Limited Gubmint

I've read a couple places where people are saying we need a Constitutional Amendment to require a limited government.

No.  No we do not.  The constitution itself is such a limiting document.  The situation at hand is government ignoring the limits placed on it by it's constituting authority.  To be fair, the consent of the governed is at fault for letting it do so; but it doesn't change that our government has and is exceeding its authorized bounds.

In all seriousness, read the Constitution.  EDIT: What the US Constitution is is a limiting document; simply it's a listing of the powers that we the people are granting to the FEDERAL government.  No more, no less.  The ninth and tenth amendments are supposed to be reminders of that; the 14th changes to a degree what powers the states are still granted. END EDIT Seriously.  It's not that long at all, really.  It's striking how little there is to it.  There are two things to bear in mind about it, 1. it was not written for a contract lawyer to read and 2. it's meaning is the plain one, no penumbras are intended.  With that in mind, read it again.  Now, pick a government agency and try to figure out where in the constitution the authority to do what that agency does comes from.

An amendment to require the government to limit itself to the Constitutional bounds will be ignored, just as the Constitution itself has been.

Why?

Because there are no consequences to violating the Constitution!  They can ignore it with impunity and they know it!  The absolute worst thing that can happen to one of them is to be removed from office.  Law you've written is found to be unconstitutional, oh well, guess you need to rewrite it and see if it finds a loophole the Supreme Court will accept (cough gun free school zones cough).

What if we amended the constitution to say No Secret Votes in Congress and that laws found to be unconstitutional require the author and sponsor of the bill to be executed for treason.  All those voting for said bill (but not authoring it) are removed from office and may never receive funds from any government source again nor may they work as lobbyists.

A second amendment I would make here is to require the states to ratify Supreme Court appointments and that each state gets one mandatory cert per session.  This lets the people have more of a voice in the proceedings and keeps the court from simply ignoring an issue they don't want to talk about.

The third amendment I propose is repeal of the 17th amendment.  There was a reason the founders had two houses of congress and two different procedures for placing them.

The fourth amendment I'd go for is repeal of the 16th; but income tax bothers me far less if the federal government can be dragged back to it's proscribed limits.  It's not going to take a huge amount of revenue to pay for the small amount of services they're allowed to perform, really.