‘Not a partisan issue:’ Florida Gov. DeSantis renews push for new national amendment

ORLANDO, Fla. – Gov. Ron DeSantis on Wednesday was out of Florida to ask another state for help pushing forward a new national amendment.

According to the governor, he spoke in front of Kentucky lawmakers to support a “Balanced Budget Amendment.”

Such an amendment would require that the U.S. Congress balance its budget each year, limiting spending to avoid further growth of the national debt. However, ratifying an amendment to the U.S. Constitution would require support from 38 states.

So far, DeSantis said, 28 states have signed on.

“This is not a partisan issue,” he wrote. “Every state except Vermont has a balanced budget requirement in its constitution. We must hold Congress to the same standards as we adhere to in our households, communities, and states.”

The federal government has been running on a deficit since 2001, already spending nearly $700 billion more than it took in during this fiscal year so far.

While the spending deficit is lower than the same period last year, it’s still an issue many Americans are forced to deal with as the total national debt approaches $39 trillion.

To put that in perspective, that amounts to over $100,000 per citizen.

“We now spend more on interest on our national debt — just to service the debt — than we do on national defense,“ DeSantis told Kentucky lawmakers. ”And those numbers are going to escalate as some of these bonds have to be refinanced."

It’s not the only constitutional amendment that DeSantis has backed, though.

Back in December, the Florida governor spoke in Delray Beach about a proposed national amendment to impose term limits on lawmakers in the U.S. Congress.

“People are so frustrated with what goes on in Congress,” he said at the time. “And honestly, yeah, Republicans may be less frustrated when it’s Republicans. Democrats may be less if it’s Dems. But I don’t think anyone’s really happy with just how the modern Congress operates.”

In 2024, Florida lawmakers passed a resolution (HCR 693) with that same aim in mind.

While term limits have been established in Florida and over 20 other states, that’s not the case at the federal level.

That’s because of a 1995 U.S. Supreme Court ruling, which posited that congressional term limits may only be imposed if the U.S. Constitution is amended.

To do so, two-thirds of the states can request a convention to propose such an amendment, though it would have to be ratified by at least 38 states before it could take effect.

[BELOW: Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis reveals budget proposal for next year]

That said, DeSantis said that it might not even take that many states to get Congress to take action.

“Well, what would happen if you got to 31, 32 states? I mean, Congress would end up passing it,” DeSantis posited back in December. “I think they would want to control, and I think what they would do is probably pass what we want, but they would just say, ‘All current members are not subject to it until a certain time or new people are elected.’”

As of now, over a dozen states have passed resolutions in both houses of their Legislatures calling for a U.S. Term Limits Convention.