Americans are tired of Washington. We keep sending new politicians who promise to get our finances in order, but every year the national debt goes up. The fundamental problem is that the United States faces an overconcentration of power in Washington, D.C. The ability to incur limitless amounts of debt is what enables politicians to get away with promising to spend limitless amounts of money. That power is easily leveraged by special interests to enrich themselves at the expense of current and future generations. As a result, Washington has not — and will never — control its addiction to debt.

Fortunately, the Founders gave us the power to solve the problems caused by “Washington gone wild” in Article V of the Constitution. Article V empowers state legislatures to originate constitutional amendments. This authority was meant to be used as a crucial failsafe to protect our liberty from an overconcentration of power in Washington, D.C. In Federalist No. 85, the last Federalist Paper, Alexander Hamilton urged skeptical states to ratify the Constitution because they retained ultimate authority over the federal government through Article V’s state-initiated constitutional amendment process.