat­ed — and dis­tort­ed — pol­i­cy dis­cus­sions for the past few years, with far too much empha­sis paid to (now shrink­ing) deficits and not enough atten­tion to (slug­gish) jobs and growth.

The skewed nature of the debate in Wash­ing­ton had anoth­er tru­ly per­ni­cious effect: it allowed Mr. Walk­er’s men­tor and bene­fac­tor, wealthy, anti-gov­ern­ment con­ser­v­a­tive Pete Peter­son, to fright­en Amer­i­cans into think­ing that unless seniors gave up their “gen­er­ous” Social Secu­ri­ty and Medicare ben­e­fits, their grand­chil­dren would be doomed. And this kind of irre­spon­si­ble fear-mon­ger­ing still haunts some of the “seri­ous” pol­i­cy dis­cus­sions heard today in Wash­ing­ton, D.C.

There was no secret to this man­u­fac­tured obses­sion. It was Pres­i­dent Rea­gan’s bud­get chief David Stock­man who said years ago: “The pur­pose of gin­ning up the Social Secu­ri­ty cri­sis was to per­mit the politi­cians to make it look like they are doing some­thing for the ben­e­fi­cia­ry pop­u­la­tion when they are doing some­thing to it, which they nor­mal­ly would not have the courage to under­take.”
...

And as the arti­cle observes, while the CAI was clos­ing down, anoth­er out­fit called Cam­paign to Fix the Debt was still sound­ing the alarm about the need for much more aus­ter­i­ty. As we’re going to see below, the group — launched in 2012 — is anoth­er Peter­son fund­ed enti­ty run by the CRF­B’s Maya MacGuineas, along with Ersk­ine Bowles and Alan Simp­son. Yep, it was basi­cal­ly oper­at­ing as the ongo­ing mouth­piece for the Bowles-Simp­son com­mis­sion:

...
Even today, an out­fit call­ing itself Cam­paign to Fix the Debt, con­sist­ing of busi­ness and finan­cial elites, is sound­ing the warn­ing that any debt ceil­ing agree­ment reached by Con­gress must include steep cuts to enti­tle­ment pro­grams, and deficit-increas­ing reduc­tions to Oba­macare.
...

While one arm of the Pete Peter­son-finance lob­by­ing com­plex might shut­ter, the beast con­tin­ues to plot and even grow new arms, like Cam­paign to Fix the Debt, which is still chug­ging along to this day.

By 2014 the “Grand Bargain” was Dead. But the Dream Never Died

And as the fol­low­ing Nation arti­cle from 2014 describes, the ‘usu­al sus­pects’ behind Cam­paign to Fix the Debt — CRF­B’s Maya MacGuineas, Ersk­ine Bowles, Alan Simp­son — were fac­ing what amount­ed to a kind of DC aus­ter­i­ty capit­u­la­tion in the form of a clean vote to raise the debt ceil­ing. The kind of vote that the aus­ter­i­ty lob­by had been hop­ing to turn into a last ditch ‘grand bar­gain’ show­down. While the clean raise of the debt ceil­ing is just gov­ern­ment func­tion­ing as it should, it was a crush­ing defeat for a group that was launched in 2012 with $40 mil­lion in Pete Peter­son-backed fund­ing and goals of see­ing a $4 tril­lion “grand bar­gain” in 2013. Not that the aus­ter­i­ty lob­by is nev­er real­ly defeat­ed. It just licks its wounds, retools, and spawns more front groups. Includ­ing youth front groups like The Can Kicks Back, a Fix the Debt cre­ation with the mes­sage that enti­tle­ments need to be cut for the sake of the young peo­ple’s futures. Futures that appar­ent­ly don’t include any sort of mean­ing­ful safe­ty-net, as such things have been deemed to be too expen­sive for the wealth­i­est soci­ety in his­to­ry.

But as the arti­cle excerpt also points out, the aus­ter­i­ty lob­by was­n’t sim­ply defeat­ed by real­i­ty of falling deficits that were man­i­fest­ing in defi­ance of the aus­ter­i­ty lob­by’s dire warn­ings. The lob­by was defeat­ed through, well, counter-lob­by­ing. High­ly effec­tive counter-lob­by­ing by a range of grass-roots enti­ties that suc­cess­ful­ly defeat­ed in the pub­lic are­na through a com­bi­na­tion of mock­ery and edu­ca­tion, two key tools in the bat­tle to defeat oli­garchic mass decep­tion:

The Nation

How Pro-Aus­ter­i­ty Groups Lost the Deficit Wars

A fun­ny thing hap­pened on the way to the fis­cal cliff: real peo­ple fought back.

Mary Bot­tari
Feb 20, 2014

It’s debt ceil­ing time and the US econ­o­my is once again on the brink, held hostage by extrem­ists hell-bent on forc­ing cuts to Medicare and Social Secu­ri­ty.

Oh wait. That was last year.

In 2014, for the first time in three years, the vote to extend the nation’s debt ceil­ing did not bring the US to the brink of default in a high-stakes game of slash and burn.

Last week, the House vot­ed to raise the gov­ern­men­t’s bor­row­ing lim­it until March 2015 with­out any con­di­tions. In fact, if the Speak­er had his way, he would have tied the vote to the repeal of cuts to mil­i­tary retire­ment pen­sions. The Sen­ate con­curred, send­ing a clean debt ceil­ing bill to the Pres­i­den­t’s desk.

It was a strik­ing turn­around for the forces of aus­ter­i­ty. One of the biggest losers? The Cam­paign to Fix the Debt, the $40 mil­lion Astro­Turf aus­ter­i­ty group, financed by Pete Peter­son and oth­er Wall Street big wigs, and front­ed by Maya MacGuineas, Ersk­ine Bowles and Alan Simp­son.

...

Fix the Debt Push­es Amer­i­ca Towards the Fis­cal Cliff

It was­n’t sup­posed to be this way.

In July of 2012, the Cam­paign to Fix the Debt was launched with a patri­ot­ic flair. They set a July 4, 2013 dead­line for an aus­ter­i­ty deal along the lines of the $4 tril­lion Simp­son-Bowles plan. The aus­ter­i­ty crowd had already suc­ceed­ed in rig­ging the game, cre­at­ing a Decem­ber 31, 2012 “fis­cal cliff” that would trig­ger steep bud­get cuts with­out a bipar­ti­san deal. Now they were poised to take advan­tage of that dead­line and oth­er stand­offs to secure a “Grand Bar­gain.”

The idea was that Democ­rats were sup­posed to trade cuts to earned ben­e­fit pro­grams like Social Secu­ri­ty and Medicare for a bit more tax rev­enue from the Repub­li­can side. The Pres­i­dent, who had cre­at­ed and backed the Simp­son-Bowles com­mis­sion, appeared will­ing to make a deal.

With a stalled econ­o­my and pub­lic sen­ti­ment decid­ed­ly against cuts to these pop­u­lar and life­sav­ing pro­grams, Fix the Debt gath­ered the big guns. Over 100 CEOs were named to a coun­cil and many con­tributed to the $40 mil­lion bud­get. Fix the Debt CEOs descend­ed on the White House and the Capi­tol build­ing. The night­ly news was filled with images of CEOs like Hon­ey­well’s David Cote step­ping up to the mike to opine about the need for belt tight­en­ing and shared sac­ri­fice.

To show “grass­roots” momen­tum, Fix the Debt hired PR firms, had them set up pho­ny state chap­ters, bankrolled the stunts of its youth group, The Can Kicks Back, which donned a foam tin can suit (the Amer­i­CAN) for cute videos and hyped slant­ed num­bers about “gen­er­a­tional inequal­i­ty.” Amer­i­ca was going to rise up they said, they were going to get 10 mil­lion peo­ple to sign peti­tions.

The goal, as Ten­nessee Gov­er­nor Phil Bre­desen so help­ful­ly let slip, was to cre­ate an “arti­fi­cial cri­sis” to get Con­gress to act.

But a fun­ny thing hap­pened on the way to the fis­cal cliff: real peo­ple fought back.

Astro­Turf Gets Mowed

Grass­roots groups were in no mood for advice from Fix the Debt CEOs, like Gold­man Sach’s Lloyd Blank­fein, who somber­ly explained to CBS News in Novem­ber 2012 that Amer­i­cans had to “low­er their expec­ta­tions,” the retire­ment age had to be raised and “enti­tle­ment pro­grams have to be slowed down and con­tained.”

Ver­mont Sen­a­tor Bernie Sanders hit the roof, tak­ing to the floor to denounce Blank­fein for his unbe­liev­able arro­gance giv­en the role the big banks played in col­laps­ing the econ­o­my and sky­rock­et­ing the deficit. Days lat­er pro­test­ers descend­ed upon a Fix the Debt event for the first time, chant­i­ng loud­ly and rat­tling a senior pre­sen­ter from the Her­itage Foun­da­tion. Burke Stans­bury from the Cam­paign for Com­mu­ni­ty Change took a punch from the Her­itage hys­teric and the throw­down was on.

...

In Feb­ru­ary, The Nation and the Cen­ter for Media and Democ­ra­cy part­nered on a front page, five-arti­cle expose and an online resource plat­form expos­ing Pete Peter­son­’s his­to­ry of deficit histri­on­ics, of bankrolling pup­pet pop­ulists and his lousy eco­nom­ic the­o­ries. Fix the Debt’s spokesman called to com­plain, prompt­ing one of the fun­nier exchanges between a PR flak and a reporter in recent mem­o­ry.

Grass­roots groups surged into action to call out the CEOs with plat­inum-plat­ed pen­sions who want­ed to cut Social Secu­ri­ty, tar­get­ing state-lev­el Fix the Debt lead­ers. In Iowa, co-chair Dr. Andrea McGuire, for­mer Con­gress­man Dave Nagel and State Rep Bruce Hunter all resigned after learn­ing more about Fix the Debt from the Iowa CCI. Michi­gan lost their co-chair Joce­lyn Ben­son and Vir­ginia State Sen­a­tor Ken Plum chose to pull his name, along with Juan Cot­to of Wash­ing­ton State and many more.

...

In April, leg­isla­tive and com­mu­ni­ty lead­ers includ­ing Sanders, Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Kei­th Elli­son, Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Mark Pocan and Ter­ry O’Neill of NOW ral­lied in front of the White House to push the Pres­i­dent to leave Social Secu­ri­ty cuts out of his bud­get. When Oba­ma includ­ed “chained CPI” cuts to Social Secu­ri­ty, groups redou­bled their effort to get him to change his mind.

For added mea­sure, econ­o­mists at PERI Amherst made head­lines by uncov­er­ing cod­ing errors and oth­er prob­lems with the sem­i­nal Rogoff-Rein­hart study, which pur­port­ed­ly pro­vid­ed the empir­i­cal evi­dence that aus­ter­i­ty led to growth.

In May, Fix the Debt orga­nized its first spon­ta­neous “flash mob” send­ing reporters and activists scur­ry­ing to inter­view par­tic­i­pants who proved to be paid dancers ($65 for the day) not at all inter­est­ed in cut­ting Social Secu­ri­ty.

In June, the Insti­tute for Pol­i­cy Stud­ies released anoth­er damn­ing report “Pirate of the Caribbean” show­ing that Fix the Debt mem­ber firms stood to gain as much as $173 bil­lion if Con­gress adopt­ed their pro­pos­al for a ter­ri­to­r­i­al tax sys­tem, a tax break which would only increase the debt.

In July, hun­dreds of mem­bers of the grass­roots group Iowa CCI vis­it­ed the home of Fix the Debter David Oman call­ing on him to renounce aus­ter­i­ty poli­cies that would hurt Iowa seniors. Activists cel­e­brat­ed when Fix the Debt missed its July 4 dead­line for a deal.

In August, Nation­al Peo­ples Action kicked off the “CEO Sum­mer” (Cor­po­rate Evil Out­ing) in fif­teen cities and towns. Take Action Min­neso­ta dropped a huge ban­ner across from a Fix the Debt gath­er­ing, while in Chica­go, cler­gy, IIRON, and ONE North­side tar­get­ed Gen­er­al Elec­tric for its fail­ure to pay tax­es and urged Sen­a­tor Dick Durbin to stiff­en his spine and do more to sup­port Social Secu­ri­ty. Vocal New York descend­ed on the home of Ver­i­zon board mem­ber Hugh Price, call­ing on Ver­i­zon to pay its tax­es and stop lob­by­ing for harm­ful bud­get cuts.

In Octo­ber, the AFL-CIO pulled out all the stops. Pres­i­dent Richard Trum­ka warned: “No politician...I don’t care the polit­i­cal party...will get away with cut­ting Social Secu­ri­ty, Medicare or Med­ic­aid ben­e­fits. Don’t try it. This warn­ing goes dou­ble for Democ­rats. We will nev­er for­get. We will nev­er for­give. And we will nev­er stop work­ing to end your career.”

The Can Kicks Back launched a bus tour of col­lege cam­pus­es. They wheeled out in a vehi­cle pro­duced by Ger­man automak­er BMW, inge­nious­ly dubbed the “AmeriVAN.” As part of the tour they col­lect­ed tin cans. Amer­i­ca’s youth was so under­whelmed that accord­ing to leaked e‑mails the pricey project “gen­er­at­ed 800 cans through our nation­al tour at a cost of about $3,000/can.” Price­less.

By this point the Net­roots were ful­ly engaged with Fix the Debt. When the group staged its first Twit­ter Q&A it was roy­al­ly trolled by knowl­edge­able crit­ics, includ­ing one who asked, “Glob­al warm­ing will reduce the avail­abil­i­ty of ice floes to push the elder­ly out to sea, does Fix the Debt sup­port a car­bon tax?” And a mer­ry pirate prankster named Alex Law­son con­front­ed the foam “can man” at a Can Kicks Back press con­fer­ence. “Aaar!” he said. “Fix the debt, but let me keep my cor­po­rate booty!”

In Novem­ber, con­gres­sion­al lead­ers went on offense. Sen­a­tors Tom Hark­ing and Sher­rod Brown intro­duced a bill to strength­en Social Secu­ri­ty. Eliz­a­beth War­ren took to the floor to declare that the tide had changed. Unions ral­lied their mem­bers to flood Con­gress with calls, and Pro­gres­sive Change Cam­paign Com­mit­tee, Move On and oth­ers gath­ered mil­lions of sig­na­tures for peti­tions (while at 360,000, Fix the Debt fell far short of its 10 mil­lion goal.)

In a major embar­rass­ment, the anony­mous @DeficitHacks caught Fix the Debt ghost writ­ing bogus op-eds for stu­dents in news­pa­pers across the coun­try, prompt­ing scathing edi­to­ri­als from offend­ed news­pa­pers and a Krug­man piece “Fix Fix Fix the Debt Debt Debt.”

in Decem­ber, the Ryan-Mur­phy bipar­ti­san bud­get deal was signed. Press sin­gled out Fix the Debt as one of the “biggest losers” of the deal which large­ly left Social Secu­ri­ty and Medicare untouched. Fix the Debt “spent at least $43 mil­lion to influ­ence the con­ver­sa­tion. Its reward: “bup­kis” wrote Slate’s David Weigel.

State of the Union Rever­sal

In Jan­u­ary 2014, the Pres­i­dent made only cur­so­ry men­tion of the deficit in his State of the Union address. At one point he boast­ed that it had been cut in half; at anoth­er he sug­gest that immi­gra­tion reform would reduce it even fur­ther. This was a far cry from the Jan­u­ary 2013 State of the Union, when Pres­i­dent Oba­ma gave deficit reduc­tion top billing.

Maya MacGuineas, who raked in $370,419 at the height of the cam­paign, was left grasp­ing for straws. The debt she says “is slat­ed to con­tin­ue to grow unsus­tain­ably lat­er this decade.”

Fix the Debt had failed in its quest for a Grand Bar­gain. Now as they shed staff and pack up their talk­ing points and tin cans, Politi­co reports that The Can Kicks Back is in debt and wait­ing for a new Dad­dy War­bucks to res­cue it.

There is no doubt that the Peter­son Youth will be back one day and MacGuineas will con­tin­ue her cru­sade at the Peter­son-fund­ed Com­mit­tee for a Respon­si­ble Bud­get, but in the mean­time the fight to strength­en Social Secu­ri­ty is on and that is some­thing Amer­i­cans can real­ly get excit­ed about. Accord­ing to the lat­est polling, 74 per­cent of Repub­li­cans and 88 per­cent of Democ­rats want to strength­en the pro­gram with­out cut­ting ben­e­fits.

...

—————-
“How Pro-Aus­ter­i­ty Groups Lost the Deficit Wars” by Mary Bot­tari; The Nation; 02/20/2014

“It was a strik­ing turn­around for the forces of aus­ter­i­ty. One of the biggest losers? The Cam­paign to Fix the Debt, the $40 mil­lion Astro­Turf aus­ter­i­ty group, financed by Pete Peter­son and oth­er Wall Street big wigs, and front­ed by Maya MacGuineas, Ersk­ine Bowles and Alan Simp­son.”

As we can see, the Cam­paign to Fix the Debt was effec­tive­ly the ongo­ing mouth­piece for the Peter­son Foun­da­tion’s aus­ter­i­ty cau­cus, with the usu­al sus­pects run­ning the show: Maya MacGuineas, Ersk­ine Bowles and Alan Simp­son. And unlike Walk­er’s CAI, the group is still going with MacGuineas still lead­ing it and advo­cat­ing the same deep cuts. It’s been an incred­i­bly well fund­ed effort. An ongo­ing effort that now includes a push to over­haul the entire US Con­sti­tu­tion. But as this 2014 piece describes, it was­n’t an all pow­er­ful lob­by. And it did ulti­mate­ly lose those ‘grand bar­gain’ bat­tles for mas­sive enti­tle­ment cuts thanks, in part, to the aggres­sive counter-lob­by­ing efforts by a range of grass-roots orga­ni­za­tions. The fact that the Rogoff-Rein­hart study — which played a big role in pro­vid­ing aca­d­e­m­ic jus­ti­fi­ca­tions for aus­ter­i­ty in 2009 — turned out to be bogus also helped:

...
In July of 2012, the Cam­paign to Fix the Debt was launched with a patri­ot­ic flair. They set a July 4, 2013 dead­line for an aus­ter­i­ty deal along the lines of the $4 tril­lion Simp­son-Bowles plan. The aus­ter­i­ty crowd had already suc­ceed­ed in rig­ging the game, cre­at­ing a Decem­ber 31, 2012 “fis­cal cliff” that would trig­ger steep bud­get cuts with­out a bipar­ti­san deal. Now they were poised to take advan­tage of that dead­line and oth­er stand­offs to secure a “Grand Bar­gain.”

The idea was that Democ­rats were sup­posed to trade cuts to earned ben­e­fit pro­grams like Social Secu­ri­ty and Medicare for a bit more tax rev­enue from the Repub­li­can side. The Pres­i­dent, who had cre­at­ed and backed the Simp­son-Bowles com­mis­sion, appeared will­ing to make a deal.

With a stalled econ­o­my and pub­lic sen­ti­ment decid­ed­ly against cuts to these pop­u­lar and life­sav­ing pro­grams, Fix the Debt gath­ered the big guns. Over 100 CEOs were named to a coun­cil and many con­tributed to the $40 mil­lion bud­get. Fix the Debt CEOs descend­ed on the White House and the Capi­tol build­ing. The night­ly news was filled with images of CEOs like Hon­ey­well’s David Cote step­ping up to the mike to opine about the need for belt tight­en­ing and shared sac­ri­fice.

...

But a fun­ny thing hap­pened on the way to the fis­cal cliff: real peo­ple fought back.

...

Grass­roots groups were in no mood for advice from Fix the Debt CEOs, like Gold­man Sach’s Lloyd Blank­fein, who somber­ly explained to CBS News in Novem­ber 2012 that Amer­i­cans had to “low­er their expec­ta­tions,” the retire­ment age had to be raised and “enti­tle­ment pro­grams have to be slowed down and con­tained.”

...

For added mea­sure, econ­o­mists at PERI Amherst made head­lines by uncov­er­ing cod­ing errors and oth­er prob­lems with the sem­i­nal Rogoff-Rein­hart study, which pur­port­ed­ly pro­vid­ed the empir­i­cal evi­dence that aus­ter­i­ty led to growth.

...

In June, the Insti­tute for Pol­i­cy Stud­ies released anoth­er damn­ing report “Pirate of the Caribbean” show­ing that Fix the Debt mem­ber firms stood to gain as much as $173 bil­lion if Con­gress adopt­ed their pro­pos­al for a ter­ri­to­r­i­al tax sys­tem, a tax break which would only increase the debt.

...

in Decem­ber, the Ryan-Mur­phy bipar­ti­san bud­get deal was signed. Press sin­gled out Fix the Debt as one of the “biggest losers” of the deal which large­ly left Social Secu­ri­ty and Medicare untouched. Fix the Debt “spent at least $43 mil­lion to influ­ence the con­ver­sa­tion. Its reward: “bup­kis” wrote Slate’s David Weigel.
...

And yet, despite those grass-roots vic­to­ries, as this 2014 piece warns, we should have every expec­ta­tion that the aus­ter­i­ty lob­by will be back, with all the ‘youth out­reach’ and oth­er PR stunts we’ve come to expect. Maya MacGuineas and the Peter­son-fund­ed CRFB isn’t going any­where, regard­less of whether or not enti­tle­ment cuts have proven to be deeply unpop­u­lar. This is a long-term bil­lion­aire-financed agen­da:

...
To show “grass­roots” momen­tum, Fix the Debt hired PR firms, had them set up pho­ny state chap­ters, bankrolled the stunts of its youth group, The Can Kicks Back, which donned a foam tin can suit (the Amer­i­CAN) for cute videos and hyped slant­ed num­bers about “gen­er­a­tional inequal­i­ty.” Amer­i­ca was going to rise up they said, they were going to get 10 mil­lion peo­ple to sign peti­tions.

...

In May, Fix the Debt orga­nized its first spon­ta­neous “flash mob” send­ing reporters and activists scur­ry­ing to inter­view par­tic­i­pants who proved to be paid dancers ($65 for the day) not at all inter­est­ed in cut­ting Social Secu­ri­ty.

...

The Can Kicks Back launched a bus tour of col­lege cam­pus­es. They wheeled out in a vehi­cle pro­duced by Ger­man automak­er BMW, inge­nious­ly dubbed the “AmeriVAN.” As part of the tour they col­lect­ed tin cans. Amer­i­ca’s youth was so under­whelmed that accord­ing to leaked e‑mails the pricey project “gen­er­at­ed 800 cans through our nation­al tour at a cost of about $3,000/can.” Price­less.

...

In a major embar­rass­ment, the anony­mous @DeficitHacks caught Fix the Debt ghost writ­ing bogus op-eds for stu­dents in news­pa­pers across the coun­try, prompt­ing scathing edi­to­ri­als from offend­ed news­pa­pers and a Krug­man piece “Fix Fix Fix the Debt Debt Debt.”

...

Fix the Debt had failed in its quest for a Grand Bar­gain. Now as they shed staff and pack up their talk­ing points and tin cans, Politi­co reports that The Can Kicks Back is in debt and wait­ing for a new Dad­dy War­bucks to res­cue it.

There is no doubt that the Peter­son Youth will be back one day and MacGuineas will con­tin­ue her cru­sade at the Peter­son-fund­ed Com­mit­tee for a Respon­si­ble Bud­get, but in the mean­time the fight to strength­en Social Secu­ri­ty is on and that is some­thing Amer­i­cans can real­ly get excit­ed about. Accord­ing to the lat­est polling, 74 per­cent of Repub­li­cans and 88 per­cent of Democ­rats want to strength­en the pro­gram with­out cut­ting ben­e­fits.
...

“There is no doubt that the Peter­son Youth will be back one day and MacGuineas will con­tin­ue her cru­sade at the Peter­son-fund­ed Com­mit­tee for a Respon­si­ble Bud­get.” Yep. Now, it’s true that The Can Kicks Back was even­tu­al­ly dis­band­ed. But that’s the thing about astro­turf. It’s always avail­able if you want to res­ur­rect it. All it takes is mon­ey. And if there’s one thing the aus­ter­i­ty lob­by has in abun­dance its mon­ey. Mon­ey and per­sis­tence.

It’s 2025 and the CRFB is Still Kicking and Growing

As we’ve seen, the aus­ter­i­ty lob­by has a seem­ing­ly end­less sup­ply of two of the most impor­tant ingre­di­ents required to achieve its deeply unpop­u­lar goals: mon­ey and per­sis­tence. The kind of mon­ey and per­sis­tence that has­n’t just allowed the aus­ter­i­ty lob­by to con­tin­ue its cru­sade. It’s expand­ing, with two more ‘main­stream’ names hav­ing just joined the CRF­B’s board of direc­tors: for­mer Sen­a­tors Mitt Rom­ney and Joe Manchin. The lob­by is fever­ish­ly fear­mon­ger­ing about away in 2025, with Maya MacGuineas still serv­ing as the CRF­B’s pres­i­dent. Of course, as we now know, the lob­by it’s just think­ing about a “grand bar­gain” any­more. An Arti­cle V con­sti­tu­tion­al con­ven­tion won’t real­ly be about grand bar­gains. It will be about raw spe­cial inter­est pow­er to rede­fine the future:

The Hill

Manchin, Rom­ney join board of direc­tors for top bud­get watch­dog

by Aris Fol­ley — 03/19/25 11:33 AM ET

For­mer Sens. Mitt Rom­ney (R‑Utah) and Joe Manchin (I‑W.Va.) are join­ing the board of direc­tors for the Com­mit­tee for a Respon­si­ble Fed­er­al Bud­get, a promi­nent Wash­ing­ton, D.C.-based think tank focused on fis­cal pol­i­cy.

Maya MacGuineas, the pres­i­dent of the orga­ni­za­tion, said in a state­ment Wednes­day that the addi­tions under­score “the committee’s long­stand­ing com­mit­ment to fos­ter­ing bipar­ti­san solu­tions to our nation’s fis­cal decline and work­ing to put for­ward solu­tions for America’s elect­ed lead­ers.”

...

Dur­ing their time in Con­gress, both Rom­ney and Manchin, who left the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty to become an Inde­pen­dent last year, intro­duced leg­is­la­tion aimed at estab­lish­ing a fis­cal com­mis­sion to explore ways to tack­le the nation’s debt. They were also known for split­ting from their par­ties on leg­is­la­tion due to fis­cal con­cerns.

“Impor­tant­ly, both have worked togeth­er on com­mon-sense reforms to address our ris­ing debt, includ­ing advo­ca­cy for trust fund reform to shore up Social Secu­ri­ty and Medicare and intro­duc­ing leg­is­la­tion and lead­ing the effort to estab­lish a fis­cal com­mis­sion to focus on com­ing up with work­able solu­tions,” MacGuineas said Wednes­day.

Rom­ney and Manchin join a list of oth­er wide­ly known polit­i­cal fig­ures like for­mer Ohio Gov. John Kasich ® and for­mer Sen. Hei­di Heitkamp (D‑N.D.), as well as Ersk­ine Bowles, as direc­tors on the board.

————-

“Manchin, Rom­ney join board of direc­tors for top bud­get watch­dog” by Aris Fol­ley; The Hill; 03/19/2025

“Maya MacGuineas, the pres­i­dent of the orga­ni­za­tion, said in a state­ment Wednes­day that the addi­tions under­score “the committee’s long­stand­ing com­mit­ment to fos­ter­ing bipar­ti­san solu­tions to our nation’s fis­cal decline and work­ing to put for­ward solu­tions for America’s elect­ed lead­ers.””

Maya MacGuineas is still at it. In March of 2025. The aus­ter­i­ty lob­by may have been forced to pull back from its ‘grand bar­gain’ goals a decade ago, but it has­n’t giv­en up. Far from it, with fig­ures like Mitt Rom­ney and Joe Manchin both join­ing the CRFB board of direc­tors, pre­sum­ably in antic­i­pa­tion of anoth­er major ‘grand bar­gain’ push to gut enti­tle­ments. Or maybe not a ‘grand bar­gain’ push. An Arti­cle V push is prob­a­bly more like­ly at this point. No grand bar­gain nec­es­sary:

...
Dur­ing their time in Con­gress, both Rom­ney and Manchin, who left the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty to become an Inde­pen­dent last year, intro­duced leg­is­la­tion aimed at estab­lish­ing a fis­cal com­mis­sion to explore ways to tack­le the nation’s debt. They were also known for split­ting from their par­ties on leg­is­la­tion due to fis­cal con­cerns.

“Impor­tant­ly, both have worked togeth­er on com­mon-sense reforms to address our ris­ing debt, includ­ing advo­ca­cy for trust fund reform to shore up Social Secu­ri­ty and Medicare and intro­duc­ing leg­is­la­tion and lead­ing the effort to estab­lish a fis­cal com­mis­sion to focus on com­ing up with work­able solu­tions,” MacGuineas said Wednes­day.
...

It’s not a mys­tery as to what Joe Manchin and Mitt Rom­ney plan on advo­cat­ing for with their new roles at the CRFB. What is some­what of a mys­tery at this point is whether or not they are going to both­er lob­by­ing Con­gress at this point. After all, an Arti­cle V con­ven­tion of states will be con­duct­ed by state-lev­el del­e­ga­tions cho­sen by state leg­is­la­tures. Mem­bers of con­gress won’t nec­es­sar­i­ly be involved at all. It will be some­thing to keep an eye on.

But, again, let’s not for­get that the path cho­sen to make this hap­pen, a con­sti­tu­tion­al con­ven­tion, is designed to be an end-run around the pub­lic’s will. A spe­cial inter­est bonan­za. The kind of pro-aus­ter­i­ty pub­lic rela­tions groups like the CRFB rou­tine­ly engage in won’t nec­es­sar­i­ly be need­ed for a con­sti­tu­tion­al con­ven­tion. Not this round. At least not before its too late for the pub­lic to do any­thing about. That’s the plan, long in the mak­ing. And almost ready. Just in time for a con­sti­tu­tion­al­ly-allowed third Trump term. That’s, of course, assum­ing the US will still be oper­at­ing under the Con­sti­tu­tion by the end of Trump’s term. We’re talk­ing about an aspir­ing Uni­tary Exec­u­tive, after all. Which is a reminder that part of the con­text of this sto­ry is the grim real­i­ty that the US is already gripped in a con­sti­tu­tion­al cri­sis that’s only going to get big­ger. After all, it’s prob­a­bly going to be a lot eas­i­er to draw up a new oli­garchic con­sti­tu­tion after the cur­rent guy is done mak­ing him­self king.