Fiscal Responsibility

Both parties have been fiscally irresponsible for far too long. And arguably, the ones who run as fiscal conservatives—the Republicans—have been worse, as they keep lowering taxes while spending more, increasing the velocity of what will be an eventual catastrophe.

Democrats are no better, proposing expansive programs without realistic funding mechanisms. The Common Sense Party believes the budget must balance. If you want to spend, show where the money comes from. If you want to cut taxes, show what you'll cut to pay for it.

But saying "balance the budget" isn't enough. You need the tools to actually do it. That's why we will pursue three concrete fiscal reforms:

Rescission Authority: Every year, billions of dollars in wasteful spending get buried as amendments and earmarks inside must-pass bills. The GAO's annual Duplication & Cost Savings report identifies tens of billions in overlap, waste, and inefficiency year after year—and Congress ignores it year after year. Legislators attach pet projects and pork-barrel spending knowing nobody will torpedo an entire bill over a few line items. We will aggressively use rescission—the president's power to propose canceling specific appropriations and send them back to Congress for an up-or-down vote—to attack the most ridiculous wastes of taxpayer money. No more hiding behind omnibus bills. Every dollar should be defensible on its own merits.

Line-Item Veto Amendment: We will pursue a constitutional amendment granting the president a true line-item veto—the ability to strike individual spending provisions from a bill without vetoing the entire piece of legislation. Forty-four governors already have this power. It's common sense that the president should too. The Supreme Court struck down a statutory version in 1998, which is exactly why it needs to be done right—as a constitutional amendment that gives the executive a real check on Congressional spending without overstepping separation of powers.

Balanced Budget Amendment: We will pursue a constitutional amendment requiring that the federal government not spend more than it takes in. The national debt has blown past $39 trillion and is growing by roughly $8 billion every single day. The CBO projects deficits of $1.9 trillion this year alone, with debt reaching 120% of GDP by 2036. Neither party has the discipline to stop it voluntarily. A balanced budget amendment would force the hard choices that politicians on both sides have ducked for decades—because when balancing the books is the law, "we'll deal with it later" is no longer an option.

The Cost of Doing Nothing

If the numbers above feel abstract, here's one that shouldn't: the United States now spends approximately $3 billion per day just on interest payments on the national debt. That's $88 billion a month. Over $1 trillion a year. Not building roads. Not funding schools. Not strengthening national defense. Not helping a single American. Just paying interest on money we've already spent.

To put that in perspective: interest on the debt now exceeds both national defense spending and Medicare. The only federal program that costs more is Social Security. We are spending more to service our past borrowing than we spend to defend the country. That's not a talking point—it's an emergency.

And it's accelerating. Interest costs have tripled since 2020, rising from $345 billion to over $1 trillion in just six years. The CBO projects they'll reach $2.1 trillion per year by 2036—meaning net interest payments alone will total $16.2 trillion over the next decade. Every dollar of that is money we're burning just to tread water on debt that neither party is willing to address.

Think about what $1 trillion a year could do if it wasn't going to bondholders. That's enough to make Social Security solvent for generations. Enough to rebuild every deficient bridge and highway in America. Enough to eliminate the federal gas tax and still have money left over. Instead, it vanishes into interest payments—the most expensive line item in the budget that produces absolutely nothing for the American people.

Every year we wait to address this, the interest compounds, the debt grows, and the cost of fixing it gets larger. We are borrowing money to pay interest on money we already borrowed. There is a word for that when individuals do it: bankruptcy. When nations do it, the consequences are even worse.

The Deficit Track Record: Rhetoric vs. Reality

The gap between fiscal rhetoric and fiscal reality has never been wider. The current administration came into office promising fiscal conservatism, but the numbers tell a different story.

During the first Trump term (2017–2021), the national debt grew from $19.9 trillion to $27.8 trillion—an increase of roughly $7.8 trillion in four years. Yes, COVID-19 drove a significant share of that spending. But even before the pandemic, the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act was projected by the CBO to add $1.9 trillion to the deficit over a decade, and pre-COVID deficits were already climbing sharply.

The second term has accelerated the trajectory. The national debt has crossed $39 trillion. The "One Big, Beautiful Bill" signed into law is projected to increase the deficit by $4.7 trillion between 2026 and 2035. Combined with tariff disruptions and reduced immigration (which lowers tax revenue), the CBO has revised its ten-year cumulative deficit projection upward by $1.4 trillion compared to just a year ago.

Across both terms, this administration will have added approximately $12 trillion to the national debt—the largest increase under any president in American history, in absolute terms. The CBO projects deficits reaching $3.1 trillion annually by 2036, with debt-to-GDP rising to 175% over the next 30 years.

We're not making this a partisan attack. Democrats have been equally irresponsible over the decades—expanding programs without realistic funding, resisting entitlement reform, and treating the debt as someone else's problem. But claiming the mantle of fiscal conservatism while presiding over the fastest debt accumulation in history is a level of disconnect that needs to be called out. By either party.

The Dollar's Privileged Position—and What We're Risking

There's a reason the United States has been able to run up $39 trillion in debt without (so far) facing the kind of fiscal crisis that has destroyed other nations: the U.S. dollar is the world's primary reserve currency. That means foreign governments, central banks, and global institutions hold massive amounts of dollars and U.S. Treasury securities as the foundation of their financial systems. When the world needs a stable, trusted currency for international trade, commodities pricing, and reserve holdings, they use dollars.

This gives America an enormous advantage that most people don't fully appreciate. Because global demand for dollars is built into the structure of international finance, we can borrow at lower interest rates than our fiscal situation would otherwise justify. Countries keep buying our debt not necessarily because our finances are sound, but because the dollar is the default. It's the financial equivalent of being the only gas station for 500 miles—you can charge more than you should because people have no alternative.

But that privilege is not permanent, and we are actively eroding it. The dollar's share of global foreign exchange reserves has fallen from 71% in 2001 to roughly 56% today—the lowest level since 1994. Central banks around the world are quietly diversifying into other currencies, into gold, and into alternative financial arrangements that reduce their dependence on the dollar. China, Russia, Brazil, India, Saudi Arabia, and dozens of other nations are actively building payment systems and trade agreements designed to bypass the dollar entirely.

This isn't happening because of some coordinated conspiracy against America. It's happening because the rest of the world is watching us run trillion-dollar deficits, rack up $39 trillion in debt, and engage in political dysfunction that periodically threatens to blow up the global financial system through debt ceiling standoffs and government shutdowns. They're diversifying because they're not sure they can trust us to manage our own finances responsibly anymore. And honestly? Can you blame them?

What Happens If We Lose It

Here's the scenario that should keep every American up at night—and that neither party is willing to discuss honestly.

If the dollar loses its status as the world's primary reserve currency, the consequences for a nation carrying $39 trillion in debt would be catastrophic. Not gradually uncomfortable. Not "we'll adjust." Catastrophic.

Interest rates would spike. Right now, global demand for dollars keeps our borrowing costs artificially low. Without that demand, we'd have to offer significantly higher interest rates to attract buyers for our debt. If the average interest rate on U.S. debt rose even 2-3 percentage points, our annual interest bill—already over $1 trillion—could double. That's an additional trillion dollars a year in interest, with no corresponding benefit to the American people. The federal budget would become mathematically impossible to balance without either gutting every major program or raising taxes to levels that would crush economic growth.

The dollar would lose purchasing power rapidly. Currency devaluation isn't an abstract concept—it means everything you buy gets more expensive. Imported goods, energy, electronics, food, raw materials—anything that touches the global supply chain would see price increases that would make recent inflation look mild. Your savings would buy less. Your paycheck would stretch shorter. Fixed-income retirees living on Social Security and pensions would be devastated. The middle class, which both parties claim to champion and neither actually protects, would bear the worst of it.

Inflation would accelerate beyond the Fed's control. When a currency weakens, the central bank faces an impossible choice: raise interest rates to defend the currency (which would choke the economy and make the government's own debt even more expensive to service) or keep rates low and let inflation run (which destroys household purchasing power). This is the trap that countries like Argentina, Turkey, and Venezuela have fallen into. The United States has never been in that trap because we've always had the reserve currency advantage as a backstop. Remove that backstop, and we're navigating without a safety net for the first time in modern history.

America's global influence would collapse. The dollar's reserve status underpins our ability to impose sanctions, project economic influence, and maintain global alliances. Without it, our leverage in international negotiations diminishes dramatically. Countries that currently cooperate with American economic policy because they need access to the dollar system would no longer have that incentive. The geopolitical implications are as severe as the economic ones.

None of this is inevitable. The dollar is still by far the world's dominant currency, and no single alternative is positioned to replace it tomorrow. But the erosion is real, it's measurable, and it's accelerating—and every year of trillion-dollar deficits, every debt ceiling crisis, every government shutdown, and every signal that America can't get its fiscal house in order pushes the world a little further toward building a financial system that doesn't depend on us.

We are spending down the most valuable financial asset any nation has ever possessed—the trust of the world in our currency—to avoid the short-term political pain of balancing a budget. That is not just irresponsible. It is generational theft on a scale that makes every other policy debate look trivial by comparison.