"This Amendment Proposal Will Self-Destruct in Seven Years"

Ratification Time Limits and the Odd Story of the Twenty-seventh Amendment 

Since 1917, Congress has usually placed a limit of seven years on the time allowed for states to ratify proposed amendments. Once, in 1978, Congress extended a seven year limit to ten years to try to save the Equal Rights Amendment. 

Prior to 1917, and at least once since then, amendment proposals had no time limits. This fact allowed for the passage of the Twenty-seventh Amendment in 1992, 212 years after it was proposed by the first Congress in 1789. 

The Twenty-seventh Amendment reads as follows: 

No law varying the compensation for the services of the Senators and Representatives, shall take effect, until an election of representatives have intervened. 
This means that if Congress votes itself a pay raise, it cannot receive the raise until after the next Congressional election. The amendment was introduced by James Madison because the Constitutional ratification conventions of Virginia, New York, and North Carolina had demanded that this provision be added to the Constitution. It was the second proposal in the bill of rights. 

Congressional pay amendment was ratified by 6 states between 1789 and 1791. New York, one of the states which had demanded the amendment in 1788, rejected the amendment, as did New Jersey, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, and Rhode Island. 

One more state ratified in 1873, but then it was forgotten until recalled to life largely by the efforts a University of Texas undergraduate who discovered the unratified proposal while doing research for an American Government class paper in 1982. Gregory Watson wrote a paper arguing that the amendment was still viable since it had no internal time limit, and it should, therefore, be adopted. He got a C. 

Undaunted, Watson began a campaign to ratify the amendment. Michigan became the 38th state to ratify the amendment in 1992. 

Read an full account of  Watson's efforts in the Madison Forum's Salute to Gregory D. Watson for Defending the US Constitution. (The Madison Forum is an organization dedicated to passing an amendment to the Constitution which would prohibit federal courts from instructing states or local governments to levy or increase taxes.)