Thomas Daschle: “efforts have been made to portray the right-to-know amendment as constitutionally questionable. Those claims are driven…”

“efforts have been made to portray the right-to-know amendment as constitutionally questionable. Those claims are driven by politics. The argument is not compelled by the Constitution. The Constitution sets out two requirements for the approval of an amendment. It must be approved by two-thirds of each House of the Congress, and it must be ratified by the legislatures of three-fourths of the States. The Constitution sets no other limits. All we are proposing is that the Constitution be amended in the same way it has been amended 27 times before, with a two-thirds congressional majority in each House. Ironically, the underlying proposal itself contains a clearly extra-constitutional provision: That if it is not ratified within 7 years, its provision will not take effect, no matter how many State legislatures thereafter desire to approve it. It is a time-limited proposal. The time limitation is not a constitutional requirement. It is a customary requirement. There is no warrant in the Constitution for such a time limit or against such a time limit. It has been used in this century as a way to ensure reasonably contemporaneous consideration of proposals to change the Constitution. It is a good idea, but it is not a constitutional requirement.”