I’ve been working for Article V, off and on, since 1983. That’s when the Alaska Legislature passed a Resolution calling for a Balanced Budget Amendment (BBA), using Article V. I was serving in the Alaska Senate. At the time the national debt was $1.8 trillion.
From 2013 to 2018 the campaign for fiscal reform, using Article V, was my sole preoccupation. My sons Darren and Brendan and I co-founded the Reagan Project to promote it. I gave it everything I had.
But I basically gave it up, because left wing dark money (Soros, et al) had entered the game in Montana in 2015. There was no money to oppose them, and no national figure of stature to take the lead in the campaign. We were dead in the water.
But now, things have changed. The debt has increased twenty-fold, to $37.85 trillion. And Congress remains unwilling to restrain its deficit spending. In 2025 the debt increased $2.23 trillion.
Most importantly, our movement now has Florida Governor Ron DeSantis as its leader. He was in Idaho a few days ago, imploring its state legislators to pass the same bill I voted for 43 years ago.
There are different ways of counting how many states have passed resolutions calling for an Article V BBA. 34 are needed. There may be litigation soon to argue that that threshold has already been crossed. But the outcome of such a lawsuit is uncertain, and the safest way to proceed is to put the current count at 27 and run a campaign to get seven more state legislatures to act.
Believe me, this won’t be easy. In addition to the left-wing dark money problem, the ultra-far right John Birch Society is adamantly opposed, claiming to fear the boogeyman of a runaway convention. They are a real force in states like Idaho and Montana. Getting to an undisputed 34 states will take several years, at a minimum.
At the end of this year, Gov. DeSantis will be term limited out of his job. What better way to spend his time than by traveling the country, promoting a BBA using Article V? If the American people were made aware that there is a way to force Congress to stop spending this country into bankruptcy, they would demand that their state legislators take action and pass the needed resolutions.
The best way for DeSantis to promote Article V is by running for President. He’d have the bully pulpit and could use it to inform the voters that there really is a way to deal with the debt, and with deficit spending.
He wouldn’t be running against Vance, or Rubio, or Newsom or any Democrat. He’d be running against Congress. The American people, of all political persuasions, are well aware of the dismal state of the United States Congress. In a bipartisan manner, it is dysfunctional, corrupt, and incapable of reforming itself.
The Framers of the Constitution, George Mason in particular, foresaw the possibility of such a Congress, and gave the states a way to bypass it, and propose congressional reform amendments to the Constitution without congressional approval. This was the way the 17th Amendment, the direct election of United States Senators, came into being. At the time, 32 state Article V resolutions were needed for an Article V Amendment Convention. When the count reached 30, the Congress, in order to prevent such a convention from taking place, rolled over and proposed the 17th Amendment.
So, we may not need to get 34. If we get five more states, for a total of 32, Congress may propose an amendment itself. An actual Article V Convention would be avoided, and Congressional power would not be challenged.
Ron Desantis may or may not ever be elected to the Presidency. But if he can lead a successful Article V campaign, he will have made a more significant contribution to this country than a whole lot of Presidents have ever done.
Fritz Pettyjohn is working with the Federal Fiscal Sustainability Foundation to promote a lawsuit arguing that 34 states have passed Article V BBA Resolutions.
Mon 1/26/2026 5:54 PM
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