A Balanced Budget Amendment Is Long Overdue

Remember those simple math problems our teachers gave us back in grade school?

“Johnny has $1.00 and apples cost 25 cents each. How many apples can Johnny afford to buy?”

Simple question and simple answer, right? The correct – and only – answer is four. Unless, of course, you are a member of the United States Congress.

In that case, it is a multiple-choice question, and there is no limit to the number of possible answers, including the following:

1. Buy four apples now and borrow another quarter from a classmate at 20% interest compounded daily so you can purchase a fifth apple (even though you’re really not that hungry and have no intention of eating it).

2. Order 10 apples, one for each school day for the next two weeks and pay for them via a high-interest installment plan… and so what if some of them go bad?

3. Complain that the cost of apples is being artificially manipulated by price-gouging capitalists who want to destroy the planet.

4. Skip the store and visit the local food bank where free apples are handed out to everyone at taxpayers’ expense. Then pocket the $1.00 and use it to pay for gender-reassignment surgery.

For the past 42 years, I have worked in the non-profit sector. First, as a department head at a continuing care retirement community (CCRC) and then as founder and executive director of two different Christian ministries.

Rule #1 in the nonprofit world is you can’t spend money that you don’t have. In other words, you base your budget on last year’s actuals – plus or minus – and manage your income and expenses accordingly.

Oh, that Uncle Sam would operate that way!

Instead, the power brokers inside the Washington Beltway, very few of whom have real-life business experience, treat money as an inexhaustible resource. I guess in some ways it is, because when it runs out, the federal government simply prints and/or borrows more.

There’s an old adage that says, “When you find yourself in a hole, stop digging.” However, the career politicians in Washington simply reach for a bigger shovel, which is why America is $36 trillion in debt and for the first time ever, the interest on our national debt exceeds our entire defense budget.

Here’s some perspective on the size of the hole we’re in…

• Our national debt exceeds the combined economies of China, Germany, Japan, India, and the United Kingdom.

• Our national debt equates to $274,000 per U.S. household and $107,000 per U.S. resident.

• If every American household contributed $1,000 per month to pay off the national debt, it would take 23 years to do so.

• $36 trillion is enough to pay for a 4-year college education for every graduating high school senior for the next 106 years.

Just how much is a trillion?

• A trillion dollar bills would reach 67,866 miles into space. Now multiply that by 36.

• A trillion dollar bills, laid end to end, would stretch 96,906,656 miles – further than the distance of the earth to the sun. Once again, multiply that by 36.

• A trillion dollars laid side to side, would cover more square miles than the states of Rhode Island and Delaware combined… times 36.

• It would take 478 tractor-trailers to transport a trillion dollars on skids. Unloaded, they would fill a football field from sideline to sideline, and almost goal line to goal line (x 36).

• At a spending rate of $40/second, it would take 792.5 years to blow through one trillion dollars… or 28,530 years to waste $36 trillion… and yet the United States is only 249 years old.

Thankfully, in the State of Florida, we have a governor who is intent not only on balancing our state’s budget, but also on showing the rest of the country how to do it. That’s why Ron DeSantis traveled to Idaho last week to meet with Gov. Brad Little and to Montana to chat with Gov. Greg Gianforte. Together, these three Republican governors are pushing for a constitutional balanced budget amendment… and I, for one, say it is about time!

Here in the Sunshine State, our state legislature is currently in session. One of the final legislative hurdles is reconciling the Senate’s $117.36 billion proposed budget with the House’s $112.9 billion proposal. Both budgets are below the adjusted revenue total of $118.6 billion for the current year.

Did you catch that? The FL State Senate is proposing a budget surplus of $1.24 billion while the State House is holding out for a $5.7 billion surplus. Meanwhile, the House budget also calls for a decrease in the state sales tax from 6% to 5.25%.

Tax cuts and a budget surplus… it CAN be done! All it takes is for responsible officeholders to start getting serious about eliminating waste, fraud, and unnecessary spending. Yes, the very same things that President Trump and Elon Musk are desperately trying to implement on the federal level. Unfortunately, they are running into one roadblock after another placed there by Democrats, special interest groups, career bureaucrats, activist judges, and the mainstream media.

In other words, the Deep State… which is really good at digging ever deeper holes.

And so, the only alternative is to pass a constitutional balanced budget amendment which would, in effect, wrestle the shovel out of their collective clutches while restoring fiscal sanity to Washington D.C.

The best way to help an alcoholic is to lock the liquor cabinet and compulsive spenders can’t be trusted with a VISA card. Simply put, the United States Congress is addicted to spending and if they won’t admit it and seek help, then We the People must cut up their credit cards for them.