I'd like this to be a discussion post of sorts.

The U.S. Constitution is hard to amend. Like, really hard.

Getting 2/3rds of Congress to agree on anything is difficult, though contrary to popular understanding, bills pass through Congress with supermajorities regularly. In a recent example, the House and Senate both passed the recent foreign aid package with supermajority margins (House 316-94, Senate 79-18) in each chamber.

The especially difficult part of amending the U.S. Constitution is getting 38 (3/4ths) state legislatures to ratify an amendment. The last time this happened was in 1992, but that amendment was proposed by Congress in 1789. The last amendment that was proposed by Congress was the District of Colombia Voting Rights Amendment, proposed in 1978. The 26th Amendment was the most recent amendment to be proposed by Congress that was subsequently ratified, in 1971 (53 years ago).

Conventional wisdom says that modern polarization makes amending the Constitution effectively impossible because getting 2/3rds of Congress and 3/4ths of states to agree on anything is, purportedly, impossible. Notably, you can also propose an amendment via a constitutional convention, but we have never done this since the Convention of 1787 and a lot of people are (wrongfully, in my opinion) scared to try it again.

I'm creating this post to challenge the conventional wisdom. The more I've had the opportunity to talk to people both online and in the real world, I find that we agree a lot more than we disagree. I want to see if we can come up with a proposal that unites most people. I think most of us agree that the current system has problems. Can we come together on anything? Any proposal here should (a) attempt to solve a real problem and (b) be able to reasonably capture broad support. I think compromise is key. I know Law 1 applies everywhere, but assuming good faith is especially important here.

For context, I'm going to list some proposals that I've seen both the Left and the Right discuss. In the spirit of open discussion, I am a right-leaning person.

Left-Leaning Ideas

• Equal Rights Amendment
• A Campaign Finance Amendment (Overturn Citizens United)
• Replace the Electoral College with a popular vote system
• Modify the U.S. Senate (or its powers) so that it has less power to stand in the way of broadly popular laws
• Term limits for Federal Judges
• Amend Article V so it's easier to ratify future amendments
• Modify the Second Amendment to permit more gun laws

Right-Leaning Ideas

• Balanced Budget Amendment
• Reducing the Power of the Federal Government (ex. narrowing the Commerce Clause)
• Repeal the 16^th Amendment
• Repeal the 17^th Amendment
• The "Countermand" Amendment
• Legislative Veto
• Modify the 14^th Amendment to do a lot of things

Term limits for Congress enjoys broad support on both sides of the ideological spectrum in national polling. Understandably, it does not enjoy the same level of support in Congress. I'm tempted to label this a right-wing proposal because I've seen people on the right be a lot more enthusiastic about it than the left has been. In the end, however, the labels don't matter.

Personally, there are two amendments I'd like to consider that nobody has talked about. First, I think Marbury v. Madison should be codified in the Constitution, albeit with some restraints. The Supreme Court has done a lot of major policy making in the absence of Congress and I don't think that's good for the country. Second, I'd like to see a campaign finance amendment that simply states that candidates may only accept donations from their perspective constituents, and PACs on behalf of specific candidates are banned.

Anyway, have at it. I'll be really interested to see if you guys can come up with any good compromises. Cheers!

EDIT: Okay so I'm going to blunt here. It feels like a lot of people didn't read the post. I created the list of left- and right-wing ideas as sort of a starter to get people thinking. Aside from the two ideas I specifically mention, I'm not endorsing or opposing any of the ideas. I'm just saying these things have been discussed. I invite you to come in with more ideas of your own.

The whole point is that people discuss the various ideas they've seen and issues that they want to see fixed, and come up up with something that everyone's like "yeah, we can agree on that." It isn't to advocate for or oppose your favorite/most hated idea of the list I created.

So far, conventional wisdom is prevailing.