Compact for America's Six Week Sprint Status Update!
In the past six weeks, the Compact for America team has made huge strides. As you head out to reconnect with family and friends, here is some great progress you can report to them during the inevitable forbidden political discussions that will ensue:
Arkansas is the first to file the Compact for a Balanced Budget bill for the 2015 session! For details, click here.
The Compact for a Balanced Budget’s interstate Commission is now “live” with Alaska Governor Sean Parnell’s appointment of Lt. Governor Mead Treadwell last week! For the first time in history, there is now an actual interstate agency that is committed to advancing, organizing and overseeing the proposal of a federal Balanced Budget Amendment by convention under Article V. Lt. Governor Treadwell joins Rep. Paulette Rakestraw (formerly Braddock) in this critical component of the push for fiscal sanity. For details, click here.
With the leadership of Arizona's States United Balanced Budget Initiative, Compact for America's all-day Liberty Amendment symposium and dinner drew between 300-400 people to hear presentations by Congressman Paul Gosar, Mychal Massie, Jake Jacobs, Sheriff Mack, Arizona State Legislators Bob Thorpe and Steve Smith, and other leaders in the Article V and state sovereignty movement.
Progressive Harvard Law Professor Lawrence Lessig, also an Advisory Council member of Compact for America’s c4 entity, joined CFA Educational Foundation President & Executive Director Nick Dranias in a Washington Post letter to the editor making the point that there is no left-right divide on Article V. For details, click here. Prof. Lessig and Dranias continued the discussion in an expanded piece published by the National Constitution Center here. This collaborative effort is crucial to ensuring that our Compact for America initiative has cross-partisan/ideological appeal—or at least neutrality—which is absolutely necessary for success in 38 states and Congress.
The venerable conservative/libertarian Freeman Magazine published an extensive interview answering all frequently asked questions about the Compact for a Balanced Budget here.
Compact for America went head-to-head with the Article V opposition in a debate against Arizona Senate President Andy Biggs (video here and here) and also in a debate organized by President Biggs against what appears to be a newly organized John Birch Society entity, the “Patriot Coalition,” at the Arizona State Capitol (video here). Compact for America Council of Scholars member and Cato Institute senior fellow Ilya Shapiro also tangled (civilly) with President Biggs at a closed Tea Party Patriots debate in Washington DC over the previous weekend. These debates were crucial to the effort because President Biggs is the primary opponent of Article V efforts in Arizona.
Thomas C. Patterson, immediate past Chairman of the Goldwater Institute, joined the Compact for America Educational Foundation as its Chairman of the Board.
Lawrence Reed of the Foundation for Economic Education and Steve Slivinski of the Goldwater Institute joined the Educational Foundation’s Council of Scholars; Arkansas Representative Nate Bell, North Dakota Senator (ret.) and National Debt Relief Amendment Spokesman Curtis Olafson, Arizona’s Scott O’Connor, and Compact Commissioner Paulette Rakestraw joined our c4’s Advisory Council.
Thanks to the generosity of the Rodney Fund (and with the crucially important co-sponsorship of Grover Norquist’s Americans for Tax Reform and the Competitive Enterprise Institute), Compact for America has organized numerous up-coming educational events in Washington, DC.
As you can see, Compact for America is more than a think tank. We get it done.
Will you help us continue the educational push for “Article V 2.0?”
This holiday season, please consider supporting our “Stop the Child Abuse/Fix the Debt” campaign with your tax deductible donation here.
