The following was written by COS Regional Captain James Peters. This was originally published in The Daily News-Record.
Once again, our nation faces a reoccurring financial crisis.
The late Paul Harvey famously said, “When your outgo exceeds your income, the upshot may be your downfall.” That is true for families, businesses, and for governments.
When individuals, families, and businesses face financial problems the most common and logical solutions are either to quit spending money or come up with creative ways to bring in more income.
In the government, conservatives try to find ways to cut spending wherever possible and liberals simply demand more taxes from individuals, families, and businesses.
Forty-nine of our fifty states have constitutional amendments that require those states to live within an approved budget.
A balanced budget amendment is a constitutional rule requiring any government to not spend more than its income. It requires a balance between the projected receipts and expenditures of that government.
A state’s budget is passed every year, or every other year in states with a two-year or “biennial” budget.
The budget process occurs during most states’ legislative session, which usually begins in January.
The process starts when the governor submits a proposed budget. Then it proceeds to the state legislature, which has the major authority over the budget’s final form.
Over a few months, legislators review and modify the governor’s proposal and add additional tax and spending measures as they see fit.
All states allow the public to weigh in on the budget with their priorities along the way.
Virginia operates under a two-year — biennial — budget cycle. Each year the governor prepares the proposed budget bill for introduction by the Virginia General Assembly. The bill is initially adopted in even-numbered years and amended in odd-numbered years.
The federal government uses a similar framework for the national budget.
Federal agencies create budget requests and submit them to the White House Office of Management and Budget.
OMB considers the agencies’ requests and then develops a budget proposal for the president.
The president submits the budget proposal to Congress, ideally early the next year.
The proposed funding is divided among 12 subcommittees, which hold hearings. Each subcommittee is responsible for funding different government functions.
The House and the Senate both create their own budget resolutions, which must be negotiated and merged. Both houses must pass a single version of each funding bill. Congress sends the approved funding bills to the president to sign or veto.
Most federal spending bills are openly published and promoted as major federal projects or national needs but then are loaded and bloated with more pork than a stockyard full of hogs.
Many of the federal spending bills being passed by both houses of Congress are packed full of projects few Americans would ever approve given the chance to decide.
Many federal agencies operate as if there is no limit to what they are allowed to spend.
The major difference between state and federal budgets is that those 49 states are required by law to live within their budgets and the feds are not.
Amending our U.S. Constitution to require the federal government to live within a budget would go a long way in solving the debt ceiling deadlocks that happen no matter who is occupying the White House.
Any intelligent person knows that Congress will never limit its “power of the purse” by proposing an amendment to make them live within a budget.
Using an Article V convention of the states can make this happen.
Our Founding Fathers gave you and me, through our state legislatures, a precious gift in Article V of our U.S. Constitution and we need to use it to save our country from an out-of-control federal government.
How nice it would be to never again have to fight over a massive increase to our federal debt ceiling, which has for decades been totally out of control.
It is not fair to leave our children and grandchildren with our present debt of over $31.8 trillion.
China holds more than $1.1 trillion and Japan holds more than $1.2 trillion of the U.S. national debt. You can check our real-time, ever-growing national debt at usdebtclock.org.
It is scary!
Write to your state legislators and ask them to support the Convention of States’ grassroots effort to reign in our runaway federal debt.
Sign the petition at conventionofstates.com and let your state senators and state delegates know they have the power to save our country from financial failure through an Article V convention.
Remember, Congress has no authority to ratify any amendments to our constitution, that ratification power is and always has been totally in the hands of our 50 states’ legislatures.
