How hard is it to amend the Constitution? Imagine last year's health care battle, multiplied by 50.
Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) recently said he would like to see the repeal of the 14th Amendment, which allows children born in the United States to automatically become citizens even if their parents are not legal residents.
The suggestion has caused quite an uproar among immigration activists, pundits and other lawmakers, but if history is any guide, nothing is likely to come of it.
Amendments must be passed by a two-thirds vote of both chambers of Congress and then approved by three-fourths of all 50 state legislatures. (The president has no formal role.) In addition, Congress can put a deadline on a proposed amendment, so if it is not approved within, say, seven years, the proposal is dead.
That's been the fate of a handful of amendments lucky enough to make it that far in the process. Dozens of others are introduced each year without even getting through one chamber of Congress.
Over the past half-century, amendments which have passed have been ones for which there was an unusual amount of agreement or a perfect political storm.
This week, Congress.org took a look at the stories behind some of the many efforts to amend the Constitution: with success, with near-success, and with failure.
Successful amendments
Amendment Lowering the Voting Age to 18
As the increasingly unpopular Vietnam war raged on, fewer numbers of eligible men were enlisting for service. The draft was put in place and thousands of young men who were barely out of high school were forced into the army.
But the 18-year-olds being sent overseas to fight and possibly die for their country could not even vote for the lawmakers sending them there because the voting age at that point was 21.
"Old enough to fight, old enough to vote," became the slogan used by those who favored lowering the voting age in the late 1960s.
Ultimately, in 1971, Congress passed the resolution establishing the creation of the 26th Amendment, which guarantees any American citizen the right to vote who is at least 18 years of age. The states ratified it in the shortest time ever.
The constitutional amendment was, in addition, also intended to override a 1970 Supreme Court decision that ruled that states could set their own age limits for local elections.
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