“[W]ithout a Republican in the White House, or 60 votes in the Senate, there are limits to what you could accomplish.” That was House Speaker John Boehner in an exclusive interview with Politico, defending his lack of gumption as a leader. Complaints from members of the House Freedom Caucus and other conservatives in Congress that Boehner has been unwilling to fight the hard fights and capitalize on referendums from the 2010 and 2014 elections have the Speaker playing defense, but his comments rather miss the point.

Sen. Bernie Sanders has excited the Democratic Party's base with promises of more "free" stuff and emerged from relative obscurity as a legitimate threat to Hillary Clinton, once thought to be the frontrunner for the party's presidential nomination. But the policy agenda the self-identified "democratic socialist" is espousing to fawning audiences on the campaign trail is one that would create severe economic problems for the United States.

President Barack Obama drew a line in the sand on budget caps during his weekly address to the country. Citing the latest employment report to argue that the economy has improved, he threatened to veto any budget produced by the Republican-controlled Congress that keeps spending in check.

Compact For America and Article V Our federal government debt is an immoral burden on young Americans, and if not prudently managed will destroy our republic and our freedom. Many a great nation has been destroyed by government debt.

In recent years, the topic of unionization and right-to-work laws has been raised as a fairly contentious issue. As state legislatures sought to recoup the costs incurred due to lost revenue following the Great Recession, de-unionization policies, at least at the public sector level, were floated as cost-cutting measures. But nearly as often, right-to-work laws at the private sector level were also explored and implemented, perhaps most infamously in the case of the state of Wisconsin under Governor Scott Walker.

Congress is coming back to town, and that means it’s time to hide our wallets. If the leadership of both parties are left to their own devices, by the end of September the government’s spending will have increased once again. This outcome is by no means inevitable; indeed, it shouldn’t even be possible after the Republicans took solid control of both the House and Senate. It will be up to those principled leaders who do care about the financial peril our nation faces to put the brakes on any effort to speed up the government’s spending.

The volatility in the stock market in recent days offers a clue to the dangerous power of the Federal Reserve, and further underscores the need to get government spending under control and finally start tackling the national debt.