nal debt just hit 40 TRILLION DOLLARS!" some guy tweeted on August 19. "This is bad. Congress needs to get spending under control and BALANCE THE BUDGET. Americans deserve better."
That does sound like a good idea. But coming from US Senator Rick Scott (R-FL), it's just hot air.
A "Readers added context they thought people might want to know" below the tweet informs us that "Scott voted for the One Big Beautiful Bill Act which raised the statutory debt limit by $5 trillion and is projected by CBO to increase deficits by $3.4 trillion over 10 years."
That vote is not an outlier.
Over the course of Scott's relatively short career in the US Senate -- he took office in 2019 and is now in his second term -- he's voted for trillions of dollars in deficit spending, especially military spending.
Since Scott took office, the US government's debt has gone from $16 trillion to $40 trillion.
His party has controlled the US Senate throughout his tenure, and the House of Representatives for about half of that tenure.
Not one thin dime gets borrowed or spent unless the both the House and Senate pass a bill, and the margins are often close enough that one or two votes -- including Scott's -- decide the outcome.
Scott's perennial "someone should do something!" tweets on the debt might be good politics, but even a cursory look at his actions demonstrates that he's someone NOT doing something.
If he was serious on the subject, he'd introduce a balanced budget amendment to the US Constitution, and predicate all his future votes on whether or not the Senate and House have approved that amendment and sent it to the states for ratification. If they haven't, he votes against spending, full stop.
Which, frankly, would be better politics than all the whining about a problem he continually chooses to be part of.
Let's consider the first three words of his latest tweet: "Our national debt."
"Our?"
If he means the debt run up by the US House of Representative, US Senate, and president, well, yes, there's the problem.
But in reality, he's using that word in an attempt to rope the rest of us into responsibility for his poor financial decisions.
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