Convention of States: Good or Bad?

[Benton]

I doubt it would have much impact.

As I understand it, if a Convention was called, it must be called for a specific purpose (for arguments sake, let's say term limits for Congress). If enough states call for it, then Congress has to recognize the meeting, and then all states get to supply representatives, which are chosen by state Senates.

So, basically, you would have federal level members of state government calling for a meeting where a state level representative of state government would come forward.

I don't think it would do much of anything because, normally, your Congress members are representative of their fellow lawmakers back home who are representative of their voters. As many flaws as there are in the system, it — for the most part — really is representative government.

Take the Kansas Experiment. It wasn't like voters didn't know that's what they were voting for. Cut taxes to the point where everyone has such a mountain of cash, they have to spend it because you can only use so many $100 bills to light cigars before you get bored. So they cut and they cut and they cut. And then they cut more, and said it wasn't working because Obama. And when services nearly stopped, they cut a little more.

Why did lawmakers keep getting sent back after it was pretty obvious the state was going off the rails? It wasn't some conspiracy or fake news. Voters sent them back to make more cuts because voters believed you could still have a functional state with 0% income tax and some industries paying little to no tax. They were morons. And when they realized they made a mistake, their representatives (some of which were new), repealed about $1 billion in tax cuts.