A “world federal government” sounds a lot like a dark web conspiracy theory.
For Connecticut, though, it’s a remnant of the past that needed to be purged.
During Monday’s state House of Representatives session, the chamber considered House Joint Resolution 49, which came with a lengthy title:
“Resolution Rescinding Previous Applications of the General Assembly that Called for an Article V Convention to Propose Amendments to the Constitution of the United States and Directing Transmission of Such Resolution to Congress for Printing in the Congressional Record.”
As explained by Rep. Matt Blumenthal (D-Stamford), the resolution is intended to rescind two calls for a federal constitutional convention, or Article V convention, that were called during the state legislature in the late 1940s and 1950s to do two things:
Authorize the United States to negotiate with other countries to draft a constitution for a world federal government (approved in 1949), and
Prohibit states from taxing the income of nonstate residents (approved in 1958).
According to various sources on the web, in 1949 Connecticut joined five other states — California, Florida, Maine, New Jersey and North Carolina — that applied for an Article V convention to propose an amendment “to enable the participation of the United States in a world federal government.”
“We have decided that those calls were not well-founded,” Blumenthal told the House on Monday, “and so this resolution would rescind those calls and issue notification to all the relevant parties.”
He also noted that, to date, the U.S. has never held an Article V convention, which requires applications by two-thirds of the states.
“An Article V convention is something we have not had since the founding of this country under its current constitution,” Blumenthal said. “Nobody knows how it would work; there’s one paragraph in the constitution about it. Suffice it to say, these two calls for constitutional conventions are not ones that I think the legislature or the people of Connecticut would support today, whatever they thought in the 1940s and 1950s. And so, we would under this resolution rescind our calls for that convention.”
After approving a minor amendment to the resolution, Rep. Tom O’Dea (R-New Canaan) rose to address the chamber.
“I carry around a copy of the Constitution and I’m embarrassed to say I did not know that the state of Connecticut had called for a convention to negotiate a world federal government,” O’Dea said.
“I think we’re going to see a whole board of green very soon,” he added, referring to the electronic board that records votes in the chamber, with green for “yea” and red for “nay.”
“There’s not a single person in this room (who) wants a world federal government,” O’Dea said. “So, I’m urging my colleagues to support this and show me the green.”
They did, approving the resolution by a 145-0 vote with six members not voting.
