For decades, Washington D.C. has accumulated power and debt at a pace the Framers never intended. Bureaucratic agencies and career politicians write rules that place burdens on American citizens, and successive Presidents play executive order ping-pong, implementing and reversing policy with each new administration. This instability and centralization are not the marks of a healthy constitutional republic.

The Framers anticipated this danger. They also understood that Congress would be unwilling to limit its own power. That is why they gave the states the authority to convene an amending convention in Article V of the U.S. Constitution — a constitutional process designed to impose fiscal restraints, term limits of office for its officials and Congress, and limits on federal power.