TOM COBURN: Washington’s paralysis requires a constitutional convention.

For years now, angry Americans have been lashing back at Washington overreach. That is the genesis of the Tea Party movement. But it’s even worse than we thought. The ultimate evil of the bureaucratic state, Howard argues, is that Americans no longer feel free. Americans no longer breathe the fresh air of freedom but the stale air of bureaucracy.

Doctors and nurses spend up to half the day filling out forms no one reads. Teachers are told never to put an arm around a crying child. Small business can’t even know, much less comply with, the thousands of rules that apply to them. Getting a permit requires running a legal gauntlet of multiple agencies with overlapping requirements. We go through the day looking over our shoulders, asking ourselves, “Can I prove that what I’m about to do is legally correct?”

While Washington is happy to micromanage Americans, it is not happy to make the hard choices necessary to secure our future. With thousand-page rulebooks, it has no interest in keeping its own house in order. The “law of the land” is more like a legal junk pile. Deficits soar because Congress lacks the discipline to set priorities or abolish obsolete laws, regulations, and programs. These trillion-dollar deficits are not just bad policy but immoral. How can we justify making our children pay tomorrow for our profligacy today?

What can we do about it? Washington will never fix itself. But Trump’s election signifies that Washington’s current political establishment is on its last legs.

The Senate would be a better body if Coburn were still a part of it.