The Convention of States organization is focused on limiting terms for federal officials, addressing the burgeoning federal deficit, and reining in the leviathan bureaucracy wherein unelected civil servants make lasting, damaging policies.
It is important to limit the terms of those who have been elected to represent us, since a quasi-oligarchy has emerged, based on political privilege. The political class is supported and propagated by wealthy corporations in finance, banking, and technology.
In the process, the American electorate has been deceived and abused.
A closer examination exposes a compelling connection between the goals of Convention of States and the effects of the Seventeenth Amendment.
The Constitution reflected the Founders’ belief in the sovereignty of the individual states and their apprehensions of a strong centralized government. This belief prompted them to established a bicameral legislature with one chamber being selected by popular vote and the other chamber to be appointed by the individual state legislatures (Article I, §3, Clauses 1 and 2).
The Seventeenth Amendment nullified this process.
Progressives have always touted their desire to bring about social change and an atmosphere in which all citizens felt a more equitable participation in their government. Progressives were instrumental in promoting the Sixteenth (individual income taxes), Seventeenth (direct elections of Senators), Eighteenth (alcohol prohibition), and Nineteenth (women’s right to vote) Amendments.
In the latter part of the 1800s, progressives began to press their ideology, and the four amendments above are fruits of their labors. Three remain, but the Eighteenth Amendment was met with widespread anger and antipathy, which resulted in its repeal 14 years later with the Twenty-First Amendment.
The Seventeenth Amendment may have had as its aim the elimination of any corruption within state legislatures, but the effect has been the creation of a larger centralized government with less accountability to interests of the states.
As U.S. Senators became loyal to the centralized government, it began to assume more and more authority. Without any effective procedure for checks and balances between the states and the centralized government, an oppressive and overwhelming bureaucracy has emerged.
Its authority is not overseen by any serious legislative efforts, because the states essentially have no voice in challenging the mandates of a centralized bureaucracy. This is undoubtedly and perhaps the most damaging effect of the Seventeenth Amendment.
The Ninth and Tenth Amendments have been routinely violated with the establishment of the Seventeenth Amendment. Since the ratification of the Seventeenth Amendment, the Departments of Education, Energy, Health and Human Services, Homeland Security, Housing and Urban Development, and Transportation have been added.
In the first 126 years of American history there were seven departments established, five of which were common sense departments, i.e. State, Justice, Interior, Treasury, and Agriculture. In the 76 years since the Seventeenth Amendment was ratified, there have been six more bureaucratic departments created.
With the laissez-faire attitude of most legislators, these departments have been running America for the past half-century or more without serious oversight or direction.
Term limitations will help reel in legislators and their largesse. However, with little or no accountability back to the individual states, they will continue to see their allegiance to the centralized government rather than to their individual states.
Amendment ideas that could restore the voice of the states in the federal government include a super-majority override of federal statutes, court decisions, or regulations. Another idea would give state legislators the ability to overturn a vote by their state's U.S. Senators.
