In March, we reported on the COS CA Team Lobby Day experience at the CA State Capitol, when 25 volunteers from Northern, Central, and Southern California met in Sacramento to visit legislators’ offices with messages of support for Convention of States.
Team leaders set up information tables on the Capitol Lawn. They set up a Cornhole Game area where volunteers and passers-by could enjoy team sport fun. Attendees and spectators experienced the unity of respectful dialogue, the exchange of ideas and information, laughter, and the dignity of civic engagement.
In the Capitol office building, Convention of States volunteers found the legislative staff to be unaware that state legislators can use Article V of the Constitution to restore state authority over the California budget. Article V empowers state legislatures to push back when the federal government oversteps its enumerated powers.
Liberty-minded Californians have their work cut out for them, ensuring their state and local leaders know that their power derives from the consent of the governed.
“Americans used to govern themselves. When this nation was founded, the government acted only to protect life, liberty and property. Now, it has encroached into every area of life, so we endlessly debate the healthcare, education, and economic policies our so-called leaders hand down to us. However, the citizens should make these crucial decisions. Who decides? According to the founders and Constitution, we do. Let’s act like it.” https://selfgovern.com
All of these represent ways in which the federal government has come to exceed its authority, robbing Californians of economic freedom and adding problems to living in our state:
- Requiring states to pay up for federal programs that should originate and function entirely under the authority of the states
- Mandating health, environmental, education, and energy policies that, once again, should originate and function entirely under the authority of the states
- Re-distributing money absconded from one state to another with requirements that federal regulations are imposed at the local level
The Convention of States effort, its mission, and the 150,000 petition signers in California agree that decisions on these matters belong closer to home, where the people can better control the administration, cost, and effectiveness of any government program.
“The framers of our Constitution wanted a strong national government, but they also wanted it to be strictly limited to the functions authorized in the Constitution. Most of these are found in Article I, section 8, which outlines the “enumerated powers” delegated to Congress. And not only does the Constitution specify the powers granted to the central government; it actually prohibits that government from exercising any powers not delegated to it. The 10th Amendment expressly declares that these are “reserved to the states respectively, or to the people.” National Center for Constitutional Studies
Dismantling federal government overreach will require the civil participation of an enormous grassroots army in California and across the nation. As Convention of States volunteers like to say, “Article V provides a solution as big as the problem.” There is great hope because citizens from every state legislative district in the USA have signed the Convention of States petition.
The framers of the U.S. Constitution in 1787 gave the people, through their state legislatures, the power to recalibrate the balance of government power with a Convention of States.
"The Congress, whenever two thirds of both houses shall deem it necessary, shall propose amendments to this Constitution, or, on the application of the legislatures of two thirds of the several states, shall call a convention for proposing amendments, which, in either case, shall be valid to all intents and purposes, as part of this Constitution, when ratified by the legislatures of three fourths of the several states, or by conventions in three fourths thereof, as the one or the other mode of ratification may be proposed by the Congress; provided that no amendment which may be made prior to the year one thousand eight hundred and eight shall in any manner affect the first and fourth clauses in the ninth section of the first article; and that no state, without its consent, shall be deprived of its equal suffrage in the Senate." Text of Article V
An Article V Convention of the States has never taken place. Why not?
It is no simple task to get 34 state legislatures to agree that certain topics have reached such a level of importance. But today, 19 states have done just that. We need 15 more to join them.
We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness… that to secure these rights, governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed… Abridged Declaration of Independence recited
From the immoral, unsustainable national debt, to the complete failure of federal agencies to work for and not against the people, it is clear that the time for agreement and action is now. Sign the petition and volunteer at www.conventionofstates.com/take_action.
