Recent Amendments to The Constitution of the United States
ARTICLE XXVIII
(Sent to the States June 20, 1992, by the 102nd Congress; ratified October 3, 1997.)
Section 1
The fourth section of the fourteenth article of amendment to the Constitution of the United States is hereby repealed. The Federal government shall incur no debts nor make any promises of repayment of debts to any person, party or nation.
Section 2
All debts of the Federal government in existence at the time this article may be ratified are hereby repudiated.
Section 3
This article shall be inoperative unless it shall have been ratified as an amendment to the Constitution by the legislatures of three-fourths of the several States within seven years of its submission to the States by the Congress.
ARTICLE XXIX
(Sent to the States June 20, 1992, by the 102nd Congress; ratified April 10, 1998.)
Section 1
Article I, Section 8 and the sixteenth article of amendment to the Constitution of the United States are hereby amended to revoke the power of the Congress to lay and collect taxes (including general income taxes), duties, imposts, and excises, to pay the debts and provide for the common defense and general welfare of the United States.
Section 2
The Congress shall levy no general taxes nor disburse the proceeds from any duties, imposts, or excises for purposes other than those in support of the activities from which the duties, imposts, or excises were collected.
Commentary by G. J. Corbin:
In 1997 the U.S. government was a debtor to the tune of $18.2 trillion, an amount more than six times the country’s gross national product. The country’s balance of trade was twelve to one against.
For almost two decades, various administrations had wrestled with Federal deficits and the growing national debt. Self-imposed budget restraint and legally imposed spending cuts both had failed to curb the people’s appetite—exercised through Congress—for a free lunch. No one had the courage to raise taxes to the levels needed to fund the government: That would have had the same effect on the faltering economy as a stone tied to a sackful of bravely swimming kittens.
Of course, when these amendments were proposed, debate raged furiously across the country. Half the electorate and most of the media’s opinion leaders claimed it would impoverish the elderly and disadvantaged, imperil the national defense, and destroy the American Way of Life. The other half claimed that a prime rate of thirty-five percent and inflation at 300 percent were well launched toward those ends.
When the amendments were finally ratified, the Federal Government adopted, in place of taxation and deficit spending, a fee-for-service system. Licenses and fees supported those judicial and regulatory functions without which society would have foundered. The administrators of these functions no longer petitioned for their budgets before some congressional appropriations committee. Instead, they paid costs and salaries out of income, like any business. And they sent a percentage—a profit—upward to General Funds.
High tariffs and a system of limited monopolies protected the country’s markets, igniting a wave of price-pull inflation that, for a while, felt like prosperity.
Postal and police services were farmed out to the commercial express and security firms which had already appropriated these markets among all but the very poorest users.
The military establishment was broken and turned over to public subscription and private contracting. The former supported a core of government-employed strategic planners, diplomatists, and operators of the nuclear arsenal. The latter supplied weapons, material, and a mixed body of volunteer regiments and mercenary troops.
The rest of the government—the masses of career bureaucrats and clients of the welfare state—were abandoned like the blackened carcass of a beached whale. And with time they were absorbed into the general prosperity, as rind and blubber are absorbed by the tide, the salt, and the sand.
For a while in 1997, the U.S. government was a debtor; ten years later it had become the richest organization in human history, with liquid resources exceeding those of any emperor, tsar, or pope.
ARTICLE XXX
(Sent to the States April 14, 2003, by the 108th Congress; ratified September 30, 2003.)
Section 1
Article II, Section 1 and the twentieth article of amendment to the Constitution of the United States are hereby amended to provide expeditiously for the succession of the President, in the event that both the President and the Vice President are simultaneously removed from office, die, resign, or otherwise become unable to discharge the responsibilities of their respective offices. In such case, the Speaker of the House of Representatives shall assume the powers, duties, and prerogatives of the executive branch and retain them until such time as a special election may be called to fill the vacated offices.
Commentary to G. J. Corbin:
This surprisingly simple piece of legislation was proposed and swiftly passed after the Hundred Lost Days, which began December 19, 2002. On the surface, it is merely a clarification of procedures that are addressed—but not entirely resolved—in earlier constitutional amendments.
The Thirtieth Amendment is hardly the sort of sweeping reform that one would expect to come out of the power brokering and confusion of those three months. It is at best a firecracker compared to the big gun of the Emergency Powers Act, which ended the Hundred Days. However, this amendment—not the Act—was the foundation upon which House Speaker George McCanlis assumed the power of the executive. And he did not let go for a long time.
Twenty years after this insidiously flawed legislation was ratified, legal scholars would note that “Speaker” is an exact translation of the Latin word dictator.