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Arizona Bills Urging US Congress To Call Article V Convention

Published: Tuesday, February 28, 2017 - 3:12pm
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There are a number of bills in the Arizona Legislature right now urging Congress to call an Article V Convention to propose amendments to the U.S. Constitution. House Speaker JD Mesnard is the sponsor of one of them.

"It’s a tool that we haven’t really utilized, but in this day and age, with rising debt, I think that it’s time for us to flex those muscles, those state-oriented muscles, as the founding fathers intended," Mesnard said. "You can entertain a lot of fears about what could happen and whatnot, but there are, at the end of the day, checks in the system."

Mesnard’s measure calls for a federal balanced budget amendment, although some of the other versions also call for federal term limits and limits on federal power, among other proposals.

Thirty-four states need to pass resolutions asking Congress to call the convention. Previous measures in Arizona have failed, but there appears to be a renewed momentum this year.

To talk about a potential Article V Convention is David Super, a law professor at Georgetown who has written extensively about this.

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