While Arkansas bureaucrats like to proclaim our state has a “balanced budget,” our check book seems to tell a different story.  According to US Government Spending.com our state has an estimated $15.8 Billion in state and local debt. (see website for details)

The most exasperating part of this debt is that it has been accrued with the consent of the people, and most don’t even realize it. I have, over the last several months, conducted a survey of Arkansans, young and old. Blue collar, white collar and no collar; rich and poor; seemingly informed and completely disengaged; people who have run for state and national offices, folks who own multi-million dollars companies in our state and not one realizes the true “state of our state.”

I have been trying to wrap my head around this issue for months and I think I finally have a way to explain it ~ Let’s say you have “fixed” costs i.e. house payment, utilities, insurance, taxes which you can easily meet with your income. But then you decide you need a new car so you get a loan and you make the minimum payment. Then you decide you need some new furniture; another new loan, new minimum payment; and then a new flat screen, new loan, new minimum payment. Some months later you buy a boat, a motorcycle and a hunting lodge all with new loans and more minimum payments. Well now your income barely covers your outgo so you open a Visa account and start making payments with that and pay the minimum payment to visa, well things get tighter so you open a MasterCard, then Discover, then you take out a second on your house and now all of the-sudden (not really) you are 100’s of thousands of dollars in debt but still barely able to make your minimum payment. That’s pretty much what Arkansas has done except our state KEEPS doing it. And now we are $15.8 billion in debt and the voters keep giving them more and more ability to open up even more lines of credit, stop the madness.

Please make sure you are doing your due diligence BEFORE you vote.