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Can you imagine a US Constitutional amendment that, if proposed, would actually get passed these days?
The relevant part of the US Constitution is:
So, either 2/3 of both the House and the Senate, or 2/3 of the states must propose it, and then 3/4 of the state legislatures or conventions in those states must support it, for it to become part of the Constitution... as I understand it at least.
What sort of possible amendments could you imagine would actually pass and become part of the US Constitution in today's political climate, if they were proposed?
I find this to be an interesting question because it is a barometer of what the various factions of US politics actually agree on, despite their various differences, and also a barometer of how much polarization there is in today's US political situation.
The most likely candidate I can think of is an amendment regularising the administrative state if it appears to be under serious threat from the conservative majority on SCOTUS. Nobody wants to live in a world where the clownshow that is Congress has to deal with the technical detail of bank capital adequacy or aviation safety, and very few people want to live in a world where those things are not regulated at all.
Before the McCarthy speakership fiasco, it looked like an Administrative Procedure Amendment would pass easily if needed with votes from Democrats, moderate pro-business Republicans, and conservative Republicans bought by the incumbent banks, airlines etc. I suspect in today's climate a lot of Republicans would be afraid of being primaried if they supported it (a majority of the voters in low-turnout non-Presidential Republican primaries appear to be the kind of anti-establishment conservative who would be happy to watch the world burn if libs were sufficiently owned as a result), so it would be difficult to get the required supermajority.
* IANAL, but my reading of the Constitution is that the administrative state is unconstitutional for the same reasons as the Air Force under any sensible interpretation scheme other than "living constitutionalism". But both the administrative state and the Air Force are good ideas, and should have been regularised by constitutional amendments which would have passed easily at the time.
If crypto has taught me anything it's that a lot of people do want to live in a financial world where those things are not regulated at all (at least for a while).
It’s more that people are still in denial that the current world of financial regulation is there for a reason. It never fails to entertain me when a new crypto scandal leads to an “innovation” which is just traditional banking with extra steps. As Matt Levine likes to say:
And I’m inclined to agree.
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