Title: Virginia Surge Article Original CoS Document (slug): [[https://conventionofstates.com/virginia-surge-article|virginia-surge-article]] Login Required to view? No Created: 2023-10-09 20:05:19 Updated: 2023-12-28 15:08:28 Published: 2023-10-23 03:00:00 Converted: 2025-04-14T20:34:25.670555612 ---- {{https://content.conventionofstates.com/cosaction-prod/public/content/images/77942/77942_original.jpg?570x428}}\\ **Your Unique Role in Calling a Convention of States** The 2024 Virginia General Assembly has the opportunity to address the outrageous federal debt through the following legislative actions: * The Faithful Delegate Resolution - procedures for selecting, instructing, and overseeing commissioners. * The Faithful Delegate Bill - enacting criminal penalties for commissioners violating their commission and for individuals interfering with a commissioner in fulfilling his or her duties. Passing this legislation will pave the way for the Convention of States application in 2025. {{https://content.conventionofstates.com/cosaction-prod/public/content/images/77116/77116_original.jpg?325x203}} **** **Debt Crisis Imperils Virginia** As of early December 2023, the federal government has amassed a (fast-growing) $34 trillion national debt. The debt is now roughly $260,000 per taxpaying constituent of each and every state legislative district in Virginia. While Virginia is required by law to maintain a balanced budget, the [[https://conventionofstates.com/news/op-ed-debt-ceiling-crisis|federal government gets a hard pass]], resulting in financial tyranny. Virginians are asking: Can anyone name one national problem that was solved by placing a $34 trillion burden on our children and grandchildren? Clearly, federal spending is out of control, unproductive, and unsustainable. Our only hope is to use Article V as the Framers intended it be used to stop a runaway federal government before it bankrupts our nation.        **We Know the Rules** Noted Professor Robert G. Natelson, by far America’s most-published active scholar on the U.S. Constitution's amendment process, explains in the following video that "There are far far more controls over this convention than there are over the runaway Congress." https:%%//%%www.youtube.com/watch?v=XzMpSdc5jRQ&t=248s\\ Further validating Convention of States, [[https://conventionofstates.com/news/natelson-full-statement|Natelson adds]]: > ...We know from experience that constitutional amendments really work. In fact, they are usually more respected than the original Constitution. The First Amendment, for example, has protected free speech and the press for more than two hundred years. Before we adopted the Twenty‑Second Amendment, Americans fiercely and recurrently argued about whether particular presidents, or presidents in general, should be elected for third or fourth terms. The Twenty-Second Amendment put those arguments to rest.\\ > \\ > ...We have over 300 years of successful experience with similar gatherings. Scores of inter-colonial and interstate conventions over the centuries have perfected the protocols and procedures... \\ > \\ > The Convention of States movement offers a way to save our children and grandchildren from the debt threat to restore the federal government to the people and to its mission of service and to repair our national fabric, and smooth the savage waves of public discord.\\ > \\ > For any American who cares about his country, no other political cause deserves a higher priority. Thus, **Virginia State Legislators who vote yes for both the Faithful Delegate Resolution and Faithful Delegate Bill in 2024 will pave the way for the Convention of States application in 2025.** Virginia once helped pave the way to liberty. Let's do so again by joining the **[[https://conventionofstates.com/progress-map-article-v-process|19 other states in calling a Convention of States to protect our Republic]]** for our grandchildren. Congress won't, so we must.