Former Idaho Sen. Larry Craig told the Senate State Affairs Committee this morning that he “took up the cudgel of the balanced budget amendment” because in his nearly three decades in Congress, Congress itself couldn’t restrain its own spending. “No congress can bind themselves to a future congress,” Craig said. “Every congress can change the rules, can change the laws. … So there is no capability within the Congress of the United States for it to control itself, unless it has the will to do so. And because of entitlement programs today and the dependency it has allowed to bestow on the American people, that will has nearly erased itself. And while we send good men and women to the United States Congress, at least from this state, and we know they have that will, that will is erased in the totality of the majority.”

Craig said when he pushed for a balanced budget amendment, “I traveled to the states. I worked to get that majority of 34. And we were there – we were so close to being there. We missed by one vote in the Senate to sending that resolution to the states for states to ratify a balanced budget amendment, but we failed, and the debt continued to grow.”

Craig said, “In the 28 years that I had the privilege of serving Idaho in the United States Congress, every year I witnessed, I experienced and I opposed the reality that was always there – the desire to spend more, the desire to tax less, the desire to borrow more, and the reality of an ever growing-debt. And so, we’re there. We are now there at a fiscal crisis, I do believe. Will it happen in our lifetime? What if it does? And I believe it will. I believe there will come a day when we can no longer honor our debt at the rate that we are currently honoring it.”

The former senator, who left office after a sex scandal, said, “I would suggest to you that there are tough choices being made. ... I would suggest to you that we must risk, that we must lead. That the alternative is a near impossibility.” He told the committee that state senators are actually more powerful than U.S. senators. “That’s how it was designed, and that’s why Article V is so powerful. Because you can cause them to do things they cannot do themselves.”

Greg Casey, former IACI president and former sergeant-at-arms and doorkeeper for the U.S. Senate, followed Craig, continuing the presentation to the committee of SCR 108. He called the idea that an Article V convention could become a “runaway” and rewrite the Constitution an “erroneous myth.” Scholars are divided on that question, with many saying an Article V convention couldn’t be limited in its scope; the nation has never had one. Casey said, "It would only take 13 states to stop a rogue amendment," by refusing to ratify it.

Rome, Georgia attorney David Guldenschuh also spoke as part of the presentation of the bill. “I’ve been in 25 states now speaking on behalf of Article V,” he said. “I refer to my home area as the bosom of the John Birch Society,” he told the senators. “John Birch was actually raised in my home town.” He noted, “There are members of the John Birch Society and its leadership which are strongly opposed to the Article V convention of the states, for good reasons.” But, he said. “They actually supported us in Georgia when we pursued various Article V resolutions there.” He said he welcomes opportunities to speak to that group. The John Birch Society is an anti-communist group known for opposing the civil rights movement of the 1960s; it long has advocated for the U.S. to withdraw from the United Nations. Guldenschuh told the senators he sees little risk of the Constitution being rewritten as a result of an Article V convention, and said, "We're in a house that's burning to the ground, and we're afraid to go outside for fear we'll get hit by a meteor."