Complaint #6: National Debt and Government Spending
FP and GPCN numbers and evaluation
9/13/20265 min read
First Principle Party Evaluation
Policy: National Debt and Government Spending — the documented pattern of federal spending that consistently exceeds revenue, producing a national debt exceeding $39 trillion growing at approximately $1 trillion every 100 days, across administrations of both parties without pause, accountability, or measurable alignment with the six goals the people authorized.
Step One — FP Factor
First principles at work:
Cause and Effect — Spending beyond means produces compounding debt. Compounding debt produces interest obligations that crowd out the spending the mission actually requires. Interest payments on the national debt now exceed $1 trillion annually — more than the federal government spends on Medicaid and all discretionary domestic programs combined. This is not an abstraction. It is the documented, predictable, and entirely foreseeable consequence of decades of spending without mission alignment.
Systems have limits — No system can indefinitely spend more than it produces without eventual structural failure. This is true of households, businesses, and governments equally. The national debt represents the accumulated evidence of a government that has operated as though this first principle does not apply to it.
Incentive structures shape behavior — The electoral incentive structure systematically rewards spending and punishes restraint. Politicians who deliver visible programs and spending win elections. Politicians who exercise fiscal discipline are penalized for it. Without an enforceable external standard requiring spending to serve the authorized mission, the predictable outcome is exactly what the documented record shows — spending that grows regardless of party, regardless of promise, and regardless of consequence to the people whose name it is borrowed in.
Posterity bears what the present borrows — Every dollar borrowed today is a debt handed to the next generation without their consent. This is not a metaphor. It is a documented transfer of financial obligation to people who cannot yet vote, cannot yet object, and did not authorize the spending their inheritance will be required to service. The Preamble explicitly includes posterity as a beneficiary of the mission. Generational debt transfer is a direct violation of that explicit commitment.
Transparency as prerequisite for accountability — Congress has not passed a complete on-time federal budget in decades, governing instead through emergency continuing resolutions that bypass normal oversight. A government that cannot produce a transparent, complete, and timely accounting of how it spends the people's money cannot be held accountable for whether that spending serves the authorized mission.
Conflicts of interest corrupt outcomes — Lobbying interests, defense contractors, and corporate recipients of government spending invest heavily in the campaigns of the officials who approve that spending. The documented financial relationship between those who benefit from government expenditure and those who authorize it creates structural conflicts of interest that systematically direct spending toward donor interests rather than mission alignment.
FP Factor: 6 first principles identified — all operating to sustain a spending pattern that serves institutional and donor interests rather than the authorized mission, at compounding cost to the people and their posterity.
Step Two — GPCN
1. Form a more perfect union: -55
A national debt of $39 trillion, growing at $1 trillion every 100 days, does not form a more perfect union — it creates a documented and growing divide between the financial interests of those who hold government debt and the ordinary citizens who will be taxed to service it. Interest payments flowing primarily to financial institutions and foreign governments represent a documented transfer of wealth from the general population to concentrated financial interests. That transfer deepens rather than reduces the economic divide that undermines union.
2. Establish justice: -60
Justice requires that the people who authorize spending bear its consequences equitably. The documented pattern of spending — driven by lobbyist influence, defense contractor relationships, and donor priorities — does not distribute its benefits or its costs equitably. Foreign aid distributed by the billions to nations around the world while veterans sleep on streets and American infrastructure crumbles represents a documented inversion of spending priority that fails the justice standard. A budget process that operates through emergency resolutions rather than transparent congressional debate denies the people the oversight that justice requires.
3. Ensure domestic tranquility: -55
The documented economic anxiety produced by inflation — driven in part by the Federal Reserve expanding the money supply to finance government debt — affects every American household and business. The erosion of purchasing power through currency expansion is a form of taxation without a vote that produces chronic financial insecurity incompatible with domestic tranquility. A government that cannot live within the means its citizens provide cannot credibly claim to ensure the conditions in which those citizens can live in stability and security.
4. Provide for the common defense: -20
Defense spending is a legitimate and authorized use of public resources. However, the documented influence of defense contractor lobbying on procurement decisions — producing weapons systems with documented performance problems that continue to receive funding because of their political economy rather than their military merit — suggests that even defense spending is not fully aligned with genuine defense needs. The F-35 program alone, documented by the GAO across dozens of reports, represents hundreds of billions in spending whose primary driver has been contractor relationships rather than defense capability. Additionally, a nation carrying $39 trillion in debt has reduced fiscal capacity to respond to genuine defense emergencies when they arise.
5. Promote the general welfare: -70
The general welfare requires that public resources be directed toward the six authorized goals. The documented pattern of national debt growth — driven by spending that serves donor interests, foreign aid priorities never authorized by the people, and programs whose connection to the six goals is tenuous at best — represents a systematic failure to direct resources toward the general welfare. DOGE promised $2 trillion in savings from waste and abuse. Total federal spending increased by 6%. The Federal Reserve expands the money supply through bond purchases, effectively financing government debt in ways that erode the purchasing power of ordinary Americans' savings. Every dollar borrowed today is a dollar that future generations will be taxed to service — a direct and documented harm to the general welfare of our posterity.
6. Liberty achieved — average of first five: -52
Overall GPCN Score: -52
Determination: FAIL
The national debt and government spending pattern fails every Preamble goal and fails the general welfare goal most severely — because general welfare is the goal most directly betrayed when public resources are systematically directed toward donor interests, foreign priorities, and institutional self-preservation rather than the six goals the people authorized.
The national debt is not a financial problem. It is a Preamble problem.
It is what happens when government stops measuring its decisions against its mission and starts measuring them against what it can get away with. When spending serves donors, foreign interests, and political survival instead of the six goals the founders authorized, debt is not a side effect. It is the evidence.
A government that cannot live within the means its citizens provide has not drifted from its mission. It has abandoned it.
Every dollar of federal spending must be measured against the six goals of the Preamble — not against political priorities, not against the requests of lobbyists, and not against the interests of foreign nations before our own. A balanced budget is not an aspiration. It is what responsible stewardship of the public trust looks like.
The debt belongs to all of us. The accountability belongs to them. It is time those two things were reconciled.
GPCN: -52 | FP Factor: 6 first principles identified, all operating to sustain spending patterns that serve institutional and donor interests rather than the authorized mission | DETERMINATION: FAIL