What the 10th Amendment Was Supposed to Do — And Why It Matters Again

The Founders did not trust centralized power. And looking at the state of our government today, they were right not to.

At the heart of our Constitution sits one of the most ignored—and undeniably most important—sentences in American law:

“The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the People.”

This is the 10th Amendment. It was not written as a gentle guideline. It was meant to be a hard limit on federal authority, ensuring that the national government remained limited and that true power stayed with the states and the citizens.

The Era of Federal Overreach

Instead of respecting that limit, over the last century, Washington has turned it into a mere suggestion. Today, the federal government injects itself into almost every aspect of our daily lives and local governance, including:

• Education

• Healthcare

• Energy

• Housing

• Labor

• Technology

• Speech

• Even local policing

Washington doesn’t absorb these responsibilities because it executes them efficiently or effectively. It absorbs them because power, once taken, is never voluntarily returned.

The True Cost of Centralization

When you strip power from local communities and hand it to a distant bureaucracy, it produces three guaranteed outcomes:

1. Waste: Taxpayer dollars are swallowed by administrative bloat and inefficiency before they ever reach the people who actually need them.

2. Corruption: Special interests thrive when power is concentrated in a single, massive, untouchable hub.

3. Unaccountability: Unelected bureaucrats in Washington are entirely insulated from the day-to-day consequences of their failed policies.

A Constitutional Solution

The reality of governance is straightforward: local problems require local solutions. Local voters deserve local control. And, most importantly, governments that are closest to the people are the easiest to correct when they fail.

This is exactly why Mark Sims’ reform agenda is built on a simple, foundational idea: The federal government should do fewer things—and do them well.

Returning power to the states and the people is not some radical, fringe theory. It is strictly constitutional. It is exactly how the American system was designed to operate from day one.

The question is no longer whether this kind of decentralization is possible. The question is whether Americans are finally ready to demand it.