The Tennessee House of Representatives is set to vote today on SJR 67, a “Convention of States” resolution. If the House approves the resolution, which passed the Senate last year, Tennessee would be the fifth state to call for the Convention of States under Article V of the Constitution. Its proponents want the convention to impose unnecessary fiscal restraints on and limit the power of the federal government.

 

SJR 67 is based off a model bill by the national group Citizens for Self Governance, which runs the Convention of States project. The American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), a secretive corporate lobbying group that operates as a tax-exempt charity, also recently adopted it as a model bill.

 

 “If the Tennessee legislature approves this resolution, they are putting the entire Constitution up for grabs,” said Dick Williams, Chair of Common Cause Tennessee. “There are no rules for a convention and this could lead to chaos where every American’s rights and civil liberties are on the chopping block.”

 

For information about the nationwide effort by ALEC and other special interest groups to call for a constitutional convention, please see Common Cause’s report The Dangerous Path: Big Money’s Plan to Shred the Constitution at www.dangerouspath.org