Coburn: Article V Convention to strangle D.C. debt monster

By Joe Wilson

As the U.S. national debt climbs ever closer to $20 trillion, many Americans are wondering if there is any way to curb federal spending. One former senator has a plan.

"Ask yourself why we're not fixing Social Security. Why are we not fixing Medicare's unfunded liabilities? Why do we continue to have $400 billion in waste, fraud, and duplication every year, or $145 billion in improper payment?" asked former Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., in a recent interview on MSNBC's "Morning Joe."

According to Coburn, millennials will be the ones hit hardest by the out-of-control deficit accumulated in the United States.

"The average millennial is going to have to pay back $1.7 million over the next 50 years," he stated. "That's over thirty thousand bucks a year, and they already have a declining median income. People don't know how much a billion is. If you make $40,000 a year, you have to work 25 years to make a million dollars. To make a billion, you have to work 25,000 years. Now we know what a billion is . . . and that's just pocket change to career politicians."

Coburn posited that the problem is that a class of career politicians have sprung up in Washington, taking power for themselves that the founders never intended for them to have.

"I left Washington because I didn't see we could fix it there, and our founders gave us this opportunity for state legislatures to re-exert their authority to restore the Constitution to its original intent," said Coburn. “How do we muzzle the alligators in the swamp? By reducing their authority back to what it was originally intended to be.”

Sen. Coburn proposes to do this by using one of the two methods of amending the U.S. Constitution laid out in Article V of that document -- the Convention of States. Coburn made an argument for a convention in his newest book, "Smashing the DC Monopoly: Using Article V to Restore Freedom and Stop America's Runaway Government."

For an Article V Convention to occur, two-thirds of the state legislatures must pass an application for Congress to call one. Twelve states out of the 34 necessary have submitted such an application. All the state applications must deal with the same topics, and the 12 currently submitted call for amendments limiting the scope of the federal government, imposing a balanced budget on Congress, and giving term limits to Washington politicians.

"We can actually rebalance more power back to the people," Coburn stated concerning these applications. "Bringing the power back to where the people actually have an input in it will actually solve some of the problems that are facing our country."

At an Article V Convention, states would send delegates chosen however they saw fit, who would discuss the issues laid out in the submitted applications. Proposed amendments would go back to the state legislatures for ratification, and they would not become part of the Constitution until three-fourths of the states had ratified them.

"What Americans want is problems solved, and they don't want to hear why you can't, they want to see it done," said Coburn. "Here's a solution that’s as big as the problems we have."

Coburn claims that 85 percent of the American people across the political spectrum support a balanced budget amendment, and believes that bringing the states together in an Article V Convention would bring the power closer to the people of each state, who have more ready access to members of their state legislatures than those in Washington, D.C.

Are you tired of D.C. elitists looking out only for their own interests? The federal government will never willingly relinquish the powers it has usurped – it's up to We the People to wrest control from an overreaching federal leviathan and give it back to our state and local representatives where it belongs. Retired U.S. Sen. Tom Coburn reveals how we can do that in "Smashing the DC Monopoly: Using Article V to Restore Freedom and Stop America's Runaway Government," available now at the WND Superstore.