Sixty-eight. That is the number of constitutional amendments members of Congress have proposed this term. One got a floor vote. It failed. The Constitution remains unchanged, as it has been since 1971, and as it will almost certainly remain until everyone currently serving in Congress is dead or retired.
One Vote, Sixty-Seven Rejections, and a Tax Repeal That Went Nowhere
Here is the full scope of the situation, per NBC News political reporter Jonathan Allen: since this Congress began, lawmakers have introduced 68 separate joint resolutions to amend the Constitution. Of those 68, exactly one received a floor vote. That was Rep. Warren Davidson's proposal to repeal the 16th Amendment, which is the provision that allows the federal government to collect income tax.
Davidson's resolution passed the House 211-207. Which sounds like a win, until you remember that amending the Constitution requires a two-thirds majority in both chambers, followed by ratification from three-quarters of all states. A majority vote to gut the income tax is not a constitutional amendment. It is a press release with procedural flavor.
The other 67 proposals? Still sitting in the bill hopper. Untouched. Like a to-do list written by someone who has never finished a to-do list in their life.
The Wish List Is Absolutely Unhinged
Let's tour the highlights of what your elected representatives are spending their time drafting. Rep. Andy Ogles of Tennessee wants to allow Donald Trump to run for a third term. Rep. Nancy Mace of South Carolina wants to rewrite the 14th Amendment to end birthright citizenship. Rep. Keith Self of Texas, a Democrat, wants to repeal the 17th Amendment, which is the one that lets voters elect senators directly rather than having state legislatures pick them. That one is a real crowd-pleaser.
On the other side of the aisle, Rep. Sean Casten of Illinois wants to add 12 at-large senators and rig the Electoral College toward the national popular vote winner. Rep. Grace Meng of New York wants to lower the voting age to 16. And somewhere, in nine separate versions, members of both parties are pitching a balanced budget amendment, because nothing says fiscal responsibility like proposing the same doomed idea nine times.
This is what Congress looks like when it cannot agree on actual legislation. It writes fantasy amendments instead. Political fan fiction. The legislative equivalent of posting a strongly worded opinion on a forum nobody reads.
The Last Successful Amendment Was in 1971. Yes, Really.
To understand how absurd this amendment frenzy is, you have to understand the timeline. As NBC News reports, the last constitutional amendment to be proposed, passed by Congress, and ratified by the states was in 1971. That was the 26th Amendment, which set the voting age at 18. Grace Meng now wants to undo it. The irony is self-sustaining.
The only apparent exception is the 27th Amendment, which was proposed in 1789 and finally ratified in 1992 after sitting dormant for 203 years. That is not a model for efficient governance. That is a geological timescale. James Madison was dead for 156 years before his amendment finished the ratification process.
In the 1980s and 1990s, Congress was at least ambitious in its futility, with some sessions seeing more than 100 constitutional amendment proposals. The 101st Congress managed 179 of them. Now the number has dropped to between 60 and 70 per term. So we are doing less of this particular flavor of nothing than we used to. Progress.
Even Steny Hoyer Eventually Got the Hint
There is one genuinely funny data point buried in Allen's reporting, and it deserves its own moment. Rep. Steny Hoyer of Maryland spent years trying to repeal the 22nd Amendment, the one that limits presidents to two terms. He introduced it during Ronald Reagan's second term. He tried again during Bill Clinton's second term. He tried a third time during George W. Bush's second term.
Now Donald Trump is in his second term. Hoyer has not reintroduced it. Make of that what you will.
The math on actually passing a constitutional amendment is brutal regardless of who is trying. You need two-thirds of the House, two-thirds of the Senate, and then three-quarters of state legislatures to ratify. In a Congress that NBC News describes as legislating at a historically slow pace and evenly divided between parties, getting two-thirds of both chambers to agree on literally anything is a fantasy. Getting 38 states to agree afterward is a fantasy stacked on top of another fantasy.
Meanwhile, the Real World Has Some Notes
While Congress drafts its stack of constitutionally doomed paperwork, NBC News also reports that inflation is quietly eating American workers alive. Wednesday's consumer price index data showed inflation-adjusted average hourly earnings dropped in July, both month-over-month and year-over-year. That means workers' paychecks are buying less than they were before.
And that is before you factor in what the war with Iran is doing. NBC News reports that more than 50,000 American troops are deployed to the Middle East, with sailors and Marines on the USS Abraham Lincoln having been at sea for more than nine months straight. A typical carrier deployment runs six to seven months, with port stops built in. The Lincoln's crew is past that, with no end in sight. The Pentagon is now scrambling to replace the ship amid growing morale concerns.
So the backdrop to all of this constitutional performance art is: workers losing ground, troops grinding through historically long deployments, and an economy wobbling under war pressure. Congress's response is to propose, for the ninth time, a balanced budget amendment.
The Dingo Take
You are supposed to look at 68 constitutional amendment proposals and see a vibrant democracy full of ideas. What you are actually looking at is a body that cannot pass a budget, cannot end a war, cannot address inflation, and has decided the appropriate substitute for governance is theatrical legislation that everyone involved knows will never become law.
This is not unique to one party. The Ogles third-term gift to Trump sits in the same pile as Casten's popular-vote Electoral College scheme. The impulse is bipartisan: when you cannot do the hard thing, write something ambitious and tell your donors you tried. Sixty-eight joint resolutions is not a legislative agenda. It is a lobbying brochure.
The last amendment that successfully changed the Constitution set the voting age at 18. That was 55 years ago. Since then, the country has survived Watergate, the end of the Cold War, 9/11, a financial crisis, a pandemic, and whatever the hell you call the last decade. The Constitution has not been touched. And if the current class of Congress is the best argument for amending it, the Founders can rest easy.
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