For years, the House passed an amendment providing for the direct election of senators, but the Senate always balked. Senators liked the cozy arrangement they had with the corporate interests that owned their states. So state legislatures escalated by applying to Congress for a Convention of the States to formulate such an amendment. In 1912, the two thirds threshold was reached.
What senators feared was that a Convention would write the amendment to require immediate implementation, i.e., the entire Senate would have to be elected under the new paradigm all at once. The Senate wrote the amendment to phase in election by the people once ratification was complete. The House quickly passed the same wording, and the amendment was sent out to the states for ratification. It was ratified in record time.
But the two thirds threshold had been reached. Congress was under compulsion to call a Convention to consider this topic. How Congress got out of it was quite clever.
Several states had “discharge clauses” in their applications. This clause stated that if Congress wrote its own amendment on the topic, the application would be considered discharged. Enough states had discharge clauses in their applications that the threshold now dipped below two thirds, thus absolving Congress from calling a Convention. Without those discharge clauses, Congress would have been in a major bind.
...26 states...
Actually it’s 28 now. Two more states piled on this year. Six more states, and Congress will have to call a Convention to consider a balanced budget amendment.
Concerning your question about aggregation, Congress will not aggregate the 4 applications with the Georgia language with the 28 applications for a balanced budget amendment. They won’t be aggregated in either direction but will be considered separate topics for tabulation purposes.
As long as we possess the world’s reserve currency, a balanced budget amendment would be a bad idea. Vast and increasing numbers of dollars are needed every day to support the $4+ trillion per day that changes hands in the world’s money markets. We have waged endless war and increased entitlements so that those dollars can be created to fill the world’s money pool. If we were back on the gold standard, we wouldn’t need a balanced budget amendment because the gold standard itself imposes an iron discipline. Only if we lose the status of possessing the world’s reserve currency would we require an amendment to end our profligate behavior.
Indeed. But consider that both Russia and China and other nations within their respective orbits are working overtime to find ways to kill the U.S dollar as the world's reserve currency.
Were they to succeed, the American standard of living would instantly decline by something like 25 percent, or more. Not to mention that the federal debt would not be able to be "monetized" anymore. The American people would then be presented with the alternative of long-term self-denial, of grinding penury to pay off the incredible debts already sustained, $18.5 trillion and counting. Or declaring national bankruptcy. I don't know what would happen then. Maybe a massive, national FIRE SALE??? Wherein the main stock of Americian capital assets would be transferred into foreign hands???
In piling up national debt like this, maybe we the people thought we could just send along the demand for repayment to future generations, and require them to pay it off.
Thomas Jefferson in particular took a very, very dim view of a generation not satisfying its own incurred debts, with the view that the next generation would be there to pay them off.
We are talking of our children here, of encumbering them financially even before they reach the age of majority, jeepers even before the date of their birth. And subsequently, their chlldren, and your grandchildren, and theirs in turn, etc.
The above is a tad off-topic. Just had to get it off my chest.
Thank you ever so much, dear Publius, for shining light on the discharge issue, and suggesting other ways that State Applications for an Article V COS might get derailed, disbarred from the "aggregation" tally....