Why not just fix the federal government instead of leaving?

Because Texans have spent generations trying, and the results are in. The federal government is not broken in a way Texas can fix from the inside. It is working exactly as those who benefit from it intend.

Texas has already tried everything else

Texans have voted. Texans have sued. Texas has sent principled people to Washington, passed resolutions, filed lawsuits that reached the Supreme Court, and built one of the most reliably conservative congressional delegations in the union. And through all of it, the federal government grew larger, the debt climbed past levels no one can seriously plan to repay, and the rules imposed on Texas multiplied. The strategy of reform has been run for decades. It did not work. It cannot work, and the reason is structural.

The math of reform does not close

Texas sends 38 members to the U.S. House and 2 to the Senate. That is 38 of 435 and 2 of 100. Even when every Texan in Washington votes as one, Texas is outnumbered roughly ten to one in a body designed to be governed by majorities from everywhere else. Reform means convincing California, New York, and the federal bureaucracy to hand power back to Texas voluntarily. They have no reason to, and they never will. You cannot vote your way out of a system in which you are permanently outvoted.

You cannot fix the fire by feeding it more fuel

Every "fix" offered inside the federal system requires going through the federal system, which means more money to Washington, more dependence on Washington, and more power concentrated in Washington. Asking the federal government to limit itself is asking the fire to put itself out. It will take the fuel and grow.

A convention will not save Texas either

Some good people pin their hopes on a convention to amend the U.S. Constitution. Set aside the very real risk of a runaway convention. Even a perfect amendment is only words on paper, and the federal government has spent a century reading plain constitutional words to mean their opposite. The Tenth Amendment is already in the Constitution. It has not restrained Washington. Adding more text to a document Washington already ignores is not a plan.

Independence is the realistic option, not the radical one

The truly unrealistic position is to believe that doing the same thing for another fifty years will produce a different result. Independence is the option that actually puts the decision in reach, because it requires the agreement of only one group of people: Texans. We do not need permission from forty-nine other states or from the federal bureaucracy. We need a vote of the people of Texas. That is the one lever Texans can actually pull.

The bottom line

Reforming Washington asks everyone else to change. Independence asks only Texans to decide. One of those is within our power. The other never has been.