Rand Paul is Exactly Right: Demand a Balanced Budget Amendment

By Todd Cefaratti
Editor of TPNN

In early December 2012, Tea Party leaders met with conservative Republican Congressional leaders to offer 160,000 signed petitions, each demanding that no tax increases occur as a result of fiscal cliff negotiations. We met with several GOP leaders; among them was Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky.

Rand Paul was on Fox News’ Greta Van Susteren and she asked if there were any scenarios where he would vote to raise the debt ceiling. Paul responded,

“I would raise the debt ceiling on one condition and that would be a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution. Barring that, people in Congress, those who I’ve met up here they don’t deserve to manage any more money. They’re doing a bad job managing the money they have. We should not send them any more money. They’re not to be trusted with money, so I wouldn’t extend their borrowing. And so we need to be limited in borrowing so that we’re limited in our spending.”

Brilliant! What a novel and radical idea! Who would have thought that the continued accumulation of national debt could be cured by government living within its means?

While Senator Paul is dead-on and I applaud him for having the tenacity to uncompromisingly stand by a firm position that needs to happen, the fact is that this is really common sense stuff, people.

Many of us have credit cards. We have them for emergencies or for the ability to make things a little more manageable when things are tight. However, even the most basic understanding of economics suggests that if someone continually maxed out credit cards over and over again, asking for credit limit raises and starting new lines of credit, that system of frenzied borrowing would not last. You cannot borrow money forever; eventually, you must pay it back.

While on an individual level, liberal lawmakers likely know that living off a credit card and spending with reckless disregard for the future is a bad idea, they still crusade to raise the debt ceiling and do nothing meaningful to reduce the deficit by cutting spending. It’s maddening.

I am happy to see the hardline Republicans holding the line on what is such an important issue. We cannot continually borrow money and expect to get out of the hole we’re in until we drastically reduce spending. America needs a balanced budget amendment to ensure that government lives within its means.