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By Kendal Ludden
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If you want to understand why I believe America has drifted so far from limited government, I would start with a year most Americans probably never think about: 1913. That was the year the 16th Amendment was ratified, giving Congress explicit constitutional authority to tax income without apportionment among the states.
The 17th Amendment followed, changing the selection of U.S. senators from state legislative selection to direct election by voters. And on the eve of Christmas Eve, December 23, 1913, Congress created the Federal Reserve System through the Federal Reserve Act.
The 16th Amendment gave Congress the power to collect taxes on income without apportioning those taxes among the states according to population. This is referred to as a Pop-Tax, or a pay-one-price tax. This is solved by everyone paying the same amount of money or sweat equity.
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Central Government Started To Move Into People's Lives
What concerns me is what followed.
I believe an income-tax system created a fundamentally different relationship between citizens and the federal government. The more directly Washington can tax individual income, the more directly it can expand its reach into the economic lives of Americans.
I have watched the tax system from the inside as a professional. I have seen how complicated it can become and how much economic activity can be consumed by compliance, administration, and government spending.
My concern is not simply that Americans pay taxes. A functioning government requires revenue. My concern is whether the system we have built has become so expansive that the middle class carries an increasingly heavy burden while the government continues to grow.
I believe a tax system based on income can become a death sentence for the middle class when combined with waste, fraud, abuse, and unchecked government expansion.
That is one reason I believe we need to rethink the assumptions behind our tax system.
United Socialist States of America
The second development of 1913 is the 17th Amendment.
Before it, U.S. Senators were selected by state legislatures. After it, senators were directly elected by the people. The National Archives describes the change as a modification of the original constitutional structure in which the Senate provided equal representation for the states.
We currently live in the USSA (United Socialist States of America), in order to be in the USA, any USA Senator needs to be approved by the states' legislatures. I believe that change fundamentally weakened the states' institutional voice in Washington.
Competing Centers of Authority Needed
The United States was designed as a federal system. The states were supposed to have a role in the federal government itself. When state legislatures selected senators, the states had a direct mechanism for influencing the federal government through the Senate.
After the 17th Amendment, that relationship changed. I believe we gradually stopped thinking of America as a union of states and started thinking of it primarily as one national government with states operating underneath it.
That distinction matters because limited government depends on competing centers of authority.
The Financial Democratic Deficit
The third piece of 1913 is the Federal Reserve Act.
The Federal Reserve was created in response to weaknesses exposed by financial crises, including the Panic of 1907. Today, the Federal Reserve plays a central role in monetary policy, inflation, employment, and responses to economic crises.
I believe Americans should be asking a basic question about that system: how much economic power should be concentrated in institutions removed from direct electoral control?
These are complicated questions. They deserve more than slogans.
Structures Were Made by People and Can Be Changed by People
I want people to understand the law before they argue about it. I want them to understand what changed before they decide whether those changes were good.
And I want Americans, particularly younger Americans, to understand that government structures are not inevitable. They were created by people, changed by people, and can be reconsidered by people.
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I believe something important about the original American system died in 1913. I also believe the American experiment itself is not dead. It can be renewed through education.
We can teach people what the Constitution actually means. We can teach them why amendments were adopted. We can examine the arguments made by supporters and opponents. We can ask what happened afterward. Most importantly, we can give citizens enough information to form their own conclusions.
Changing the 16th and 17th Amendments
That is what I mean when I say I want to return America to a nation controlled by its citizens. I’m proposing a change to the Constitution related to both the 16th and 17th amendments.
I do not mean abandoning the government. I mean restoring accountability.
I do not mean eliminating taxation. I mean questioning whether an increasingly complicated tax structure serves the people who finance it.
I do not mean pretending the Federal Reserve does not exist. I mean understanding how it acquired its role and asking whether that role is consistent with the principles of limited government.
And I do not mean ignoring the 17th Amendment. I mean having an honest conversation about whether removing the states' direct role in selecting senators changed the balance of our federal system.
America does not need less history. It needs more people who understand it.
If we want to debate the future of America, we first have to understand the decisions that brought us here. So, 1913 is where I believe that conversation should begin.
Kendal Ludden is a South Carolina tax attorney, certified public accountant and former IRS agent who was a Republican candidate for the U.S. House in South Carolina’s 1st Congressional District in 2026.
All views expressed are the author's own.
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