"Outside the Box" using interstate compacts to replace Obamacare.

Belmont Club ^ | 9/30/10 | Richard Fernandez

[Ouderkirk]

It is a very interesting proposal.

[Yaelle]

Fascinating. It would be wonderful to end game around Obamacare.

[conservatism_IS_compassion]

Congress would never approve this. It takes away their POWER.

That is the argument for an Article V convention. It takes fewer (34) states to call a convention than it takes (38) to ratify proposed amendments.

The great problem would be to get a convention which would propose only conservative amendments, or only bad amendments which could not be ratified.

IMHO the right approach to correcting the course of constitutional law would be to modify the makeup of SCOTUS. In principle an amendment could literally name the members of the court - and if it did nothing else but reiterate the names of the present members of the court it would still establish the precedent that the states can decide who is and who is not a justice of SCOTUS. And that the states therefore do have rights which SCOTUS is responsible for enforcing.

[conservatism_IS_compassion]

Congress would never approve this. It takes away their POWER.

That is an argument for a constitutional convention.

IMHO this article's idea for interstate compacts is a good one, but we should make the compacts into the "good cop," while simultaneously promoting the "bad cop" of a constitutional convention.

Since everyone fears a constitutional convention, promoting it is a way of positioning the compact route as the moderate approach.

[1010RD]

That’s the only way, other than to never create collectivists. But, the devil’s in the details.