Getting a Balanced Budget via Article V Constitutional Convention 2.0: Nick Dranias of the "Compact for America" Explains How 38 States Could Force Congress to Spend Within Its Means via Reason.Com Forcing the federal government to keep to a balanced budget has been a dream of the fiscally conservative, or those just worried about ruinous debt, for decades. “Force” is the operative word—there seems little hope that Congress will embrace consistent fiscal discipline on its own

One of the foundational principles on which America’s Constitutional Republic would stand (or fall) upon involved the centralization of power. To prevent too high a concentration of power, our founders were very careful to create a proper balance of political power between our state and federal governments. The logic being, if our state legislatures got off track, Congress could rein them in with Constitutional amendments. Likewise, if our federal legislators couldn’t be trus