Trials of Constitutional amendments

It's probably at least a one-in-a-thousand long-shot, but Sen. Max Baucus has just introduced a proposal to amend the U.S. Constitution. The senator's amendment, in response to a recent Supreme Court decision allowing corporations to spend without limit in political campaigns, would grant Congress direct authority to regulate political contributions.

"We Montanans learned our lesson almost a century ago when the copper kings leveraged their corporate power to effectively buy elections," Baucus said on the Senate floor as he offered his amendment. "This is about standing up for the rights of regular folks."

Only 27 amendments have been successfully ratified in the constitution's 221 year history. But that doesn't keep members of Congress from trying. It's not unusual for hundreds of amendment proposals to be introduced in a single session of Congress. The same week that Baucus proposed his amendment, South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham announced he is preparing one to eliminate the constitutional protection for "anchor babies."

Graham is proposing to modify the 14th Amendment so it will no longer automatically confer citizenship on babies born in the United States whose parents aren't citizens.

Both Baucus and Graham can make a case for their proposals, but the odds against them are overwhelming.

To be successful, amendments must pass both houses of Congress with two-thirds majorities, and then be ratified by legislatures of three-fourths of the states. The only amendment to complete this process in modern times was the 26th Amendment to lower the voting age to 18. That passed under the leadership of Montana Sen. Mike Mansfield 39 years ago, at the height of the Vietnam War. The Montana state legislature ratified it a week after it cleared Congress, and the 38th state giving it the necessary three-fourths majority of the states, approved it seven months later.

What would have been the 27th Amendment was the Equal Rights Amendment, barring discrimination based on gender. In 1972 it also won its way through Congress under the leadership of Mansfield.

But in controversial actions, Congress stipulated that the "ERA" must be ratified within a seven year period, later extended to ten years. A sharply divided Montana legislature was the 31st to ratify, but the number of states stalled three short at 35 when the decade-long time limit expired.

Ironically, what became the 27th Amendment, the last added to the Constitution, was submitted to the states without time limitation in 1789, and was finally ratified in 1992, more than two centuries later.

The 27th Amendment makes it unconstitutional for members of Congress to raise their salaries during their current term in office.

Certainly our U.S. Constitution is one of the greatest documents ever created. Its checks and balances are importantly there to prevent a tyrannical concentration of power. But they may also prevent actions that need to be taken. Just the checks on the amendment process are daunting.

While the national debt has spiraled to $13 trillion, the amendment to require Congress to balance the national budget has been suffocating under the two-thirds requirement since 1997.

The Montana State Constitution is far different. Proposed amendments to it can come from the legislature, or from the people through a relatively low threshold of signatures. Unique among the constitutions of the 50 states, ours even contains a provision to allow the people of the state to vote, every 20 years, on whether to convene a new constitutional convention . In fact, we will have the opportunity to do so this November when we cast our votes on CC-2 on the general election ballot.

Brown is a former Montana secretary of state and past president of the state senate.