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After concluding Washington is incapable of solving some of America’s biggest problems over his 16 years in Congress, former Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., says a constitutionally provided convention of the states is the only realistic remedy to what ails us.

Article V of the Constitution allows for amendments through a convention of two-thirds of the states proposing changes that would then need to be ratified by three-quarters of the states. Currently, 34 states would need to get on board to force Congress to call a convention and 38 states would need to approve any proposed amendments.

“Before our constitutional convention, everything was decided through a convention like this,” said Coburn, who points out George Mason insisted on the inclusion of the convention of the states option after pointing out no government in history has ever given back power to the people.

Coburn further explained the process.

“You have to an application that aggregates (among the states). You have to have the same application everywhere. You can’t have one application for a balanced budget and one application for something else. You have to have 34 that say the same thing,” said Coburn.

The current push for a convention of the states calls for three amendments: one to balance the budget, one to rein in the reach of the federal government , and one to limit the length of terms in the House and Senate.

Coburn says a balanced budget amendment is desperately needed.

“We think the federal government ought to be fiscally responsible. They ought to have to live under the same accounting guidelines everybody else does and they ought to have to live within their means,” said Coburn. “That’s a balanced budget amendment but it also means you can’t just go and add mandates to the states to balance the budget. You have to make hard choices.”

Congress came within one vote of approving a balanced budget amendment in 1995, just months after Republicans won control of both chambers. The plan passed the House 300-132, but the 65-35 tally in the Senate was just shy of sending the amendment to the states.

The vote was really 66-34, but when it was clear the measure would fail then-Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole, changed his vote to no so he would be eligible under Senate rules to reconsider the issue. A subsequent vote also failed.

Since 1995, no balanced budget proposal has come anywhere close to passing, and Coburn says that should come as no surprise.

“They don’t want to balance the budget, because then they have to make hard choices, then they have to be accountable to their electorate. If the electorate doesn’t like the choices that they made, they’ll replace them. It’s an insurance policy if I don’t have to have a balanced budget,” said Coburn.

“The easiest thing in the world is to spend somebody else’s money and that’s what they do every day. They spend our grandchildren’s money because we’re certainly not spending our own right now,” said Coburn.

Next on the amendment list is to “limit the scope and jurisdiction of the federal government.” Coburn says a ridiculous case from 1942 effectively gave the federal government to meddle far too intimately in our lives.

“An Ohio wheat farmer grew 18 acres more wheat than he was allotted, but he used every bit of it to feed his own cattle, his own family and used it for feed the next year. The federal government said that’s interstate commerce because you didn’t buy that 18 acres worth of wheat from somewhere else,” said Coburn.

“So they expanded the commerce clause and that is what has allowed the federal government to tell every state – in everything they do now – what to do,” said Coburn.

Coburn says returning power to state and local authorities also heightens accountability, pointing out it is much easier to get an appointment with your state representative than a member of the House or Senate.

Coburn cited a recent poll showing 86 percent of Americans don’t trust the federal government. He says that places America in a crisis that returning power to states and locales can help to address.

“When you quit trusting the central authority, then you will no longer follow its will. That’s called anarchy. So we have to take back our freedom. We have to re-establish the rule of law and make sure it’s followed. But also it has to have the integrity of the central government in terms of a limited federal government,” said Coburn.

The third and final amendment Coburn and his allies are pushing would limit lawmakers to 12 years in the U.S. House of Representatives and 12 years in the U.S. Senate.

“Prior to a Supreme Court ruling in 1994, 26 states had limited the terms of their members of Congress. In an Arkansas case, the Supreme Court decided that we as citizens can’t decide whether we want to limit the terms of our federal representatives. Well that’s ludicrous. So what you do is pass an amendment that puts a limit on the amount of time people can serve,” said Coburn.

Coburn says 12 states are already on board. He expects another 10-12 states to join the effort in the next 12 months and another 10-12 in the year after that, meaning a convention of states could take place within two to three years.

He is quick to stress that the convention itself cannot ratify the amendments. That role still belongs to the states. Coburn is bullish on that front as well, noting that Republicans are just 24 seats away from controlling the legislatures in 38 states.

Ultimately, Coburn believes the success or failure of this campaign will depend upon the courage to do what has to be done.

“Do we have the moral structure with which to make these hard decisions for the future or do we just let this train run out of control down the mountain? That’s the real question,” said Coburn.

“If you love your kids, you love your country, and you love your future, you ought to be about choking down the federal government and having it live within its means, lessening it’s impact on the economy so the economy can actually grow,” said Coburn.

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Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, says some of the most important names associated with the push for limited government at our nation’s founding have been shoved out of history and the effort has coincided almost perfectly with America’s push for a bigger and bigger federal government.

Lee, who was just elected to a second term in the U.S. Senate, is the author of “Written out of History: The Forgotten Founders Who Fought Big Government,” which he says is designed to give adults and children a better idea of what the vision of our founding fathers truly was. Lee says limited government isn’t some anachronistic vestige of the colonial era, but the fundamental premise of our system of government.

“It’s very important for parents to emphasize to their children at a young age that that’s the whole reason why we have a constitution is to limit the power of government. Those limits need to mean something, but they can only be meaningful if we recognize them, enforce them, and talk about them,” said Lee.

Reiterating the famous James Madison quotation that if men were angels, no government would be necessary, Lee says we do need government, but not one that smothers the people who rule over it.

“It’s important for us to remind our children that they should respect government. Government is a good thing. It is a tool for good, as long as it remains subject to the limitations brought about by elections,” said Lee, who says the book is not meant to address current partisan squabbles but return America’s focus to the point of government as envisioned by our founders.

“I’m talking in this book about advocating any particular conservative vs. liberal or Republican vs. Democratic agenda. What I’m talking about here is returning power back to the people, allowing more of the people in America to have access to more of the kind of government they want and less of the government they don’t want,” said Lee.

“That’s what our founding-era principles do and that’s what they could do for us if we were to follow them more consistently,” said Lee.

Lee says the founders are of greater interest these days, even to young people, as result of the smash Broadway musical, “Hamilton.” In addition to the performance, Lee says there is always fascination with that part of our history.

“They respond this way in part because the American people intuitively understand something about the founding generation. They understand that generation knew something about who we are as a people and that we have a lot to learn if we learn from their stories,” said Lee.

And Lee says getting American to understand the lessons from our founders, especially the less known figures, is the point of the book.

“I knew there were a whole lot of founding fathers that the American people know little or nothing about, in part because they don’t fit our modern, progressive narrative. I wanted to reintroduce the people to those stories,” said Lee.

According to Lee, that “modern, progressive narrative” has been chipping away the key figures and principles of the American founding for generations.

“We tend to remember those whose narratives fit with our world view from our day. Over the last 80 years or so, we have – within our public education system and our higher education system – seen a big push toward a centralization of power. People are taught to have a whole lot of faith a whole lot of confidence in the federal government, almost as if it were endowed with certain deity-like qualities,” said Lee.

He says it is no coincidence that the push to adjust history to fit more of a big government narrative began about the same time our own leaders were pushing for great expansion of federal powers.

“There’s nothing coincidental about it at all. The fact is that since the New Deal the American people have been asked to simply trust government, to have faith in government almost as they would in God. That narrative isn’t supportable by the facts. It’s not supportable by history,” said Lee.

As such, Lee believes his book is ideal for high school or college graduates who likely heard little to nothing about the virtues of limited government.

“These are things not likely to have been taught in any high school or college history course, for the simple reason that they conflict with this modern narrative that says that government in general is great, you don’t need to fear it as much as some people might think and the federal government in particular can be trusted,” said Lee.

In the book, Lee highlights multiple figures forgotten or marginalized by history, starting with an unlikely figure from before the American founding.

“I chose, for example, Canasatego, the Iroquois Indian chief who hardly ever gets mentioned but in many respects is the father of American federalism, this concept of vertical separation of powers that says most of the governing is supposed to take place at the state and the local level,” said Lee.

“A few powers are given to our federal government in Washington, but everything else is supposed to remain with the people. That’s the essence of the 10th amendment and the rest of the Constitution even prior to the 10th amendment,” said Lee.

Lee also focuses on Aaron Burr, whose legacy goes far deeper than killing Alexander Hamilton in a duel.

“We forget about the fact that one of America’s most revered presidents (Thomas Jefferson) actually became quite dangerous in the case of Aaron Burr, had him prosecuted based on a perceived political fit of rage and very nearly won, but the Constitution held out and Aaron Burr was found not guilty,” said Lee.

“This is a reminder to us that even a revered man like Thomas Jefferson could abuse power and tried to abuse power,” said Lee.

Lee is also struck by how similar the debates over the intrusion of government are today compared with the founding era.

“Back then they were intrusions that, prior to the revolution, were considered against the right of Englishmen as established by laws of England, using things like Writs of Assistance, whereby law enforcement personnel would kick down doors, search people’s homes just looking for anything they might want to find to use as evidence against someone,” said Lee.

“This is one of the reasons why we ended up with protections found in the 4th amendment requiring that any searches be conducted pursuant to warrants and that those warrants be substantiated by probable cause and a warrant signed by a judge,” said Lee.

Lee says he is well aware of the conditioning Americans have undergone over the past 80 years to expect and accept big government, but he believes the momentum can be reversed.

“The hardest part is getting people to think about it, to talk about it, to read about it in books, to talk about it around the dinner table. Because once you have that part done, you can quickly move and bring about real change, the kind of change that returns power to the people,” said Lee.

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Coburn Details Convention of States

‘Written Out of History’