“Fiscal Restraint”

The Founders Warned Us!

Picture a family so deep in debt that the kids, and even the grand-kids, are born owing money before they take their first breath. Now multiply that by 330 million souls and you’ve got America in 2025. Our Federal Government has racked up over $37 trillion in Debt. That’s thirty-seven trillion dollars our leaders borrowed in our names without our consent, shackling unborn generations to bills they never ran up. And while Rome had Nero fiddling, we’ve got most of Congress swiping credit cards like drunken teenagers on prom night.

The Convention of States says fiscal restraint is one of its three core pillars, and for good reason. Washington will never limit itself. It feeds on power, and its favorite meal is your money. COS is calling on the states to use Article V—the one tool in the Constitution that bypasses Congress—to slam the brakes on federal spending. Balanced budgets. Hard caps. Debt limits. Tax sanity. Real accountability. These are not dreams. They are amendments waiting to be proposed, and they are the lifeline our Republic is gasping for.

Now let’s make this real. Fiscal restraint is not about spreadsheets and line items. It’s about freedom itself. Every dollar Washington spends (aka borrows) is a dollar our children and grandchildren must pay back in labor and taxes.

Thomas Jefferson saw this danger with eagle-eyed clarity: “I place economy among the first and most important virtues, and public debt as the greatest of dangers to be feared.” He wasn’t talking about theory; he was warning us about today. Because a government that can bury you in debt will bury your liberty right along with it.

And yet, Washington acts as if the laws of economics don’t apply to them. They throw trillions around like candy at a parade, bribing states with “free money” that comes with federal strings attached. That isn’t generosity, it’s extortion in disguise. Imposing “Fiscal Restraint” cuts those strings. It says to Congress: No, you may not enslave states with bribes. It says to the bureaucrats: No, you may not hide your schemes in omnibus bills nobody reads. It says to the lobbyists: No, you may not siphon off the nation’s wealth while families can’t afford groceries.

Let’s be brutally clear: without fiscal restraint, America will not survive as a free republic. Rome fell not only to invaders but to debt, corruption, and excess. Madison, in Federalist 58, warned that “the power over the purse may, in fact, be regarded as the most complete and effectual weapon with which any constitution can arm the immediate representatives of the people.” Yet today, Congress doesn’t even wield that power responsibly, they’ve outsourced it to agencies, to backroom deals, to future generations who have no say in the matter. That is not representation. That is theft.

And don’t miss this: fiscal restraint is moral restraint. A government that spends without limits is a government without virtue. It is stealing not just dollars but futures. Washington has chained our grandchildren before they can even walk. Hamilton may have favored a strong treasury, but even he knew debt must be temporary and repaid. None of the Founders—zero—would have stood for perpetual, rolling deficits and debt ceilings raised year after year like clockwork. They would have called it what it is: tyranny hiding under a ledger.

Now, imagine what happens once Convention of States succeeds. Picture a Washington that cannot spend beyond what it takes in. Picture Congress forced to prioritize, to cut waste, to justify every dime to We the People. Picture states free to govern without federal bribes. Picture your children inheriting opportunity instead of IOUs. That’s not fantasy. That’s the constitutional remedy sitting on the table right now.

And to be clear, COS isn’t speaking in vague slogans, they’re pointing to concrete amendment models. One example is a Balanced Budget Amendment requiring that the federal government spend no more than it collects in revenue, except in wartime with a supermajority vote. Another proposal would set a hard cap on federal spending tied to a percentage of GDP, meaning Washington can’t grow faster than the economy that sustains it. These are precise, practical fixes, simple rules with seismic impact, that pull us back from the fiscal cliff.

So where does that leave us? At a fork in the road. One path is the road we’re on: runaway spending, debt slavery, financial collapse, and the slow, quiet death of freedom. The other path is bold, hard, and requires courage, states standing up to use Article V, to impose fiscal restraint by force of law when Congress will not. COS isn’t promising ease. It’s promising survival.

The Founders gave us the map my friends. Article V wasn’t written for peacetime tinkering. It was written for emergencies, when Congress breaks its leash and endangers the Republic. Tell me, if $37 trillion plus in debt and counting isn’t an emergency, what on earth Gods Green Earth is?

The call to action is simple but urgent. Talk to your state representatives. Demand they pass the COS resolution confined to these pillars (we’ve covered 2 f 3 so far). Show up at town halls. Write letters. Refuse to let Washington drown your children in debt while you stay silent. This is the people’s fight. Jefferson, Madison, and Mason are long gone, but we are not. We still have the power, that our founders gave us, to act.

Fiscal restraint is not optional; it’s survival plain and simple. The question is whether we will muster the courage to seize it before the avalanche of Federal Debt buries us all.

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