Florida governor makes Idaho stop to advocate for balanced budget amendment

BOISE — Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis made an appearance at the Idaho State Capitol on Thursday in a national effort advocating for states to support a balanced budget resolution.   

DeSantis was flanked by the state House Majority Leader Mike Moyle and Senate Majority Leader Kelly Anthon, who offered support for a proposed amendment to the U.S. Constitution requiring a balanced federal budget.

DeSantis said the national debt is bipartisan, having risen from around $14 trillion 15 years ago to about $38 trillion today.

“You had both Republicans and Democrats that have controlled Congress over that period of time, and yet the results continue to be similar,” DeSantis said. “I’m convinced that you're not going to see this turn around unless you have some constitutional constraints on the ability of Congress to drive us deeper into debt.”

Introducing the proposed amendment requires two-thirds of state legislatures (34) to pass resolutions calling for a constitutional convention. It takes 38 states (three-quarters) to ratify it. Congress has never convened a constitutional convention in this manner in its history.

With 28 states already signed, DeSantis said he expects Congress will see the “writing on the wall” and will write an amendment themselves and propose it for ratification. Without a pressure campaign encouraging action from Congress, DeSantis said he did not expect a course correction from the nation’s “looming insolvency.”

“We need to have a balanced budget in our Constitution,” Anthon said. “And this is something we've known in Idaho, and we've done in Idaho for a long time: to balance our budget.” 

Moyle said he wasn’t aware of any other mechanism that would get Congress to rein in its ongoing budget deficits.

“We've proven in Idaho, you can do it,” Moyle said. “You’re going to see this year we're going to cut taxes, we're going to trim budgets.”

Unlike the federal government, the Idaho State Constitution precludes the state from running a deficit. The state still finds itself in its own budget quagmire following more than $400 million in tax cuts passed in the previous session.

State revenues that fell short of projections led Gov. Brad Little to implement agency spending holdbacks last year and to propose a variety of cuts earlier this month to avoid a deficit in the coming fiscal years. These include cuts to Medicaid services, reductions in transportation project investment and holding state employee wages flat, as previously reported by the Idaho Press.

Though not the focus of the press conference, DeSantis also voiced support for another amendment proposal that would set term limits for members of Congress, an issue he described as inseparable from the current national debt landscape. 

“I actually think these both go together,” DeSantis said, “because I think part of the reason Congress passes the buck and adds to the deficit is because that's the path of least resistance (to) them getting reelected.”

DeSantis responded to concerns voiced during his previous appearance at the Capitol in March of last year. At the time, there was concern that calling for a convention to propose an amendment could result in a “runaway convention” lacking guardrails on what could or couldn’t be changed within the U.S. Constitution.

He said Thursday that while states can initiate the convention process, Congress must call for a convention before 38 states ratify any amendments proposed.

“That’s not an easy thing to do,” DeSantis said. “I think the only issues you can do it on are things that transcend some of the normal partisan cleavages.”

Idaho House lawmakers rejected a resolution last year calling for a constitutional convention to introduce a balanced budget requirement, congressional term limits and add restrictions on the federal government’s jurisdiction, as was reported by the Idaho Capital Sun.

DeSantis previously stated he expected a resolution limited to a balanced budget requirement would garner more support.

If Idaho were to adopt the resolution advocated for by DeSantis this year, it would be the 29th state to do so, a press release for the event said. DeSantis’s appearance in Idaho comes much earlier in the session than the year prior, leaving time for introducing such a resolution if there is sufficient interest among legislators.