Ron DeSantis rallies Kentucky legislators to back federal Balanced Budget Amendment

Gov. Ron DeSantis is taking time to address legislators in the House … but not in Florida, where he and Speaker Daniel Perez aren’t speaking.

Rather, DeSantis is in the Bluegrass State making his case for House Concurrent Resolution 45, which calls for a federal Balanced Budget Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

The Governor has traveled around the country making this argument, including to Idaho recently, sacrificing being in his home state during the peak of his final Legislative Session.

DeSantis said he had been in Florida recently for sports events, but the big game to him is the Balanced Budget Amendment.

Twenty-eight states have called for a constitutional convention on the matter. Thirty-four states would need to certify their will, while it would take 38 to change the Constitution.

“The first Republican President was born in Kentucky. And then when he became President, Abraham Lincoln famously said during the Civil War that he hoped to have God on his side, but he must have Kentucky on his side, and I kind of feel (the same),” DeSantis said.

“Much different context, but that’s what we need if we want to fix the nation’s fiscal trajectory. We need the states to step up and do their constitutional role, and Kentucky absolutely has got to be a part of that.”

As DeSantis has said before, he’s pessimistic that Congress will “fix” the budget issue despite the nation being $38 trillion in debt. To that end, he believes the states must call for a Constitutional Convention.

That said, he hopes that pressure from the states could drive action, with Congress seeing “the writing on the wall” if enough states sign on.

DeSantis expects that a convention would be “one vote per state” should it happen. He believes this push is necessary to shield the next generation from exacerbating bad decisions made by leaders in recent times.

“I do think that the next generation — the young people, my kids, people’s grandkids — I think we’re not doing our part to leave them, this country, better than we found it if we’re not willing to address this,” DeSantis said.