Wars of Choice. Broken Budgets.

Thirty-six trillion dollars.

That is what this country owes. Not to a foreign government. Not to an enemy. To itself, in the form of borrowed money that has been accumulating for decades while the people in charge told us everything was under control. Thirty-six trillion dollars is not an abstraction. It is the reason interest payments on the national debt now cost more than the entire defense budget did twenty years ago. It is the reason there is never quite enough money for the things that would actually help working families here at home. It is the price of choices made in Washington with someone else’s money.

Let us talk about how we got here.

President Bush launched two wars after September 11th. The decision to go to war had broad support and real justification in the moment. The decision to finance those wars entirely on borrowed money, while simultaneously cutting taxes, did not. The Afghanistan war alone cost over $2 trillion. Iraq cost another $2 trillion. Neither was paid for. Both were charged to the national credit card and handed to the next generation. By the time Bush left office, the national debt had doubled.

President Obama inherited both wars, a financial crisis, and an economy in freefall. He did not raise taxes to pay for the wars he inherited. He borrowed to stabilize the economy, which most economists say was necessary. The debt grew by $9.3 trillion over eight years. President Trump’s first term added $7.8 trillion in four years, driven by tax cuts, defense increases, and COVID relief. President Biden added another $7 trillion. The current administration’s One Big Beautiful Bill pushed the defense budget past $1 trillion for the first time in American history while cutting the programs that working families depend on.

Four presidents. Two parties. One direction. The bill lands on your kitchen table in the form of rising costs, underfunded services, and a government that can never quite find the money for the things that matter most to the people who live here.

The war question is not left or right. It is right and wrong.

This country has spent the last two decades in military engagements that Congress never formally declared as wars. The Constitution is clear: only Congress has the authority to declare war. That provision exists for a reason. It forces accountability. It requires the people’s representatives to stand up and say yes, this is worth the cost in blood and treasure, and be on the record for it. When that step is skipped, wars become easier to start, harder to end, and impossible to fully account for. We have been paying that price ever since.

Foreign aid is not inherently wrong. This country has a long and legitimate history of supporting allies and advancing stability in ways that serve our national interest. The question is whether that aid comes with accountability, clear conditions, and honest assessment of what it is accomplishing. A blank check is not foreign policy. It is an abdication of responsibility to the taxpayers who fund it.

The Pentagon has never passed a full financial audit.

Not once. The Department of Defense has failed its audit five consecutive times. It cannot account for trillions of dollars in assets and expenditures. Every other federal agency is required to pass a financial audit. Every business, every nonprofit, every household that has ever applied for a loan is held to a standard of financial accountability that the largest budget item in the federal government has never been required to meet. We are asked to spend more on defense every year by an institution that cannot tell us where the money already went.

The use-it-or-lose-it culture inside federal agencies means that departments spend frantically at the end of every fiscal year to avoid losing their budget allocation the following year. The result is billions of dollars spent not because it is needed but because it is available and the clock is running. That is not how responsible institutions manage public money. It is how bureaucracies protect themselves.

Here is what I will go to Washington to do.

First, I will support requiring a formal Congressional declaration before any new military commitment abroad. No more wars of choice financed on borrowed money without a vote on the record. The Constitution already requires this. We simply need representatives willing to enforce it.

Second, I will push for foreign aid with accountability and clear conditions. Aid that advances genuine stability and American interests, evaluated honestly, with transparency about what it costs and what it accomplishes. No more unconditional funding without oversight.

Third, I will support a pay-as-you-go requirement for new spending. If Congress wants to spend more, it must identify where the money comes from. The era of charging everything to future generations has to end somewhere. It might as well end here.

Fourth, I will demand a full, independent audit of the Pentagon. Every dollar. Every contract. Every asset. The American people fund that institution. They deserve to know where their money goes. Any representative who votes against a defense audit is protecting waste, not national security.

The thirty-six trillion dollar debt is not an accident. It is the accumulated result of choices made by both parties over decades, choices that prioritized short-term political convenience over long-term responsibility to the people who would have to live with the consequences. We are those people. The families here at home feeling the squeeze at the register, watching their healthcare costs climb, wondering why the government always finds money for everything except them, are living the consequences of those choices right now.

Enough. It is time for representatives who ask the hard questions before the check is written, not after.

Ballots are in your hands. Primary is June 2nd. Vote for true Change. Vote Independent.

With conviction and clarity --
Nina Linh
Independent Candidate, CA-40