A day after Compact for America’s Nick Dranias outlined the group’s plan to pursue a streamlined path toward a federal balanced budget amendment, George Leef devotes his latest Forbes column to analysis of Dranias’ plan.

Thomas Jefferson agreed that federal borrowing was dangerous. In a letter written to James Taylor in 1798, he stated, “I wish it were possible to obtain a single amendment to our constitution. I would be willing to depend on that alone for the reduction of the administration of our government to the genuine principles of its constitution; I mean an additional article, taking from the federal government the power of borrowing.”

Since the official debt of the U.S. government has recently gone over $18 trillion and is projected to increase dramatically over the next two decades, it is certainly time to think hard about the explosion of federal borrowing. If we can’t remove the borrowing power in the Constitution, as Jefferson suggested, couldn’t we at least put a limit on it?

There is one enormous obstacle to doing so: the political establishment in Washington. Politicians often pay lip service to returning to fiscal sobriety, but the safe thing for many of them to do is – nothing. Any votes they might take to rein in the government’s spending will mean barrages of attack ads from special interest groups and their political allies, decrying the heartlessness of Senator X or Congressman Y for voting to cut spending on some ostensibly compassionate program.

Any political benefit there might be from voting to cut spending and debt is usually outweighed by the losses. Thus, the short-run focus of most federal politicians, dominated by imperative of winning the next election, ensures that they’ll never act to restrain their spending and the borrowing that makes it possible.

Fortunately, the federal government is not (yet) in absolute control. Under Article Five of the Constitution, the states can push for amendments by calling for a convention. And that is already in motion.

The Compact for a Balanced Budget is a well-conceived idea that would give the nation a new amendment putting a limit on the amount the federal government can borrow, a maximum of 105 percent of the current debt. Nick Dranias, who is spearheading the compact, argues in this Freeman interview, “Using an interstate compact to coordinate the amending of the Constitution from the states, which represents perhaps the ultimate problem of collective action in politics, is just a natural solution.”

I suspect that it’s the only solution.

What makes the state compact approach both appealing and practical is that the key issues would all be settled in advance. Once 38 states have voted to join the compact (at this point, two have: Alaska and Georgia), the application for a convention that would consider only the precise amendment drafted and then either approve or disapprove it becomes operative. Congress would only require simple majorities in each chamber to approve the convention, and that seems within reach, although no sure thing.

Look for a lot of action in state legislatures next year as advocates of restraining federal debt argue for joining the Compact, while interest groups that know a slowing of government spending would hurt them try to derail it with “the sky is falling” claims.