Dear Editor,
As you probably know, the Convention of States is a movement that would try to force the U.S. Congress to adopt amendments to the Constitution to be submitted to the States assembled in conventions or to the Legislatures of the States. It’s authority is found in Article V of that document. I recommend that you reread Article V carefully for yourself in order to fact check what has been said previously on this topic or in this submission.
Let’s get a few things out of the way here. As I said on the House floor in debate over HJ 5, I am not afraid of the process, which is, after all, constitutional. If you have read Article V you would know that. The stated goals of HJ 5 were to recommend a balanced budget amendment, and to recommend term limits for members of the U.S. Congress. On the surface these sound like great ideas and in principle, I agree with the balanced budget idea.
The difficulty lies in the fact that without question the balanced budget amendment will contain an escape clause. All Congress will have to do is to declare some emergency to escape compliance. If you doubt this, just remember that a similar mechanism already exists but the Congress circumvents it, almost every time.
It isn’t my business who other voters vote for. Term limits sound reasonable on paper. But if Ron Paul were my Representative, I would vote for him until he decided to stop running for office. No one should be able to take that choice away from me for some undefined and unknown benefit.
As I said on the House floor, if the stated goals of the convention were to overturn the 16th and 17th Amendments, I would likely have voted for the resolution.
Lost in a previous condemnation on the pages of this paper was the fact that I did vote to approve commissioners to a convention should a Convention of States happen. In the condemnation that appeared in this paper dated April 18, 2025, it was suggested that a group of named Republicans, myself included, somehow “broke their promise to represent us when they decided to follow the Democratic Party.”
I don’t know if the author of that condemnation is a constituent of mine. He didn’t say. Nor did I hear any communication from him. I didn’t make any promises regarding the Convention of States to anyone except to say that I had reflected on the idea for quite some time and that I would make a decision based on a deep analysis of the issue. I did that.
Does the author of that condemnation really believe the named House members are somehow not Conservative? The list includes 15 of the most fiscally and socially conservative Republicans in the entire Legislature and I am proud to be included there. Again, should you doubt my conservative credentials, I sponsored HB 316-the Personhood Amendment, HB 439- the Sheriff’s First Initiative, and HB 723-the Infants Born Alive bill.
I recommend that the author of the condemnation piece focus his attention on those who have actually betrayed conservatives. That would include those that killed SB 90 in committee as well as those who voted not to blast it out of that committee, or those who will be responsible for passing a State budget that will be at least 18% higher than the last one. By the way, I voted against that budget. There is no mechanism that will contain Federal spending. We can’t even control State spending with so many Legislators voting to spend more money.
It sounds to me as if the author of the condemnation piece had a pet project that failed and that he is lashing out against those of us who voted against it. I hope that the author took some time to reflect on that April 18th piece before submission. I recommend my own 24-hour rule if he didn’t take time to reflect. My rule is that if I write something in anger, I wait 24 hours before submitting it, as I did with this piece.
Lee Deming
Billings,
