Dakota Beacon

Recently former Democratic legislator Tom Fiebiger wrote a letter to the editor chiding US Congressman Rick Berg for supporting a balanced budget amendment to the US Constitution.  Given the uncontrolled spending by Congress and the unaffordable $14 trillion debt our citizens are carrying I worry that people just don’t grasp the seriousness of the situation.  Congress continues to increase spending, add new programs and pile on more debt without regard to the precarious financial position in which it puts our country.

Any legislator’s job is to spend available revenue for the good of the people, but unless there is a control mechanism like a balanced budget requirement, it is too easy to spend more than we have thinking that we can just bring it back into balance in the future.  But we see how reckless this attitude is when all of a sudden we wake up one day facing a debt that is unaffordable and say, “what in the world happened?”

Well, what happened is we spent more than we took in.  And we did it over and over again, year after year until people are now standing up and saying---“ enough!” 

 I have seen firsthand how budgeteers totally disregard standard accounting practices and common sense spending policies just so they can pat themselves on the back and say “I did a good job.”  They develop tricks and schemes with the budgets and sometimes downright deceptions so we can’t follow the money.  And they can do so because there is nothing holding them accountable to living within our means. Take away the budget games and we find out that every year since 1969 our government has spent more than its income. For the last 42 years Congress has not delivered a balanced budget---not even once!

President Obama is delivering the current budget with a $1.6 billion deficit and he projects trillion dollar deficits into 2020 and beyond.  We are digging ourselves into a financial hole that might be too deep to ever climb out of.  Our only chance is to balance our budgets and the time to start is now.   

When Fiebiger was a legislator, he always had to fight the North Dakota budget into balance because he was required to do so.  Why would he not want our Federal Government to operate under the same controls?  He says, “Congress can choose to balance the budget” and he is right, they can.  But they don’t and they won’t.  Fiebiger says “it’s been done before” and he is right.  But unfortunately, Congress has only carried that discipline for brief periods of time and then fell right back into the cavalier spending attitudes that have brought our country to the brink of bankruptcy.

Congressman Rick Berg understands the necessity of a balanced government budget, just like each one of us does with our own personal finances.  And he should pursue a constitutionally required balanced budget---it is the right thing to do for the financial health of our country.