Debating proposals to amend the Constitution is one thing; however actually amending it is another. Since 1789, over 10,000 amendments to the Constitution have been proposed in Congress. Of those, only 33 were sent to the states for ratification, and only 27 were ultimately ratified.

The number of proposed amendments to the Constitution has actually gone down during the last decade:

Examples of prominent amendments in recent years which received much congressional attention but failed to survive the process include the Flag Desecration Amendment, the Balanced Budget Amendment, the Equal Rights Amendment, a Term Limits Amendment, and a School Prayer Amendment.

The following amendments have been added to the Constitution in the twentieth century:

George Washington has been quoted as saying the Constitution was an imperfect product, made more perfect by the ability to amend it. The Founding Fathers anticipated that changes to the Constitution would be necessary with changing times and established a process for amending it in Article V of that document. Article V provides for changing the Constitution either through an act of Congress or through a national constitutional convention. All 27 amendments to the Constitution to date were completed through congressional enactments.

Any Member of Congress may propose to amend the Constitution by introducing a joint resolution. The legislation is treated like any other in terms of committee consideration, floor scheduling and debate. Passage, however, requires a 2/3 vote in each chamber. If all were present that would mean 290 out of 435 Members of the House and 67 out of 100 Senators. These super-majorities are difficult to obtain. Once passed, the proposed amendment is not sent to the President. Instead, it is sent to the states. Three-fourths -- or 38 -- of the states must ratify the proposed amendment. They do so either by vote of the state legislature or by a state ratifying convention. Only one amendment -- the 21st -- was ratified using the convention method.

In earlier years, no deadline was imposed for an amendment to wind its way through the states. For example, the 27th amendment was proposed in 1789 and only ratified in 1992, 203 years later!

In recent years, however, Congress has included a deadline for ratification within the text of a proposed amendment -- seven years has been the usual time frame imposed. Within that period, if 38 states do not ratify the amendment, it fails. In the case of the failed Equal Rights Amendment, its original deadline was extended from 1979 to 1982, but even with the unusual extension, a sufficient number of states failed to ratify the amendment.