By Kasie Whitener
This election, integrity is everything. We elect people trusting them to govern on our behalf and they are governing at our expense.
We are in a financial crisis. Congress has allowed the national debt to balloon to $40 trillion. Voters and citizens have been taught to ignore the debt by the very people who could make it better but are instead making it worse.
Every issue is a debt issue: healthcare, housing, affordability all go back to the staggering amount of money we owe.
Popular solutions are to raise more money through eliminating fraud, raising tariffs, or taxing the uber-wealthy. And those solutions are in both parties because politicians want to tell voters that someone else will pay this bill.
But there is no one else. It’s on us.
There are three ways to fix this:
- Increase revenue.
- Decrease spending.
- Grow the economy.
Raising taxes and reducing spending don’t get politicians elected. In fact, it’s cutting taxes and increasing the spending that gets them elected, and since being elected is what they want, they keep spending. They try to grow the economy and ignore the other two.
We had a debt-to-GDP ratio this wild before, following World War II. And we fixed it. Good fiscal policy and government restraint reduced that debt from 106% of GDP to just 23% over about two decades.
We can reduce the debt but it will take time, and a combination of all three: increase revenue, reduce spending, and grow the economy.
The first urgent effort to address the national debt is to take on its two biggest drivers: Social Security and Medicare. Make no mistake, these are hard conversations, the kind that don’t get you elected.
The candidates running for this office are not being honest. They continue to lob accusations at one another and deliver platitudes. They are campaigning. It’s what the parties are good at: raise money, spend money, get elected.
South Carolina is hiring a Senator. We need someone who can and will do the job. Not the fundraising-campaigning job, but the governing job.
Your Senator should represent you, not a party. She should understand complex systems and incentive structures to lead reform. She should understand foreign policy and global economics.
Our debt is the result of corporations owning the major parties through campaign donations. Corporations write laws, write regulations, and influence decision making at the highest levels of our government. They do so to protect their own interests. We are all invested in the corporations through our retirement portfolios, as consumers, and as employees. Blaming them for the state of our democracy is what politicians do best.
But it’s the elected officials’ job to govern and their character is what enables them to do so.
This election, we have a clear choice between candidates who will continue the cycles of spending, corruption, and blame. Or a candidate who will represent the best of South Carolina: loyalty, dignity, and integrity. I am that candidate. I work for you.
We have hard decisions to make and big problems to solve. And we need serious people to solve them. I take seriously the role of representing the best interests of our state to the highest levels of government.
This is a plurality election. That means the most votes wins. No 50% needed, no run-off will occur. Just one election, most votes to the candidate who will become your next Senator.
I promise to make you proud, South Carolina. You can trust me with your vote. Let’s make history together.
Kasie Whitener is a writer, business owner, radio host, and educator at the University of South Carolina running as a Libertarian for the United States Senate in South Carolina. Learn more at kasiesouthcarolina.com.
