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 PMThe 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.”
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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 17th 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 113th 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.”
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“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:
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“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 17th 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 113th 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.”
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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:
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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.
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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. EDTA 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.
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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.
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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.
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“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:
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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:
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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:
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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:
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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:
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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:
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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.”
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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.”
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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, 2017Former 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.
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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:
- 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.
- 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
- 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.
- 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.
- Require a two-thirds vote in both houses of Congress to increase public debt.
- 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
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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
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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.
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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:
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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.
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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.
———–
“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.”4Convention 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.15But 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.29In 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, 2009Is 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.
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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.
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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:
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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.
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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:
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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.
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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, 2009David 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.
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“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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.”
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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.”
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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?”
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“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.
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“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:
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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.
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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:
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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.
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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:
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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.
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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’:
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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.
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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?”
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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, 2013Unbeknown 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.”
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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.”
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“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:
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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.”
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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:
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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.
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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, 2014It’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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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“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:
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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.
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But a funny thing happened on the way to the fiscal cliff: real people fought back.
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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.”
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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:
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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.
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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.
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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.”
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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.
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“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.”
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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.
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“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:
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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.
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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.
For a scenario routinely portrayed as utterly outlandish, amending the US Constitution sure is getting talked about a lot, thanks, in large part, to President Trump’s repeated calls for things that violate the Constitution. Things like a third presidential terms, a scenario Trump keeps raising. A scenario that remains casually dismissed as a remote possibility that can’t be taken seriously. All this talk of amending the US Constitution is just a big joke. Or at least that’s how Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson has been repeatedly portraying it. President Trump isn’t serious about a third term. He’s just joking. Over and over. As Johnson put it in response to Trump’s latest third-term calls, “There’s a constitutional path. You have to amend the Constitution to do it, and that’s a high bar.”
And it is indeed a high bar to amend the US Constitution. Or at least it should be. Of course, as we’ve seen, that bar is going to be a lot lower should the austerity lobby and the Council for National Policy (CNP) succeed in pushing the template lawsuit designed to result in a legal ruling that the “high bar” for a constitutional convention has already been met. Not just the “high bar” for a single amendment but the “high bar” for the kind of constitutional convention that could easily devolve into a “runaway” convention that rewrites the whole Constitution.
And that threat of a dramatically lowered “bar” — so low it’s already been reached according to the draft lawsuit — brings us to a story out of California that is sadly emblematic of how non-seriously the Democratic Party is taking this threat. Because as we’re going to see, California already has seven active calls for a constitutional convention sitting on its books, with the oldest going back to 1911 with a call for the direct election of Senators, something that eventually happened with the adoption of the 17th amendment. As we’ve seen, the repeal of the 17th amendment is actually one of the goals of the Koch network’s Constitutional overhaul plans, so perhaps having that call for a seemingly redundant amendment isn’t the worst thing to have on California’s books. Except, as we’ve also seen, that template lawsuit designed to trigger a constitutional convention is based on the legal argument that call for any constitutional amendment by a state should be counted towards the 2/3rd (34 state) threshold. So just having that constitutional convention call for 2011, or any other constitutional convention call, on California’s books is basically playing with fire at this point.
And it’s not just California. Since 2016, multiple Democratically-controlled states have rescinded their constitutional convention call in response to the growing far right constitutional convention organizing. And yet, as we’re going to see, that may not be so easy for California, thanks to the fact that the latest California call for a constitutional convention came in 2023 from none other than Governor Gavin Newsom, who made an open call for a constitutional convention focused on creating constitutionally-enshrined a gun-control laws. No other state has pushed for such an amendment and it’s seen as have basically a zero percent chance of getting the support it needs.
But despite those near-zero chances of passge, Newsom has no interest in rescinding his call. Members of his own party are already sponsoring a state bill — SRJ1 — which would rescind not just Newsom’s call but all of the rest of California’s still-active constitutional convention calls. But so far the Newsom administration is resisting the legislation, asserting that the call includes provisions rendering the call void if a constitutional convention is convened on a topic other than gun control. Provisions that, as experts keep warning, can’t really be relied given the vague nature of the constitutionally-stipulated rules for managing a convention. Rules that don’t even clarify who would referee disagreements. The reality is that no one is in a position to predict how such a scenario would play out.
But, again, given the fact that California is the only state in the country to make the call for the gun-control amendment, another reality in this situation is that there is basically a zero percent chance of a gun-control constitutional convention ever being called in the first place. What is scarily possible, on the other hand, are all these constitutional convention calls sitting on California’s books eventually be used to reach that 34 state “high bar” should the draft lawsuit eventually succeed. And with today’s corrupted judiciary, it’s hard to rule that scenario out.
Beyond the draft lawsuit, Republican members of Congress are already taking steps to effectively replicate that draft lawsuit as legislation that could be passed by Congress. That’s the goal of legislation being pushed by Texas Representative Jodey Arrington which would require the head of the National Archives to track down all of the state applications for a constitutional convention. David Walker — one of the key figures behind the draft lawsuit — even testified before Congress back in December during a hearing where Arrington argued that “high bar” had already been reached. Arrington insists that the 34 state threshold was met in 1979 and a constitutional convention should have already been called by Congress as a result. What are the odds he can get the rest of congressional Republicans on board? Especially if it promises to grant President Trump the possibility of a constitutionally-allowed third term? It’s getting increasingly hard to rule it out.
That’s all part of the context of Mike Johnson’s repeated insistence that President Trump is merely ‘joking’, repeatedly, about serving a third term. It’s a joke, but the joke is on us:
““There’s a constitutional path. You have to amend the Constitution to do it, and that’s a high bar,” Johnson, a former constitutional litigator, said at a press conference Tuesday when asked if there was a way for Trump to seek a third term.”
Mike Johnson isn’t exaggerating. There really is a high bar to amending the US Constitution. Especially when it comes to triggering an Article V constitutional convention. Which, of course, is the entire point of the new lawsuit being shopped around by David Walker and his fellow travelers in the austerity lobby: lowering that high bar through a wildly ‘loose’ interpretation of the rules. So yeah, the bar is high. Until it’s not. Which is part of why it’s getting increasingly difficult to dismiss President Trump’s constitutional amendment talk as just a joke, as Johnson repeatedly frames it:
Speaking of jokes, it’s worth keeping in mind that the proposed constitutional amendment by TN Congressman Andy Ogles isn’t just a joke. It’s also an plea for some sort of presidential intervention in the federal campaign finance felony investigation he was facing. A plea that the Trump administration appeared to hear. Just a week after Ogles submitted his constitutional amendment bill in Congress, federal prosecutors dropped their investigation. It was the kind of gross open corruption that should serve as a reminder that we really are in uncharted territory here:
And that uncharted nature of this situation brings us to the following California-based story about the efforts of one state lawmaker to stop California from helping make some sort of constitutional convention nightmare unfold. Back in December, Democratic state senator, Scott Wiener, introduced legislation that would rescind all of California’s seven active calls for a constitutional convention. Yep, California has seven calls for a constitutional convention on the books, with the oldest going back to 1911 with a call for the direct election of Senators, something that eventually happened with the adoption of the 17th amendment. Even so, that 1911 call is still on California’s books. And as we’ve seen, any constitutional convention call is deemed to count towards that 34 state threshold under the legal theory being pushed by the Federal Fiscal Sustainability Foundation and its allies. Including the latest call for a constitutional convention to pass a gun-control amendment made by none other than California Governor Gavin Newsom. And as we’re going to see, Newsom isn’t very alarmed by the growing calls from experts about the very real risk of a “runaway” convention and, for now, remains intent on keeping in constitutional convention call in place. Which is a sad reminder that the path to a constitutional convention won’t just entail an abundance of bad-faith legal reasoning on the part of the austerity lobby. Highly avoidable mistakes on the part of everyone else will be playing a role too. That’s how democracies tend to work. Or get torn asunder, as the case may be:
“Some Democratic officials are more concerned than ever. In California, a Democratic state senator, Scott Wiener, introduced legislation on Monday that would rescind the state’s seven active calls for a constitutional convention, the first such move since Donald J. Trump’s election to a second term.”
Yes, as we can see, California doesn’t just have an active call for a constitutional convention. It has seven active calls, including one from 1949 calling for the creation of a “world federal government.” And then there’s the oldest constitutional convention call on California’s books for an amendment that would allow for the direct election of senators and which did eventually become reality with the 17th Amendment. Recall how overturning the 17th amendment is one of the Koch network’s big goals. But regardless of the validity of these constitutional convention calls, all of them mean California is actively playing into the Federal Fiscal Sustainability Foundation constitutional convention lawsuit scheme too. Democratic state senator Scott Wiener sees in the writing on wall:
And Wiener is far from the only elected Democrat who has been warning about this growing threat. Nor are these new sudden concerns. Nine Democratic-controlled legislatures have rescinded constitutional convention calls since 2016. This is been a slow-rolling threat for years. But let’s not forget one of the elements of the Federal Fiscal Sustainability Foundation constitutional convention lawsuit: they argue these constitutional convention calls can’t be rescinded, arguing that “once the Article V bell has been rung, it cannot be unrung.” While we should certainly encourage more states to rescind these constitutional convention calls, don’t assume that’s a solution to a corrupt lawsuit navigating a corrupted judiciary keen to please a corrupt president:
And as we can see from the bill put forward by Texas Republican Jodey Arrington — a bill that would serve the same purpose of the Federal Fiscal Sustainability Foundation constitutional convention lawsuit by triggering a constitutional convention — David Walker was at Arrington’s congressional hearing and even described the plans for the lawsuit. Which is a reminder that the lawsuit scheme isn’t the only scheme the austerity lobby is devising. This movement is going to keep trying gimmicks until one of them works. Kind of like the austerity lobby’s commitment to shredding entitlements. Just keep trying new tactics until one of them works. And getting a majority of Congress to support Arrington’s, and Walker’s, position could alone be enough:
Another area of caution in this story is the reality that the Constitution leaves vague all sorts of nuanced rules that would need to be followed should a constitutional convention get started. Rules like whether or not lobbyists and special interests could directly play a role or even who would referee disputes. It’s a recipe for not just a “runaway convention” but one guided by highly unfair rules potentially written by a bunch of lobbyists:
Sadly, as we should expect, some Democrats are still dismissing concerns about a constitutional convention by pointing out that 38 states would need to approve of any changes. Think about what a wildly dangerous ‘strategy’ that is: just let it happen under the premise that there won’t be enough states to support any of the amendments. As if following the vaguely defined rules is something we can just take for granted at this point:
And when we see President Trump expressing a desire for the overturning of the 14th Amendment, keep in mind that the can of worms that could be opened from a decision like that could include not just the stripping of citizenship of millions of people but deporting them to countries they’ve never even visited. It’s a humanitarian disaster waiting to happen. And if that sounds like an unrealistic scenario, keep in mind the words of Rick Santorum at a private ALEC workshop: because “most states are going to be controlled by Republicans,” rural and Republican voters will have “an outsize granted power” in a convention ad “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.” A conservative supermajority at the state level thanks to the one-state-one-vote nature of the convention. Previously unthinkable should become much more thinkable under a scenario like that:
And yet, despite this clear and growing danger, it appears that California’s Democratic governor Gavin Newsom not only has no interest in repealing California’s constitutional convention calls but he’s now pushing a gun-control amendment that has 0 other states backing it:
And as the following LA Times article warns, the fact that Newsom continues to resist Wiener’s calls to rescind the constitutional convention calls doesn’t just mean that the governor is unlikely to the support the bill if it succeeds in the state legislature. Wiener’s bill is likely to face a behind-the-scenes battle to prevent it from coming to a vote in the first place:
“The fight ahead could also be a boon for Wiener, further raising his public profile ahead of a potential congressional campaign. That said, it will also test his political might, particularly if the governor chooses to wage a behind-the-scenes campaign against the proposal.”
Is a behind-the-scenes campaign being waged against Scott Wiener’s push to rescind California’s convention calls? Let’s hope not. But with state Democratic leaders refusing to say whether they support Wiener’s resolution it’s hard not to start suspecting some sort of behind-the-scenes campaigning designed to kill the bill without a vote is in the works:
And as legal experts keep warning, there really is no way to predict how a constitutional convention would pan out. The only way to find out is to do it:
We’ve been warned. Over and over. Warnings that will presumably be largely ignored until it’s too to do anything about it.
We already know it’s been a debacle. A historically profitable debacle to those in the know. The Trump tariff scheme imploded before it ever really got started. And yet, it’s still in place. It’s a slow rolling disaster with plenty of tumult to come. Along with plenty more historic insider trading opportunities.
What hasn’t been clear so far is what exactly was Trump thinking? What’s the actual plan here? Was this really just a giant act of ‘poop and scoop’ market manipulation? Or was this a real attempt at ‘negotiating’ with the world? A bit of both? And while we still don’t have a conclusive answer to those questions, it’s important to keep in mind that what we just saw transpire wasn’t just some random plot President Trump pulled out of thin air. This debacle had architects. One architect in particular: Peter Navarro, Trump’s long-time economic advisor. This debacle was his baby.
Except, of course, as with so much else going on in the second Trump administration, this isn’t actually Peter Navarro’s plan alone. He has support. Deep institutional support. Specifically, the support of the folks behind the Project 2025 playbook that has defined the second Trump administration. Navarro was a Project 2025 co-author, after all. Yep. He wrote a whole section on trade policy.
Navarro’s fingerprints on the Trump tariff debacle aren’t just all over Project 2025’s plan for a second Trump administration. It turns out Navarro was deeply involved in devising Trump’s tariff policies, including coming up with the bizarre seemingly ‘formula’ for determining the appropriate reciprocal tariff levels. Someone has been whispering in Trump’s ear and that someone is Peter Navarro.
But, again, it’s not just Navarro. When we see him serving as a Project 2025 co-author it’s clear that Navarro isn’t the lone economic iconoclast. The forces behind Project 2025 — with the powerful Council for National Policy (CNP) at the core — are ultimately the same forces behind Trump’s tariff debacle. And the same CNP-led forces that brought us the plot to overturn the 2020 election. Just days ago, CNP member Steve Bannon referred to criticism of Navarro as “really veiled attacks on President Trump,” and touted how Navarro “always gives President Trump the hardest, toughest options—that provides leverage.” Peter Navarro isn’t a lone wolf acting all on his own.
And let’s not forget how the CNP is one of the main elements — along with groups like ALEC — behind the coalition of forces currently scrambling to trigger an Article V constitutional convention with ambitions on rewriting the entire US constitution into an oligarchic dream document. Which is sadly a reminder that the ambitions of the network that brought the world this looming self-inflicted economic disaster include the goal of imposing their will permanently through a rewritten constitution. The same network that is increasingly threatening violent measures to impose its will on society at large. What that’s your ambition, triggering a recession may not seem like such a big deal. Also keep in mind that, when that constitutional rewrite takes place and income taxes are constitutionally banned, tariffs are probably going to be a much more mandatory feature of long-term US policy-making. In other words, the tariff madness we are seeing play out happens to be a requirement for the CNP’s planned new constitutional order.
That’s all part of the context of the ongoing head scratching on the part of just about everyone who is trying to understand the White House’s disastrous tariff rollout and why it seems like the Trump administration is throwing the world into an economic crisis of its own making. It wasn’t just Trump. Nor can Trump blame it all on Peter Navarro. The same anti-democratic theocratic forces that brought us the January 6 Capitol insurrection and are currently trying to rewrite the US constitution are ultimately responsible for enabling what just happened. Trump and Navarro are their boys. Trump and MAGA might be the brand but the CNP and its fellow travelers like ALEC are the ones writing the plans. The devil is in details. This really is the CNP administration executing the CNP-crafted Project 2025 agenda. It’s their plan that Trump is executing and that includes the tariff debacle. Which is also a reminder that, if there really is pervasive insider trading taking place based on foreknowledge of the Trump administration’s market-swinging policies (or just tweets), that insider trading is probably rampant across the CNP. It’s the ultimate insider network in 2025, after all.
All that said, also keep in mind that the CNP’s fingerprints all over the Trump tariff policy don’t exclude the possibility that Trump might also be insane. Especially given the overall diplomatic hamfistedness of it all. We could easily be looking at a quasi-sane plan being horribly undermined by an insane president. This isn’t an ‘either/or’ situation:
““And their concern is that the White House is not acting rationally, but rather on ideology. And some even fear that this may not even be ideology,” Lee continued. “A few have quietly wondered if the President might be insane.””
Yes, Wall Street fund managers have indeed increasingly wondered if Trump might be insane. Quietly. Anonymously. Because you don’t want to piss off the Mad King. Everyone knows that. So while we should expect that Wall Street recognizes the internal contradictions of Trump’s policies — like the fact that the stimulus spending needed to deal with the recession he’s inducing will dwarf the ‘savings’ achieved through DOGE’s ideological gutting of the federal government — we also shouldn’t expect too much open grumbling about it. The Mad King is vengeful. Everyone knows that:
And those concerns about whether or not the Mad King might be literally insane bring us to the following import WSJ piece that reminds us of some very clarifying details. Like the fact that Trump’s tariff policy is a product of Peter Navarro, who remains a very influential force inside the Trump administration, ‘pause’ or not:
“Apart from Trump, no one is more associated with the tariffs rocking the globe than Peter Navarro, the scrappy trade hawk who helped design the much-maligned formula for Trump’s reciprocal levies. He has Trump’s ear and his loyalty: As the president privately reminded a group in the Oval Office recently, Navarro went to jail for him.”
It’s not the Trump tariff debacle. It’s the Trump-Navarro tariff debacle. Because it wasn’t President Trump who devised this policy. That was Navarro’s job, including the crafting of the bizarre tariffs formula:
And yet, as we can see from the very supportive comments of Steven Bannon, it’s not like the support for Trump’s tariffs policy is purely coming from Trump and Navarro. Navarro is operating as the lead agent for a movement that has a larger base of support. Anonymous support presumably in many cases. But Bannon isn’t hiding it. He’s all on board:
And let’s not forget one of Steve Bannon’s more notorious affiliations: he’s a longstanding member of the CNP, the organization that arguably has more influence over the actually running of the second Trump administration than anything else. As we’ve seen, while Project 2025 was technically authored by the Heritage Foundation, it really is a CNP-orchestrated agenda. And that brings us to one of the more important details to keep in mind when assessing the actually levels of institutional support for the Trump/Navarro tariff policy: Peter Navarro was a Project 2025 author who wrote a chapter on trade policy:
“In his section of the policy road map, Navarro outlined a plan to raise tariffs on the European Union, China and India to balance the U.S. trade deficit. Navarro — whom Trump called his “tough guy on China” during his 2016 campaign — also listed dozens of policy recommendations for responding to Chinese “aggression,” including banning Chinese-owned social media apps like TikTokand holding China “accountable” for the Covid-19 virus.”
As we can, Peter Navarro had big plans for major tariffs already in mind when he was tapped by Project 2025. Plans the Project 2025 organizers presumaby knew about when they tapped him. That’s a clue about who all is really behind these tariffs. He wouldn’t have written this Project 2025 “policy road map” if Trump’s tariff policy was just a Trump and Navarro scheme.
And, of course, Navarro is just one of a number of Project 2025 authors to end up in a high-level Trump administration position, starting with the Project 2025 ringleader Ruseell Vought, who has been explicit about his desire to ‘inflict trauma’ on the federal workforce. A desire he has effectively outsourced to Elon Musk’s ‘Department of Government Efficiency’ (DOGE) as the administration got underway:
Or there’s FCC chairman Brendan Carr, who didn’t just write the Project 2025 chapter on FCC ‘reforms’. He wrote that chapter while serving as an FCC commissioner. Recall how one of Carr’s first actions as the new head of the FCC back in January was to open an investigation into CBS News over specious allegations of favorable treatment towards Kamala Harris. It’s also worth noting that Carr isn’t just a Project 2025 contributor. He’s also one of the many members of the America First Policy Institute (AFPI) who has taken on a senior role in the second Trump administration. Brendan Carr was installed as the chair of the FCC to take extreme actions but he he’s not just acting on behalf of Donald Trump:
Joining Carr at the FCC is Adam Candeub, the FCC’s new general counsel. And as we can see, Candeub’s ‘government experience’ includes being appointed the deputy attorney general in December of 2020. And as we now know, if you were given a new high-level appointment in the weeks following the 2020 election, it’s probably in anticipation of the need for extreme loyalty as the CNP-orchestrated efforts to overturn election results played out. Which is also why we should expect a complete lack of integrity from the FCC’s legal office for the next four years at a minimum:
Finally, in light of the growing suspicions of some sort of major insider trading scandal surrounding the Trump administration’s sudden decision to implement a ’90 day pause’ on the tariffs, note how the new head of the SEC, Paul Atkins, also happens to a Project 2025 co-author. So when we ultimately see zero enforcement of the insider trading laws by the SEC keep in mind Project 2025’s revolutionary anti-democratic agenda to fundamentally remake the country into an oligarchic paradise. The kind of revolutionary agenda that implicitly presumes the Trump administration will be operating outside the boundaries of the law:
And it’s that nation-breaking-and-remaking revolutionary oligarchic agenda that create the broader context of the Trump tariff policy. Trump and Navarro are clearly intent on breaking and remaking the global order. It’s a big deal. But it’s also just one facet of an overall break-and-remake agenda that includes the very core of the US government and society. The kind of context that terrifyingly makes Trump’s economy-destroying actions seem less like the actions of a Mad King and more like the actions of the Manchurian Candidate operating on behalf of a network of super-villain oligarchs. Which, again, is not to say that Trump isn’t also insane. Both can be terrifyingly true.