Congress has been stealing from your grandchildren for decades.
Now one governor is going state to state to make them stop – and Washington is hoping nobody notices.
And Ron DeSantis stood in front of the Kentucky House this week and delivered a message that every man and woman in that chamber knew was true but hadn't heard anyone say out loud with this kind of urgency.
The Clock Is Running Out
The national debt just crossed $37 trillion.
Interest payments on that debt will top $1 trillion this year – and double to $2.1 trillion by 2036.
Social Security runs dry in 2032.
You read that right.
The country your grandkids will inherit looks like a company that already filed for bankruptcy, still swiping the credit card.
DeSantis didn't come to Kentucky to talk about his next campaign – he came because there's exactly one constitutional mechanism left that can force Congress to stop the bleeding.
https://twitter.com/GovRonDeSantis/status/2024157921353875780?s=20
Twenty-eight states have already called for an Article V convention specifically to amend the Constitution and require a balanced federal budget.
Thirty-four states trigger the convention.
Thirty-eight ratify the amendment and it becomes the law of the land – permanently.
Kentucky is state twenty-nine if they vote yes, and DeSantis made clear to legislators that he needs them.
"The first Republican President was born in Kentucky," he told the chamber, invoking Lincoln's famous line about needing the Bluegrass State on his side.
Same stakes now.
Why Congress Will Never Fix This On Its Own
Here's what the political class doesn't want you to understand.
Congress isn't going to balance the budget.
Not this Congress.
Not the next one.
Not ever – unless the Constitution forces them.
Every family in America lives within their means.
Every state but one has a balanced budget requirement written into its own constitution.
Only Washington gets to spend money it doesn't have, year after year, with no consequences.
https://twitter.com/GovRonDeSantis/status/2024138633268048081?s=20
DeSantis has now taken this fight to Montana, Idaho, and Kentucky – doing the unglamorous work of lobbying individual state legislatures while Florida's own legislative session runs without him.
Ronald Reagan understood this exact playbook.
Back in the 1980s, when state legislatures were closing in on the 34-state threshold for a balanced budget convention, Congress panicked and passed the Gramm-Rudman deficit reduction law.
The pressure from the states worked without a single convention being held.
DeSantis is betting the same dynamic plays out again.
"Once there's momentum behind this, Congress sees the writing on the wall – I do think they would write an amendment and send it to the states for ratification," he said.
What's Actually On The Line
Kentucky's Democrat Governor Andy Beshear spent his week taking a shot at DeSantis on The Daily Show.
Jon Stewart asked Beshear which governor he'd least want to share an elevator with.
Beshear named DeSantis.
DeSantis shrugged it off.
"A guy that sends state police to try to block people from worshipping on Easter Sunday, a guy that's obsessed with gender mutilation of minors – if that's the person criticizing me, I wear that as a badge of honor."
He's not wrong.
https://twitter.com/TheDailyShow/status/2023427402957770910?s=20
But here's the bigger picture.
The people fighting to stop this amendment – the Beshears, the Schumers, the Democrats in state houses across the country – know exactly what a balanced budget requirement does to their agenda.
No more blank checks for Green New Deal spending.
No more trillion-dollar COVID slush funds.
No more buying votes with borrowed money.
That's why they fight it, and that's exactly why this fight matters.
The CBO projected just last week that the federal government will add $24.4 trillion in new debt over the next decade – and that your grandchildren's Social Security trust fund runs dry by 2032.
Sources:
- A.G. Gancarski, "Ron DeSantis rallies Kentucky legislators to back federal Balanced Budget Amendment," Florida Politics, February 18, 2026.
- Joseph Garcia and Isaiah Kim-Martinez, "Ron DeSantis shrugs off Andy Beshear's late-night jab," WHAS11, February 18, 2026.
- James Comer, "It's Time to Finally Balance America's Budget," Lexington Herald-Leader via Congressman Comer's Office, January 2026.
- Idaho Governor's Office, "Gov. Little hosts Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis to push for balanced budget amendment," March 2025.
- Montana Governor's Office, "Governors Gianforte, DeSantis Promote Balanced Budget Amendment," 2025.
- Congressional Budget Office, "The Budget and Economic Outlook: 2026 to 2036," February 11, 2026.
