The federal government is making progress in bringing down the national debt. A record-setting $308 billion surplus in April certainly helped, and the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimates the federal budget deficit will shrink to around $1 trillion this year due to surging tax revenue and the end of COVID-19 pandemic-related financial aid programs. This comes after the U.S. added more than $2.7 trillion to the deficit in 2021. Straight Arrow News contributor Newt Gingrich believes balancing the budget needs to be a renewed priority for America as it grapples with inflation and other economic adversity.

One of the most interesting developments is Larry Kudlow, who is a very, very successful commentator on Fox, who was the head of domestic policy for President Trump and who before that worked for Ronald Reagan in the White House in the 1980s. Kudlow is a very famous economist. And he now does a show on Fox TV, and has a radio show every Saturday, and he has decided that he’s going to make getting back to a balanced budget, a major part of his commitment.

Larry [Kudlow] knows that when I was Speaker, we balanced the budget for four straight years for the only time in your lifetime. He also knows that controlling spending, reducing taxes, limiting regulation, leads to the most dramatic economic growth. And that the whole key to the Reagan system was to incentivize people to go to work, and to incentivize people to invest and create jobs. And the result was we had a very long stretch as Kudlow likes to point out, we grew at an average of three and a half percent a year for 50 years, because the system was working. 

Now, when you go to high taxes, lots and lots of regulations, and you start going back, instead of heavy work requirements, you go back to giving people money while doing nothing. And then you tolerate huge amounts of corruption, you’re going to have a big deficit, you’re going to have an economy that slows down dramatically. And you’re going to have average everyday working Americans losing ground. That’s exactly where we are today. 

And so I think you’re gonna find in the next few months, a growing interest in setting the standard of getting back to a balanced budget, a growing interest in genuinely reforming government and increasing awareness that you can’t have, you know, programs like California, which lost 20 billion not million, $20 billion in unemployment compensation that was stolen. You just can’t afford that. And so I’m very intrigued because I’ve been very actively involved in both economic growth and balancing the budget. And I think that it’s a real key to the American future. I think you’re going to see it become a key part of our political discussion, and I’d keep an eye out for how that evolves.