Status as of November 2019
Advocates of holding an Article V convention for proposing a Balanced Budget Amendment currently have 28 states with “live” applications to Congress for such a convention. See the red states on the BBA Con-Con Status Map. Only six more states are needed to trigger a risky convention. To ensure they don’t reach 34 states, residents of the 28 states with applications are urged to get rescission resolutions passed.
Residents of targeted and untargeted states are urged to stop the passage of any BBA Con-Con applications in their state legislatures.
BBA Constitutional Convention Threat
A BBA Article V convention would have the inherent power to be a runaway convention that could make harmful changes in the Constitution, including a new ratification procedure, or even completely rewrite it.
Apart from the problems with an Article V convention of any type, a Balanced Budget Amendment itself would tend to legitimize the longstanding usurpations of powers by federal officials by changing the question about legislation from “Is it constitutional?” to “Will it balance the budget?”, thereby moving our nation away from its founding as a constitutional republic (rule of law) and toward being a democracy (rule of men).
BBA Loopholes
Based on most drafts of Balanced Budget Amendments (BBAs), we would expect a BBA to have loopholes. One example of such a loophole would be: Congress would be exempt from having to balance the federal budget in the event of variously defined national emergencies, such as war, etc. A second example of a BBA loophole would be: Congress would be permitted to approve a deficit budget if 60 percent of both houses of Congress agreed.
A BBA with such loopholes could not be counted on to guarantee an end to budget deficits.