When talking about Washington deciding how to spend our tax dollars, there’s an important piece of the puzzle that is often not mentioned, lobbyist. As you can imagine, September is not only a very busy month for Congress, it’s a busy month for lobbyist as well. Our federal government has a $6.3 trillion budget is the biggest business in the country. The Halls of our nation’s capital are crawling with special interests, hire professionals, looking for opportunities to carve out a slice for themselves, or perhaps protect the slice they already have. It is no secret that lobbyists are a major part of the Washington DC landscape. It’s an unchecked influence, one that helps bloat our government and sometimes threatens the very principles upon which our country was founded. There are of course, corporate lobbyists, threatened by government overreach, and or excessive regulation, they cozy up the lawmakers to protect or expand their business interest. But they’re not the only ones. The fact is, 60% of Americans get more from government than they put in today. So at the end of the day, too much of our federal spending goes to states communities and individuals who are often not accountable. According to the House Budget Committee, the federal government spent a total of 4.1 trillion on transfer payments to individuals in fiscal year 2022. And if that sounds like a lot, it’s because it is. And in fact, it’s 65% of our entire budget. And in 2021, it was 62% were gone the wrong way. With that in mind, you gotta hand it to Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, because in June, he rejected Biden so called inflation reduction funding for his clean energy programs. That’s millions of dollars. But the Santa has rightfully said, No thanks, we’ll take care of our own and more states should be saying we will take care of our own. We often talk about accountability for each individual, we often talk about personal responsibility. And we should, because if individuals are not responsible with the decisions that we make, we will never get our federal government to balance its budget and pay off our federal debt. Federal Government is not the end all be all answer for every problem. And those federal dollars, they shouldn’t be up for grabs. You know, former congressman Davy Crockett in the 1800s spoke to politicians spending on these non essentials after he was confronted by one of his constituents. He went back to Tennessee after having spent money here in Washington, DC, and that constituent told him it wasn’t yours to give, it’s not yours to give, you can find it all over the Internet. In fact, he has made copies of it that our congressmen need to reread and reread and reread that pass the hat up here spinning money for something that burned down, and one of his constituents had to remind him that when a barn burns down around here, we as a community of people rebuild it. And one of the reasons we’re having this hard budget discussion right now is because of this discretionary spending, we want to spend it on anything and everything, including disaster relief. If there’s a local disaster, then the local people should heal their local disaster, people are charitable to help this is not for government to continue to do. In fact, after David Crockett went back to the Congress, after his constituent confronted him, he spoke to his congressman, his fellow congressman, he changed his vote. And then he spoke to his fellow congressmen who are all too eager to give tax dollars to causes. He told him causes that we up here deem vital and important. Yet those same congressmen and women would show no interest in giving a penny out of their own pockets. And even so the causes and the programs that they sought the fun, we’re not even a part of the Constitution. And that was back then. And it’s really worse now. And we need to remind members of Congress today of these lessons of personal responsibility and accountability, and we need to learn those lessons ourselves as well. $32 trillion of debt is not a future for this country.