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The Liberty Amendments
In our discussion of the merits of a Convention of States, HVTs notes that Mark Levin’s book, The Liberty Amendments, was released eight days after the Convention of States Project’s website went live in August 2013. “Levin and our group,” he writes, “were travelling on parallel tracks that have since merged.”
These are the amendments Levin proposes:
- Establish twelve-year term limits for members of Congress and the Supreme Court;
- Repeal the 17th Amendment;
- Allow either Congress or the states to overturn a Supreme Court decision within 24 months with a three fifths vote of the members of both houses or the states;
- Require a federal budget to be enacted by May or impose an automatic across-the-board 5 percent cut, and the budget may not exceed total tax receipts or 17.5 percent of GDP;
- Place a 15 percent limit on the amount of income taxes collected from natural and legal persons, change the tax-return filing date to the day before federal elections, and ban federal estate, value-added, or sales taxes;
- Require every federal agency to be reauthorized every three years in a stand-alone bill or else expire, and require a seven-member House committee to approve all regulations with an economic burden greater than $100 million within six months or cancel implementation of the regulation;
- Limit the Commerce Clause to preventing states from impeding commerce and trade between the states, and specify that it does not extend to activity within states (whether or not it affects interstate commerce) or to compelling an individual to participate in commerce;
- Extend the protection against seizure of private property to require compensation for regulations that reduce market value or interfere with the use of property in an amount exceeding $10,000;
- Change Article V so that any constitutional amendment, proposed by anyone, will be adopted if it is ratified by two thirds of the states;
- Require a 30-day waiting period between agreement upon the final version of any congressional bill (engrossment) and the final vote to approve it, and allow three fifths of the states to override any federal statute or any federal regulation with a cost exceeding $100 million within 24 months of passage or approval;
- and Require valid photo ID and proof of citizenship to register and vote in all federal elections, in person or by mail, and limit early voting to 30 days before the election (except for active-duty military personnel).
For those who don’t have the book, Jeffrey Lord offers a clear summary of the rationale behind the proposals.
Do you agree that separately or together these amendments might be the right recipe for curbing the runaway power of the federal government and restoring the role of the states?
Do you agree that–perhaps–such a plan could forestall our future as toast?
If not, why not?
Would you add others?
Published in General
These changes must be made if the United States is to survive in any recognizable form.
Claire, thanks for the post, most of the items sound worthy of consideration. Numbers 2, 5 and 10 would be on the top of my list and I would add one similar to what the just passed in Canada that requires sun setting old and out of date regulations when a new one is passed.
The book is sitting on my shelf unread, your summary has encouraged me to final read it to better understand the reason why Mr. Levin has put forward each item.
Interestingly, most seem to be defining the constitution in the way it was seen and accepted by the Founding Generation. People of the time simply couldn’t believe, I don’t think, that politicians would SO redefine obvious statements in the constitution to subvert its meaning.
The only one I would take some issue with would be #9. It is not clear that opening the constitution to the California “proposition” system would be a good thing.
The signature value of Levin’s proposal is NOT the amendments per se but rather the Article V convention at which these amendments … or others … Could be proposed. I have heard Levin speak on several occasions and he is always careful to point out that these are only his personal recommendations. They are intended to be the jumping off point for the discussion, not the end point of it. So whether you like all or some or none of them, it should not lessen the importance of an Article V convention.
This is a mixed bag for me, sorry.
1. Term limits is a double-edged sword, ousting heroes like Antonin Scalia along with Harry Reid. Draw.
2. Appointng my Senators in Sacramento would shift influence from Washington to Sacramento. A winner, but not huge.
3. A 2/3 vote for overturning court decisions could be used in a tyrannical way just as easily. Draw.
4. Budgets are an important tool for bringing government out of control, and capping the size of government is a dream. But dreams are not reality. Once the Democrats finish explaining the necessary cuts to Medicare and Social Security, President Warren can get to work redistributing your wealth. We need to get the voters to want their government to spend less, not force spending cuts on a population perfectly comfortable with a generous welfare state. A loser, because it will never be enacted and cost elections.
Wish I had more time, but must generate more income for the State.
Disagree with #2, because it merely turns state elections into federal elections as candidates for state government campaign on who they’d vote to send to the US Senate rather than campaigning on state issues (or even their own competence to hold office).
I’m all in favor of anything that helps bring power to the state level and decreases the demagoguing of federal issues. However I’m going to have to disagree that a) we’re toast, and b) something must be done in order to forestall this horrendous future. All the amendments in the world won’t mean squat unless the people believe in them. You can’t impose a culture or beliefs on other people. We have to take the imperfect clay of humanity that already exists in our country and figure out how to work out a modus vivendi.
I’m surprised how much people thing 1.) and 2.) would make any appreciable difference.
3.) sounds like a terrible idea. Supreme court decisions are right more often than they are not, and when they’re not right they have less influence on our day-to-day lives than people first attribute to them.
4.) wouldn’t fix much and might make things worse. Government spending is the problem, not deficits. The deficit only matter in how much spending goes to paying the interest. Government spending displaces private spending. It’s worse than taxes in a way. It’s not apparent it would actually reduce spending.
5.) is a pipe dream. There’s a reason the government is the way it is, voters almost always get what they want. We have a median voter government. That’s the real reason the government isn’t more conservative and why most of these wouldn’t be enacted. People don’t want them.
6.) This is my favorite one. I’d love to see it happen.
7.) Second favorite!
8.) Sure… who’s for government confiscation? Taxes are a form of private property seizure, can the $10,000 rule apply to taxes, too?
The rest are kind of obscure, 12.) is like the first two in that people think ID would do measurable things to change government outcomes. It wouldn’t.
The Supreme Court should be abolished.
I confess that’s a bit extreme for me. Then again, you think Texas should secede, so that would make sense.
The only changes needed are to repeal the 16th and 17th amendments. This is simple in practice, but game changing in terms of the consequences.
Getting rid of the income tax (and not replacing the revenue) would remove the Federal government’s ability to meddle in areas it is not supposed to as it won’t have the money. The Federal government would have to prioritize, mostly back to defense.
Getting rid of the 17th amendment would make the Federal government more responsive to the States.
These two actions would flip the balance of power back to the States. From there the States can evolve as they wish.
I admire Mark Levin, and my husband admires him so much that he’d help him run for president if he could.
Mark was very negative about President Bush after a while, so I stopped listening. He’s not entirely wrong about GW, but he’s not right either. (How can that be, she asked?)
When Romney was running for president, he remarked to someone that he was really shocked that the president doesn’t have a line-item-veto power for the federal budget. “Good grief, I had that in Massachusetts!” That change would be helpful.
We also have a tax-increase cap of 2.5 percent on local taxes, which has been a godsend here in Massachusetts.
Mark Levin and I see a different cure here for the out-of-control, too-big federal government. I say, “States’ Rights.”
I think we need to and will burst apart here. The feds shouldn’t be doing anything except national defense.
The really funny thing to me about life is that the founding fathers were the original diversity guys. There is strength in the diversity of fifty separate sovereign states.
The line-item veto seems awesome at first blush, but the problem is that it further hamstrings any incentive for the executive to defer to the Congress, as well as killing any last vestiges of negotiating and horse-trading in that august body. If we ever want to step back from hyperpartisanship, then we can’t have a line-item veto.
Nice try, Ms. Berlinski, but I am not going to spend a second day debating hypothetical amendments to the U.S. Constitution while you enjoy the Paris nightlife.
If Massachusetts is any evidence to the contrary, trust me, our budget deliberations are long and arduous! :)
And GW had a wonderful attitude about budgets. One of my all-time-favorite GW remarks: They can authorize it, but I don’t have to spend it! :)
But I agree with your point: the Democrats can get around anything. Politics is what they do all day long. You can slow them down, but you can’t stop them.
Reagan captivated a nation with his humor. His speeches moved effortlessly from the tiny specific to the overarching principle.
I wish the next Republican candidate would do the same with the rich supply of humor bits available in the three thousand federal regulations that are passed every year.
I don’t think the federal government can be made workable.
The issue for me is civic engagement and personal responsibility.
I can’t get involved with the federal government. It is simply too far away for me. I can barely get involved with Boston. I do stay involved with my town.
It bugs me that I’m responsible for some of these executive agencies like the EPA that I have absolutely no control over.
That’s why I’m a states’ rights fanatic.
I am responsible, and I want and need to exert some influence. Some control.
I’m very glad that the line-item veto seems to be working well in Massachussetts. However, I’m still not convinced that it would scale up well, especially given the cut-throat, zero sum, winner-take-all nature of politics in DC at the moment, and double-especially given the fact that we already have huge trouble passing budgets at all at the federal level.
Here’s something I would like to see:
Forbid the executive branch from issuing any legally binding standards or regulations, outside of limited areas such as the military and internal agency rules. Every rule-making body must report to Congress. Congress would be forbidden from delegating its power to another branch.
For example, OSHA would retain its enforcement and advisory functions. However, all OSHA standards would be developed by the Congressional Occupational Safety Board – all of whom are congressional appointees. That means you would still have subject matter experts making decisions, but that they would be responsible to the lawmaker we have elected.
No more of the police writing the laws they enforce.
#5 has little to do with economic efficiency and funding the government and more to do with conservative talking points. A more efficient way to fund the government would be to eliminate income taxes across the board and impose a national sales tax.
Also why would you allow a tax on legal persons? Taxing corporations is just another way to impose sales and investment taxes that is inefficient. All costs are born by the consumer and the shareholders.
Mark might be a decent lawyer but he’s not a great economist.
I do not like them other than repeal of the 17th. If we cannot follow what we have now, these won’t help.
Line item veto is unconstitutional. It essentially gives the executive the powers of the legislature.
What is the point of these amendments since nearly all have no chance of passing? Typical talk show fare, living in an imaginary land. Maybe we need term limits on talk show hosts?
These ideas are mostly great, but I fear repealing the 17th amendment would not limit spending in any way. The states would appoint senators who send fountains of money to their state. Requiring Congress to approve all regulations with fiscal impact of 100m or more is a special favorite of mine.
Don’t know what your fantasy of Paris nightlife is all about, but someone of my age, on my budget, and of my temperament finds a night of thinking about how Article V could be used to amend the US constitution–and learning more about it on Ricochet–about a thousand times more appealing than the usual evening pursuits on offer.
True fact, though: The last time I went out for a drink with a friend here, we argued until about 9:00 pm–we’re middle-aged, so that’s pretty heated–about his five-point plan to amend the French constitution. (He’s got some good ideas, actually. He won me around on most of them.)
It’s a good start. Better than hoping one of our GOP prospects will do anything significant.
Paris has nightlife? I’d rather be in almost any American city when it comes to nightlife than in Paris.
Talk show hosts are term limited by market forces. I don’t think Mark Levin is in any danger! {:-)
The point is that citizens like us have to take responsibility for making the difference between “nearly all” and zero a positive whole number. If not by this amendment process, what are we going to do to get out of the mess we are in . . . a mess which only worsens day after Mother Loving day?
…
To your point i’ll retort…
While i do share in at least a slice of your skepticism, allow me to attempt an amelioration.
The difference now; I suppose, would be a matter of temporal proximity.
After reading through the Federalist and Anti-Federalist recently, I am confounded by how far our vernacular and understanding have traveled in a mere century or two. The foggy air, and the murky water of passed time shrouds the candle of wisdom and understanding from full view. The fog is not as thick; The water not as clouded, if the marker was set down yesterday.
Compounding this sentiment, is that the Congress, Executive, and Supreme Court are changing The Constitution today, De Facto !
Middle-aged is the new 30 (he said, hopefully). You’ve provided fresh reason to fancy Paris . . . 30-somethings burning with passion for Article V talk! Next up? Fifty Shades of Commerce Clause!