Watch Out, DC: Conservative State Legislators Plot to Get the Feds Under Control

David Weigel has a great piece in the Washington Post about how state legislators are quietly — hey, maybe not so quietly — planning to limit the power, scope, and jurisdiction of the federal government.  He writes:

Jim DeMint brought bad news from Washington. Republicans run every branch of the government, but it was “no longer possible for the federal government to avoid a disaster.” Members of Congress, like he once was, are not able to deliver fully on their promises.

“We have accomplished little more than to slow the growth of spending, slow the growth of debt, slow the growth of regulations,” the former senator from South Carolina told a breakfast audience at the American Legislative Exchange Council’s policy conference on Thursday. “It’s very unlikely, after all the promises, that we’re going to repeal Obamacare and eliminate the federal control of health care.”

For members of ALEC, a 45-year-old think tank that helps state legislators craft libertarian-leaning policy, this wasn’t news. Six months into Donald Trump’s presidency, little of his agenda has made it through Congress. Medicaid has not been transformed into a block-grant program. Tax reform keeps sliding down the calendar. In February, Trump proposed an ambitious school voucher program; last week, the Republican-controlled Senate quietly smothered it.

He also reported on our Article V break out sessions:

… legislators filling rooms past capacity before one-on-one sessions with DeMint, former Oklahoma senator Tom Coburn or Citizens for Self­Governance President Mark Meckler. “If you were not already convinced that D.C. will never fix itself, this week should have convinced you,” Meckler said at one session.

Lastly, he mentioned the hesitance some people feel over an Article V convention…  and Sen. Coburn’s no-nonsense response to one legislator.

At one crowded session, De­Mint and Coburn found themselves reassuring legislators, who worried they’d be accused of plotting “runaway conventions,” telling them to insist that truly bad ideas couldn’t get the supermajorities to pass.

“You gotta get over it,” Coburn told one skittish legislator. “Are you just going to let us fall like every other republic?”

I’m glad there are patriots like Sen. Coburn and Sen. DeMint who are willing to fight this battle.

Read the rest of it here.

Image Credit: Gage Skidmore on Flickr