The Seriousness We've Lost

Political campaigns are chock full of promises. The federal budget is where promises collide with reality.

I’ve spent a lot of my career immersed in budgets. And not because I love spreadsheets - though business school certainly taught me to appreciate a good one - but because budgets force us to ask: What are we actually willing to prioritize?

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Every budget reflects tradeoffs. Every dollar spent is a dollar that can’t be spent somewhere else - or must be borrowed and paid for later. That’s what makes budgeting difficult and what makes it one of the most honest exercises in governing.

Unfortunately, Washington has lost sight of the seriousness budgeting requires. That’s part of why I’m running for Congress, because our country can’t afford more political games and more of the same.

Instead of serving as a roadmap for governing, the federal budget has become another arena for political warfare. Politicians constantly present us with false choices: fiscal responsibility or Social Security, a strong military or a strong middle class, economic growth or environmental stewardship. They seem to imply that the only way they can responsibly govern is choosing one priority at the expense of another.

That’s not how good budgeting works. Budgets force discipline and require policymakers to weigh competing priorities and acknowledge opportunity costs. They should force our leaders to make transparent decisions about how they’re using our tax dollars.

Early in my career, I worked with the Campaign to Fix the Debt, where we advocated for bipartisan cooperation on our country’s long-term fiscal challenges. Even then, the deficit demanded serious attention. Today, those warnings feel a lot more urgent - and not just because the numbers have grown, but because Washington seems less willing than ever to confront them.

We can’t borrow indefinitely without consequences. Rising interest payments consume resources that could otherwise be invested in infrastructure, education, national security - the list goes on. Every additional dollar spent servicing debt reduces our flexibility to respond to future challenges. Every time Congress delays difficult fiscal decisions, it leaves future Congresses - and future generations - paying the bill.

Fiscal responsibility isn’t about reflexively cutting spending, nor is it about defending every existing program. It’s about asking difficult questions about every dollar. Are defense procurement programs delivering value? Are corporate tax expenditures producing measurable public benefits? Are federal programs achieving the outcomes they were created to achieve? Are we measuring success in 2026 correctly?

Those kinds of questions aren’t political, and they don’t belong to Republicans or Democrats. Those questions are the foundation of responsible budgeting. But in today’s budget spectacle, Congress applies different standards depending on whether it already supports a particular program. Spending a party favors becomes an investment. Spending the other party favors becomes waste.

Real fiscal discipline requires intellectual consistency. No agency should be immune from being evaluated. No tax preference should exist forever simply because it has influential defenders. Every part of the federal budget should be examined using the same standard: Is it accomplishing what taxpayers are paying for?

Consider one example from the current debate. While Social Security faces projected trust fund shortfalls in the early 2030s, the White House’s 2027 budget proposal has called for increasing defense spending from roughly $1 trillion annually toward $1.5 trillion over the coming years. The same proposal calls for significantly reducing funding for agencies like the Bureau of Labor Statistics, whose data helps businesses, workers, economists, investors, and policymakers understand the health of our economy.

The point isn’t whether the Defense Department, the Bureau of Labor Statistics, or any other agency should be immune from scrutiny, because they shouldn’t be. The point is whether we’re willing to apply the same standard everywhere. Are we getting good value? Is a program accomplishing what taxpayers are paying for? And what are we giving up by allocating resources here instead of somewhere else?

That’s what responsible stewardship looks like. And it’s something Washington has lost the plot on.

That’s because budget debates in Congress now revolve around political identity instead of measurable outcomes. Success is defined by whether one side defeated the other rather than whether taxpayers received better value. And disciplined budgeting becomes very difficult in a system where every dollar has a constituency. Campaign fundraising and well-funded special interests reward politicians protecting favored programs or tax preferences instead of objectively evaluating whether they still work.

I hear frustration over this issue all the time - across party affiliations - but especially among voters who describe themselves to me as “fiscally conservative” or “deficit hawks” but feel like both parties have failed to take our fiscal challenges seriously. People tell me they’re worried about our long-term fiscal outlook and about what we’re leaving our kids and grandkids. Budget debates have become performative - more about producing the next viral social media clip or fundraising email than making principled decisions about the country’s future.

The consequences of all this extend far beyond Washington. Deficits don’t care who controls Congress. Interest payments don’t distinguish between political parties. Eventually, the math catches up.

And look, that doesn’t mean balancing the budget should be Congress’s only objective. We have real obligations: to our kids, to seniors, to veterans, to families, to national security, to scientific innovation, to economic growth. But those commitments make disciplined budgeting even more important, not less. We have to weigh every new priority alongside existing commitments.

The federal budget isn’t a partisan scorecard. It’s one of the most important responsibilities Congress has. We elect leaders to wrestle with competing priorities and explain their choices transparently, not to reduce every budget debate to another political fight.

Work like the federal budget work was never supposed to be easy. It deserves the kind of seriousness we’ve lost.

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