“When Washington Won’t act, “We the People” Must!”

Guest Editorial by Tom Luna

In the coming days, the Idaho Senate will vote on a resolution supporting a Balanced Budget Amendment (BBA) using the authority given “We the People” under Article V of the U.S. Constitution.

It’s the same amendment Ronald Reagan called for back in 1982. Reagan warned about the catastrophic consequences of unchecked national spending and debt, he concluded:

“I now believe that a constitutional amendment requiring a balanced budget is the only way to restore fiscal discipline in Washington.” Ronald Reagan, 1982

Now Idaho has the opportunity to follow Reagan’s counsel. The Idaho House has already passed the BBA resolution, now it’s the Senate’s turn.

This isn’t symbolic. It isn’t radical. It’s a sober, constitutional response to a Congress that has talked for forty years and done nothing, all the while burying future generations under a mountain of debt.

I wasn’t always a fiscal conservative.

In 1980, the first year I could vote for president, I was at a friend’s house when a Ronald Reagan campaign ad came on TV. I said, “I don’t think I’ll vote for Reagan. I heard he wants to cut some government program.”

My friend’s father looked up and asked, “Where do you think the money for that program comes from?”

“From the government,” I said.

“And where does the government get its money?”

I didn’t know. No one had ever asked me that.

Two hours later, I left that house a dyed-in-the-wool Reagan Republican and a fiscal conservative. Once I understood that every dollar Washington spends ultimately comes from the people, I never saw government spending the same way again.

When Reagan was elected in 1980, the national debt was under $1 trillion.

It took the United States more than 200 years: through the Revolutionary War, the Civil War, two world wars, and the Great Depression, to reach that number.

Then something broke.

By 2000, the debt had exploded to $5 trillion. No world wars. No Great Depression. Just business as usual in Washington.

Fast-forward another twenty-six years: the national debt now stands at $37 trillion and is sprinting toward $40 trillion.

Today, federal deficits are nearly $2 TRILLION A YEAR! Think about it: it took our country over 200 years to accumulate 1 trillion in debt and today annual deficits are two times that amount.

That’s not an accident. It’s not partisan. It’s a systemic failure.

For more than four decades, Republican party platforms have supported a Balanced Budget Amendment.

• 1980s: “We call for a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution”

• 1992: “We vigorously support a balanced budget constitutional amendment.”

• 1996: “We believe in a balanced budget amendment.”

• 2000, 2012, 2020: the same call, repeated again and again.

Forty years of talk.

Forty years of lip service.

Forty years of failure.

And it hasn’t mattered who’s in control, Republican or Democrat. Deficits grow. Debt soars.

Washington spends as if arithmetic no longer applies and today’s annual deficits of nearly $2 trillion are the largest in our nation’s history.

This is exactly why the Founder Fathers put Article V in the US Constitution.

Article V isn’t a threat to the Constitution; it is in the Constitution.

It’s the safety valve our Founding Founders created for moments like this, when Congress refuses to act. It empowers the states, We the People, to step in when Washington won’t fulfill its duty.

There is no clearer case of congressional malpractice than $37 trillion in debt.

This amounts to generational theft, one generation stealing from the next, robbing their prosperity, their freedom, and their future.

No generation in American history has done more to shackle the next generation.

Support for a Balanced Budget Amendment spans the conservative movement: Donald Trump, JD Vance, Marco Rubio, Governor Brad Little, Lieutenant Governor Scott Bedke, Mike Huckabee, and every sitting Republican governor in the country.

That is good company.

Opposition, meanwhile, comes from the usual suspects: the Democratic National Committee, the American Socialist Party, the John Birch Society, and every Democratic governor in the nation.

The Idaho House has already acted. Now the Senate must do the same.

For the sake of our children and grandchildren, I urge you to contact your State Senator and ask them to stand up for fiscal responsibility and join the call for a Balanced Budget Amendment and use Article V to make it happen.

This approach is consistent.

It’s constitutional.

It’s conservative.

And it’s long overdue.

About the Author
Tom Luna is the Past Chairman of the Idaho Republican Party and Former Idaho State Superintendent of Public Education.