The following was written by Convention of States Senior Advisor Sen. Tom Coburn and originally published on the Washington Examiner.
Americans know Washington is broken. That’s why they elected an outsider who promised to “drain the swamp.” But while President Trump can undo Obama-era executive orders, he does not have the power to fix decades of broken statutes and regulations.
Congress won’t fix it either. What I learned from 16 years in Congress, 10 in the Senate, is that Congress doesn’t see its job as going back to repair or eliminate obsolete laws. In his new book, Try Common Sense, Philip Howard says that “Congress is like the Roach Motel, where the laws check in but never check out.”
For years now, angry Americans have been lashing back at Washington overreach. That is the genesis of the Tea Party movement. But it’s even worse than we thought. The ultimate evil of the bureaucratic state, Howard argues, is that Americans no longer feel free. Americans no longer breathe the fresh air of freedom but the stale air of bureaucracy.
Doctors and nurses spend up to half the day filling out forms no one reads. Teachers are told never to put an arm around a crying child. Small business can’t even know, much less comply with, the thousands of rules that apply to them. Getting a permit requires running a legal gauntlet of multiple agencies with overlapping requirements. We go through the day looking over our shoulders, asking ourselves, “Can I prove that what I’m about to do is legally correct?”
While Washington is happy to micromanage Americans, it is not happy to make the hard choices necessary to secure our future. With thousand-page rulebooks, it has no interest in keeping its own house in order. The “law of the land” is more like a legal junk pile. Deficits soar because Congress lacks the discipline to set priorities or abolish obsolete laws, regulations, and programs. These trillion-dollar deficits are not just bad policy but immoral. How can we justify making our children pay tomorrow for our profligacy today?
What can we do about it? Washington will never fix itself. But Trump’s election signifies that Washington's current political establishment is on its last legs.
So, where’s the new governing vision? Try Common Sense makes a powerful argument for replacing thick rulebooks with simpler, goal-oriented codes. Give people laws they can understand and give us the dignity of taking responsibility for how we do things. Hold officials accountable for whether they are practical and fair. Imagine that — elections might matter again.
But how do we get there? Here’s where the states come in. Article V of the Constitution allows two-thirds of the states call for a convention of states for the sole purpose of proposing amendments to the U.S. Constitution. It would take 38 states to ratify any resulting amendments.
We’re already one-third of the way there. I have visited over 40 states in the last three years, building support for this convention of states. Thirteen have officially endorsed it: Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Indiana, Louisiana, Missouri, Oklahoma, North Dakota, Tennessee, and Texas. Another 10 states have passed legislation in one chamber, and 17 more have active legislation in 2019. A full listing is available at conventionofstates.com.
Howard proposes a constitutional amendment to give governors the power, every 15 years, to appoint a “recodification commission” to examine and make proposals to fix federal regulatory programs. Creating simplified codes always requires drafting by a small group of experts, as the Constitution was drafted. As Howard explains: “Expert committees designed the Justinian Code in the sixth century, the Napoleonic Code in the nineteenth century, the German Code at the turn of the twentieth century, and the Uniform Commercial Code in the 1950s. These were all transformative legal reforms. Congress uses the model of independent commissions to make the politically difficult choices of which defense bases to close down.”
Creating simple codes is a lot easier than trying to micromanage every daily choice. The Napoleonic Code took four judges only five months to draft. I was a member of the Simpson-Bowles Commission for balancing the budget, which took seven months. However, Congress refused even to consider its recommendations.
Congress would have the ultimate say on enacting the proposals. But a constitutionally required commission would put idiotic programs under harsh lights, and Congress couldn’t evade responsibility by hiding behind the complex legal mess it has created. The independent commission would set the agenda and terms of the debate. If Congress didn’t approve new, simple programs, we would at least know who to throw out.
Washington isn’t working for the American people anymore. Washington doesn’t care what we think, or what we need. It doesn’t care that it tangles us up in unnecessary red tape. It won’t fix itself. So let’s join together in a convention of states and fix it ourselves.
Want to get involved? Sign the Convention of States Petition below!
