The Independent View: Senator Tom Coburn Joins the Convention of States Project

I always believed in a self-imposed term limits of elected officials. But if they refused to leave, it is time to change our constitution.

Senator Tom Coburn, the 65-year-old Oklahoma Republican, is exiting the Senate at the end of this year. First elected to the upper chamber in 2004, he had always said he would serve only two terms there.

"It's time for me to go do something else," Coburn said. "I know me. I've made lots of shifts in my life, and I know when it's time. My faith comes into that. I pay a lot of attention to what I think I'm supposed to be doing. ... And it's just time for me to do something else. So I'm getting ready to walk through whatever door opens."

He has decided to lend his support to a growing effort in state legislatures across the country to call a convention to amend the Constitution with the aim of limiting the size and reach of the federal government.

"I'm going to be involved with the Convention of States. I'm going to try to motivate so that that happens. I think that's the only answer," Coburn said. "I'm just going to go around and talk about why it's needed, and try to convince state legislatures to do it."

The Georgia state Senate on Tuesday became the latest legislative chamber to vote to call for a national convention. Similar efforts are underway in Alabama, Alaska, Florida, Georgia, Virginia, Wisconsin, and a few other states. Mark Meckler, a former leader of the Tea Party Patriots and founder of Citizens for Self-Governance, the group behind the Convention of States Project, said that he expects 10 to 15 states to make "a serious effort" to pass similar legislation this year. At least two GOP governors who could be 2016 presidential hopefuls, Louisiana's Bobby Jindal and Ohio's John Kasich, have said they support the idea.

Under Article V of the Constitution, if two-thirds of state legislatures -- or 34 states -- call for it, Congress shall convene a national convention, to which the legislatures will send delegates. The convention may propose constitutional amendments, which will then need to be approved by three fourths of the states -- 38 in all -- through votes either in the legislature or at a state convention.

In recent years, state legislatures have passed measures supporting the idea of a constitutional amendment requiring the federal government to balance its budget, and Kasich in Ohio has actively backed such a move. But the effort mentioned by Coburn is organized not around a specific amendment, but rather a specific subject: "limiting the power and jurisdiction of the federal government."

It is an idea proposed recently by conservative radio talk show host Mark Levin and since picked up by former Fox News personality Glenn Beck. Around 100 state lawmakers from a reported 32 states met last November to discuss the idea.

Coburn's decision to make this a cause of his own is a symbolic shift. He has long railed against the institutional corruption of Washington, arguing that careerism in Congress and self-protection by lawmakers of both parties make the nation's capital immune to pursuing real reform and to making the tough choices and difficult compromises necessary to get results.

His decision to leave Congress now and to focus his energies on the national convention idea is a loud statement that he doesn't believe Washington can be changed from the inside.

"Washington isn't going to fix itself," Coburn said. "We need a balanced budget amendment, we need term limits, we need the oversight capability to limit the bureaucracy in terms of its impact on the private sector. ... We need to have that discussion. And I want to tell you, the country's tuned for it."

“I think [George] Mason was prophetic that we would devolve to where the federal government became too powerful, too big and too unwieldy. That’s why he put Article V in,” Coburn said.

With Congress these days hard-pressed to cobble together the consensus necessary to perform even the most basic functions of government — such as keeping it funded — a convention of the states is looking more attractive to Coburn.

“If the convention is set up in a partisan way, you can be certain that whatever the convention does will fail because it takes 38 states to ratify any amendment,” said Lawrence Lessig, a professor at Harvard Law School and a self-described Democrat who supports holding a convention to reform the Constitution.

“The legitimate constitutional questions that are being put on the table are questions about the balanced budget, the size of government … as well as the integrity of the electoral process, that’s the stuff the people on the left are talking about,” he said.

Unlike a constitutional convention, which would attempt to rewrite the Constitution entirely, an Article V convention would be more limited in scope and would focus on amending the document.

Coburn has been in contact with Michael Farris, the chancellor of Patrick Henry College, and Mark Meckler, the president of Citizens for Self-Governance, who are leading a push for a convention of the states.

Farris said his goal is for 20 more state legislatures to adopt the proposal in 2015 and the remaining dozen or so to endorse it in 2016. He wants to hold the convention in 2016 before the presidential election.

While states cannot dictate the precise language of the amendments at the convention, Farris said they can set the scope of the debate.

“By 2020, 89 percent of the federal budget will be consumed by interest on the national debt, Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security. That’s unsustainable,” Farris added. “Getting fiscal restraints on the federal government in the areas of taxing, spending and debt; it’s essential for the survival of the country.”