CONGRESS IS THE PROBLEM WITH U.S. DEBT - NOT THE SOLUTION

Congress isn't the solution to national debt, it's the problem. States may prove the hero.
By John Solomon
Since I arrived in Washington in 1991 as a young investigative reporter, I have watched the national debt explode tenfold. It was $3.6 trillion that year I arrived. This year it will blow past $37 trillion.

When our Founding Fathers created this country, they gave Congress the power of the purse string. They did so because they believed the institution closest to the people would be the best steward of their monies.

But the last two generations of lawmakers have grossly abused that power in ways our founders could never have imagined. Today's House members and senators are too far detached from the people and too deeply entangled with the special interests that fund their campaigns to appreciate the harm their fiscal recklessness has unleashed.

Today, they’ve been comfortable adding $2 trillion of debt per year, a crushing liability that my great great grandchildren who I will never meet will be forced to carry. Our Founders - who were businessmen like farmers, candlemakers, publishers, and entrepreneurs — could not possibly imagine a Congress comfortable burdening future generations with such crushing debt.

And that debt is beginning to have a profound effect. Its interest payments are eating up more and more of each year’s budget. It’s making institutions less eager to buy American bonds, something that has seldom happened in our storied history. It’s causing the great credit, faith and trust of the American government to be downgraded. It’s deflating the dollar and causing foreign central banks, and even American states, to turn to gold as a back up. Finally, it is giving the enemies of America like China great comfort that one day soon we will be knocked off the hill where our shining city has burned so brightly as a beacon of freedom for the rest of the world.

Such warning signs would have shamed and embarrassed earlier generations of Americans. But not this generation or its members of Congress. They actually believe saving $200 billion a year of the recent $2 trillion annual explosion in federal spending is a success story. Everyday Americans with even a rudimentary math education know that is not success. It is a recipe for failure.

Yesterday I gave a speech to the National Association of Christian Lawmakers at Liberty University. Four decades ago, Ronald Reagan said government isn’t the solution. It’s the problem. Yesterday I suggested Congress isn’t the solution to the debt crisis, it’s the problem.

The real solution are the states and their ability to exercise their powers of federalism to rein in a debt-mongering central federal government, and it wayward purse string holders. They can join forces with President Trump in the aftermath of the Big Beautiful Bill and commandeer the debate, the action and the debt crisis, I hope you enjoy watching the remarks I made.