An Idaho Senate committee on Monday narrowly rejected a resolution that would’ve called for a never-before-used method of amending the U.S. Constitution to balance the federal budget.
Debate over the issue has largely centered around whether a constitutional convention would be a runaway process that risks upending the entire U.S. Constitution. The resolution, House Concurrent Resolution 25, proposes a constitutional convention for a federal balanced budget amendment.
The Senate Judiciary and Rules Committee rejected the resolution on a 5-4 vote Monday, with three Republicans — Sens. Brandon Shippy, Dave Lent, and Josh Keyser — joining the committee’s two Democrats in opposition. The resolution narrowly passed the House on a 36-34 vote last month.
Past attempts at getting the Idaho Legislature to call for a constitutional convention failed. The Idaho Republican Party has opposed calls for the state to apply to a constitutional convention.
The U.S. Constitution has never been amended using a convention, a process outlined in the Constitution that requires applications by 34 states. Amendments proposed in a convention must be ratified by 38 states to take effect.
Idaho Republican Party chairwoman Dorothy Moon said she commended the committee for voting down the proposal.
“While we strongly support fiscal responsibility and a balanced federal budget, an Article V Convention is not the right path,” Moon said in a press release. “Our Constitution has served this nation for nearly 250 years. Opening it to a convention carries serious and unpredictable risks that could extend far beyond a single amendment.”
How the Senate committee voted on the bill
Here’s how the committee’s vote broke down:
- Senators that voted against the resolution: Republican Sens. Brandon Shippy, Dave Lent, and Josh Keyser; and Democratic Sens. Melissa Wintrow and James Ruchti.
- Senators that voted for the resolution: Republican Sens. Dan Foreman, Brian Lenney, bill cosponsor Doug Ricks, and Todd Lakey, the committee’s chairman.
Sen. Doug Ricks, a Rexburg Republican who’s cosponsoring the resolution, argues that the intent isn’t to actually call a convention – but to threaten one to pressure Congress to course correct itself.
If Idaho joined the call, Ricks said the Gem State would be the 29th state out of 34 needed to call a convention for a balanced budget.
He rebuffed arguments that the convention would be uncontrollable, arguing that the requirement that proposed amendments be ratified by three-fourths of states is a high bar.
“We have this budget, like a speeding bus, heading for the cliff. And it’s going to go off, some day. And when that does, our whole country will be in such bad financial ruin, it’ll take years; it’ll make the Great Depression look like a heyday,” Ricks told the committee. “We need to get this under control.”
Public testimony on the resolution Monday was largely negative.
Senate Minority Leader Melissa Wintrow, a Boise Democrat, said she’s not willing to risk the U.S. Constitution in today’s political climate.
“I am concerned that we can’t check power,” she said. “We have it from the highest office in our country right now that has basically had a full disregard for court decisions and continues to press on, and a Congress who isn’t holding them accountable”
But Sen. Todd Lakey, a Nampa Republican who chairs the committee, said he’d been following the issue for a decade, and that he believed the nation’s founding fathers created the process in the Constitution for a reason.
“I think they did see our day — when the federal government cannot control itself,” Lakey said.
In a 2012 report, the Congressional Research Service wrote that a convention of the states “is one of few provisions of the Constitution that has never been implemented,” and the process “presents many questions for Congress.”
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, a former Republican presidential candidate, visited Idaho this year and last year to push the Gem State to join the call.
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