Former U.S. Senator calls for Convention of States to limit federal power

Tom Coburn, the former Republican U.S. Senator from Oklahoma, is ready to call for a Convention of States (COS) to limit the power and jurisdiction of the federal government.

Coburn addressed the COS plan at the Feb. 3 First Friday Breakfast presented by the Fort Smith Regional Chamber of Commerce. It is Coburn’s second time in recent months to be in Arkansas pushing his message. He spoke to a group in Little Rock on Nov. 1.

As part of the keynote, Coburn identified four components on which the COS should focus: bolstering the rule of law; building a “virtuous and educated citizenry”; creating economic freedom; and limiting the say the federal government has in the lives and finances of American citizens.

To highlight the point the federal government has become too bloated, Coburn observed while the original Constitution could fit in his pocket, “the annotated Constitution weighs 77 pounds.”

“All republics before us have died. They’re gone. And they died for the same reasons,” Coburn said, adding that it was because they lost sight of the four qualities.

THE RULE OF LAW
On the rule of law, Coburn lashed the coastlines for their assessment of citizens in the southern and middle United States.

“When you think about the border and illegal immigration, what people in the northeast and the far west coast think about people in the south and the mid-central states, is that we’re racist, and they don’t connect the fact that when you don’t enforce the laws of your country, other people see that and say, ‘Well if we’re not going to enforce that one, then this one doesn’t apply to me.’”

Coburn called it the “unwinding” of the rule of law, and said it is “one of the things that actually destroys a republic faster than debt.” Specifically, Coburn called out the lack of enforcement of immigration laws and the violent protests over controversial speaker Milo Yiannopoulos at UC-Berkeley earlier this week, labeling the latter as “anarchy.”

“Those are symptoms and signs of people who don’t care about the law,” Coburn said. “Our freedom is only there as long as we allow other people to have freedom, and we don’t impinge on that freedom.”

EDUCATED AND VIRTUOUS CITIZENRY, ECONOMIC FREEDOM
Citing Pew statistics, Coburn pointed out 69% of the 85 million Millennials in the U.S. (approximate ages of 18-38) “don’t trust the federal government” and that only “4% know the three branches of the federal government.”

“They don’t have any idea of how our government works. They have no knowledge of it,” Coburn explained, then setting his sights on the failures of the education system.

“We’ve spent $3 trillion since 1978 through the Department of Education with not one parameter improved in our country and many much worse. Maybe we don’t have as educated and virtuous of a republic as we need to have,” he said.

On economic freedom, Coburn lamented the U.S. is no longer the world leader, instead falling in rank to the No. 16 nation for starting a business and creating wealth, which should be “a tremendous warning sign to us that we’re way off course if we want our kids to have a future.”

LIMITED GOVERNMENT
In the final point of his keynote, Coburn informed the audience 60% of every dollar sent to Little Rock was “controlled by a bureaucrat in Washington.”

He continued: “Your elected representatives, who were envisioned by founders to actually make the decisions because they’re closest to you, only control 40% of your government, and that was never intended.”

Coburn said while most recognize the country is “at risk” and that he’s “hopeful” of the new administration, “I’m scared to death.”

“We’re on the edge throughout the world,” he said. “When someone can’t apologize and say, ‘I’m wrong,’ that, to me, is the sign of a personality disorder and that scares me because leadership consists of listening a whole lot more than it does talking, and I’m not seeing that in Washington, and I haven’t seen it.”

Coburn said it is the goal of the COS to engage in further limiting the power of government by calling out “monkey business” when it sees it, citing 2016 statistics that placed the annual deficit at $584 billion even as the national debt rose $1.6 trillion. “Now any accountant knows something’s wrong if that’s happened,” he said, adding that over the same period of time unfunded liabilities rose $7 trillion.

“The unfunded liabilities of the U.S. today are $144 trillion, and it’s going to be our kids — the Millennial generation — paying for it.”

Following that number to its admittedly “dark” conclusion, Coburn said, funding the liabilities would require each Millennial to pay $1.8 million, “and the average net worth of a Millennial today is minus $7,000. It doesn’t work.”

Even so, Coburn believes it is possible to turn things around but it will require states to work through Article V of the Constitution. According to the Convention of States website, the strategy — led by Citizens for Self-Governance (CSG) — would urge state legislatures “to properly use Article V to call a convention for a particular subject — reducing the power of Washington, D.C.”

The site continued: “It is important to note that a convention for an individual amendment (e.g. a Balanced Budget Amendment) would be limited to that single idea. Requiring a balanced budget is a great idea that CSG fully supports. Congress, however, could comply with a Balanced Budget Amendment by simply raising taxes. We need spending restraints as well. We need restraints on taxation. We need prohibitions against improper federal regulation. We need to stop unfunded mandates.”

Article V requires 34 states pass resolutions to call a convention of states on the same subject before the meeting can be called. CSG is working with state legislators nationally to call a convention for the specific subject of limiting federal government power and jurisdiction, and is in the process of building a political operation in at least 40 states, “recruiting 100 citizens who are ready to contact their state legislators in at least 75% of the state legislative districts.”