Given the obscene amount of debt that our nation currently has on its books, it’s really not enough to just balance the budget. If we’re speaking precisely, a budget that is balanced is one where the revenue and expenses are in equilibrium. If you bring in a trillion dollars in a year, then you only spend a trillion that year.
The problem is that we’re twenty-two trillion in the hole. Balancing the budget would be the equivalent of only paying the minimums on our credit card. Yeah, okay, we’re meeting our obligations, but we’re still going to be carrying that debt for years…or decades…or centuries.
Although a balanced budget is, indeed, the long term goal of my campaign, in the first years of our fiscal reform we will need to run a significant surplus. I propose setting spending at an amount at least ten percent less than projected revenue, and spending every cent of the surplus on paying down the national debt.
I will veto any budget bill that comes across my desk that does not meet this goal, or, at minimum, provide a clear path toward reaching that goal in less than four years.