Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis during a Wednesday visit to the Kentucky capital pushed back at recent comments by Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear about him on national TV.
DeSantis, a Republican, said he did not “really know much about” Beshear, a Democrat, but someone had shown him a clip of Beshear’s appearance on “The Daily Show” with Jon Stewart last week. Stewart asked Beshear to name the worst governor, or who comes to mind when “the elevator opens, and he’s about to walk in, and you just go – or she – and you just go, oh ****.” Beshear said DeSantis.
“All I can say is, a guy that sends state police to try to block people from worshiping on Easter Sunday, a guy that’s obsessed with gender mutilation of minors, if that’s the person that’s criticizing me, I wear that as a badge of honor,” DeSantis told reporters in Frankfort.
The Florida governor was referring to when Beshear during the coronavirus pandemic directed state troopers to record license plates of church-goers on the holiday and had vetoed anti-transgender legislation in Kentucky in 2023.
Both Beshear and DeSantis are considered potential presidential candidates in 2028.
DeSantis appeared before lawmakers in the Kentucky House to testify in favor of a resolution requesting a national convention to propose a constitutional amendment to require a balanced federal budget. The House committees on State Government and Elections, Constitutional Amendments and Intergovernmental Affairs heard a presentation from DeSantis, Elkton Republican Rep. Jason Petrie and Loren Enns, who leads the national campaign for a Balanced Budget Amendment, but the committees did not take action on the resolution Wednesday.
DeSantis has been critical of the increasing national debt for a while. He was at the Idaho State Capitol last month to advocate for a similar resolution The Idaho House adopted its resolution this month.
DeSantis told Kentucky lawmakers that he viewed the national debt and the government spending that fuels it as a “bipartisan problem.”
“We’ve had Democrats in office spend. We’ve had Republicans in office spend,” he said during the committees’ meeting. “This century has had debt after debt from the turn of the century on.”
He added that if states like Kentucky and Idaho join others that have expressed interest in such a constitutional amendment, that would put pressure on federal lawmakers to either write their own balanced-budget rules or lead to a convention of states to amend the U.S. Constitution.
The League of Women Voters says that 28 states have had resolutions calling for a convention to address balancing the national budget.
Kentucky has a requirement in its constitution to balance its budget.
“Kentucky’s doing great. Florida is doing great. We have a lot of states that are doing good things, certainly fiscally,” DeSantis said to the committees. “The way you guys operate, the way we operate, is much different from how they operate in Washington. And we can say, ‘hey, it’s a Washington problem.’ The problem is it’s going to affect our people in a really negative way if we have a big debt crisis. And so this is really, I think, the only way we’re going to be able to head that off.”
The idea of balancing the federal budget isn’t new to all Kentucky Republicans. U.S. Rep. Thomas Massie has often worn a ticking national debt clock to draw attention to growing federal spending.
Asked by reporters if he would back Massie in his upcoming primary in the 4th Congressional District, DeSantis said that he has avoided making comments about Florida races or any congressional races at all, but Massie was a “profile in courage” for calling on the U.S. House to take a recorded vote on a $2 trillion coronavirus relief package. Massie currently faces a GOP challenger backed by President Donald Trump, Ed Gallrein.
“He showed up and demanded a vote, and man, the weight of the world came down on him, but he stood strong,” DeSantis said of the congressman. “And if you think about it, he was right then.”
A 2019 analysis by the progressive think tank the Kentucky Center for Economic Policy previously called on the Kentucky General Assembly to avoid joining a call for a national constitutional convention as it “could lead to extreme, wide-reaching and unpredictable changes to the U.S. Constitution and Bill of Rights” if states decide to address other issues during the convention.
Rep. Anne Gay Donworth, D-Lexington, raised similar concerns during the meeting, saying that Article V of the U.S. Constitution doesn’t direct conventions to focus on just one issue.
“I am not willing to put our entire country at risk over this, and I think the idea of having a balanced budget is wonderful, and I think we should all aspire to that,” she said. “However, that is Congress’ duty, and if they are not willing to do that right now, then we need to look at reforms there.”
DeSantis said before Donworth’s comments that state legislatures could adopt criteria to ensure that delegates to the convention are “faithful to that call.”
Some economists say requiring balanced federal budgets would be “very unsound economic policy” by forcing Congress to cut spending and raise taxes during economic downturns, thereby worsening and lengthening recessions. They say it also would prevent federal borrowing for capital expenditures such as infrastructure and other investments in the nation’s future. In 1997, when Congress considered a balanced budget amendment, 1,000 economists, including 11 Nobel laureates, issued a joint statement opposing it.