Letter: Balanced budget amendment needed

In the Aug. 9 Economy column, professors Cecil Bohanon and Nick Curott write about our nation’s huge $22 trillion federal debt. Their children and the other children of America will inherit a bankrupt country. The debt can also lead to financial chaos, hyper-inflation, collapse of social welfare programs and the next great depression. Interest alone last year was over $500 billion. Our debt has quadrupled in the past 18 years. It is clearly out of control.

All past legislation, such as Sequestration, PAYGO, and Gramm-Rudman-Hollings, failed. Having a lot of meetings in Washington failed. The only effective and enduring way to prevent national bankruptcy is a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution. The only way to get that amendment is through a convention of the states called under Article V of the Constitution. Twenty-eight of the necessary 34 states have already called for this amendment-drafting convention.

Government debt problems have led many nations to disaster. Debt can bring an economic crash to America also. With federal revenue growing at an average of 5% per year during the last 20 years, no tax increases or spending cuts are necessary to control debt. Slow government growth would work. Yet there is no plan whatsoever in Washington to prevent a crisis. The federal government will borrow more than $1 billion this year, with a good economy and no war spending. However, there is one way to prevent the inevitable national disaster that enormous debt can and will bring to Americans: a constitutional amendment drafted and ratified by the states. Please consider that solution.

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Mark Guyer, states coordinator forLet Us Vote for a Balanced Budget Amendment