THE WEEK

Local, state, and federal taxation in 1964 totaled approximately $2,800 per household. President Johnson says the Great Society will guarantee $3,000 per household. Coming or going?

As one state after another plunges into seemingly hopeless legal confusion trying to conform to the Supreme Court’s one-man, one-vote apportionment decree, support grows for a constitutional amendment that would re-introduce common sense by permitting one house of a state legislature to be based, as in the past, on factors other than population. Many state governors as well as congressmen believe, in the light of the defeat of Senator Dirksen’s proposals last session, that in the Senate it will be impossible to get the two-thirds majority required to submit an amendment to the states in the usual manner. They have therefore turned to the alternate method provided by the Constitution, according to which Congress “shall call” a convention empowered to propose amendments to the states, on petition by two-thirds of the state legislatures. Already sixteen legislatures (out of 34 needed) have sent petitions to Congress. Endorsement early this month by the biennial meeting of the General Assembly of State Governments encourages proponents to think the additional nineteen petitions may soon be forthcoming. If so, a constitutional crisis of unparalleled intensity may break, because a) the Liberals in Congress may refuse to comply with the constitutional provision for calling a convention, and b) if a convention is actually held, it might, like the Philadelphia convention, extend its proceedings to cover not only reapportionment but any other subject it chose.

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Local, state, and federal taxation in 1964 totaled approximately $2,800 per household. President Johnson says the Great Society will guarantee $3,000 per household. Coming or going?

As one state after another plunges into seemingly hopeless legal confusion trying to conform to the Supreme Court’s one-man, one-vote apportionment decree, support grows for a constitutional amendment that would re-introduce common sense by permitting one house of a state legislature to be based, as in the past, on factors other than population. Many state governors as well as congressmen believe, in the light of the defeat of Senator Dirksen’s proposals last session, that in the Senate it will be impossible to get the two-thirds majority required to submit an amendment to the states in the usual manner. They have therefore turned to the alternate method provided by the Constitution, according to which Congress “shall call” a convention empowered to propose amendments to the states, on petition by two-thirds of the state legislatures. Already sixteen legislatures (out of 34 needed) have sent petitions to Congress. Endorsement early this month by the biennial meeting of the General Assembly of State Governments encourages proponents to think the additional nineteen petitions may soon be forthcoming. If so, a constitutional crisis of unparalleled intensity may break, because a) the Liberals in Congress may refuse to comply with the constitutional provision for calling a convention, and b) if a convention is actually held, it might, like the Philadelphia convention, extend its proceedings to cover not only reapportionment but any other subject it chose.