We Need Professional Help.

Written and copyrighted by: John H Ramsey, Founder, The  Project

NOVEMBER, 2025

Our federal government’s dangerous and extensive fiscal mess is getting worse and nothing constructive is being done to fix it. I am a retired financial executive with a proposed solution, and I would like to know what you think of it. If you think my approach has merit, I am writing to ask you and the community of financial professionals in America to help me build support for it and get it done. 

This is not partisan. It is not about partisanship. It is about our country, and our kids.

It’s not a task our elected representatives can do by themselves. Strong support from We The People, starting with financial professionals and their associations, are needed to make the changes we require, and we must earn that support, and soon.

When it comes to mismanaging the people’s money, most of the blame rests with Congress. Congress is broken and does not perform even its most basic fiscal responsibilities. It has been this way for a long time and is getting worse. Most of us know this, so rather than wring our hands and pass along this mess to our children and grandchildren, let’s fix it, all of it, while we still can. 

I would welcome an opportunity to meet with you wherever convenient to explore working together to bring about the changes we need. 

To be clear, I do not hold nor am I a candidate for any political office, nor have I any commercial products or services to sell. I am doing this because I know that We The People must make this right for all of us who are so privileged to be American citizens, whatever our politics. We will all be better off if we get this solution right, and much worse off if we don’t.

Spending is dangerously out of control for sure. But our resulting national debt, now about $38 trillion and counting, is not the only fiscal problem we urgently need to solve. TruthInAccounting.org says the unfunded future obligations of our federal government for which no funding has yet been provided exceed $160 trillion. The components of our federal fiscal mess are interconnected and must be dealt with comprehensively. 

Balancing expenses to revenues, for example, means reforming both. Social Security and Medicare are going broke because they are improperly designed and operated, not just because beneficiaries are living longer.

The most urgent problem we must solve is that there are no rules in our Constitution requiring that Congress and the President safeguard and properly manage our money. None. So they don’t, both parties don’t, and haven’t for a long time. Perhaps that’s the way they want it, because accountability and discipline can be inconvenient, even difficult.

To check Congress we need common-sense, easily understood rules in The U.S. Constitution that elected representatives must follow, with consequences, possibly court-imposed, when they do not, to stop endangering our fiscal future. We can’t delegate this job of setting the rules. As a free people, this is uniquely ours to do.

I built a package of Amendments to accomplish this. It’s called The , (BOFR), only four pages long, with five clear, easy-to-understand Amendments. It is drafted and ready to go, with full text here: https://bofrusa.com/bill-of-financial-responsibilities/. To summarize, when BOFR is ratified, Congress and the President will be required to:

• Professionally manage custody and investment of all federal trust funds, especially Social Security & Medicare. Congress will be forbidden from using Social Security & Medicare money to fund government operations.
• Balance annual government operating revenues and expenses except during declared emergencies. Congress and the Executive must pay down a large amount of existing national debt every year.
• Empower the President with the line-item veto that permits the President to cancel specific parts of a bill (usually spending provisions) while signing into law the rest of the bill.
• Simplify federal taxation by limiting its use to only financing government operations, not changing taxpayers’ behavior. No special favors, no loopholes.
• Require that the federal government adhere to generally accepted accounting principles determined by independent accounting professionals, with required annual independent audits and timely reporting to the public of all federal agencies. Audit failures would mean loss of funding.
• Settle regulatory disputes through our independent judiciary, not the regulators’ administrative courts. Tie regulations tightly to law.

Only We The People can do this. Our elected representatives, both federal and state, are too conflicted, and/or risk averse, to get the job done. We know that elected officials will respond to the will of the people when they hear it, or when a few representatives lose their jobs because they turned a deaf ear.

We need a national messaging campaign to educate our citizens and build their active support. That will cost money, maybe lots of it, and state-of-the-art technical expertise and strategic thinking. But we have no choice. It is the price of citizenship for an America in trouble.

The goal is to create and sustain enough citizen pressure on Congress and the various State Legislatures so that both will propose and endorse our Constitutional solution, The , for ratification by the people.

What are your thoughts? Will you and your professional associations help me get this done? Please let me know if you would be willing to explore this.

Thank you.

Sincerely,
John H. Ramsey, Founder
Bill of Financial Responsibilities® (BOFR) Project
Senior Fellow, Reason Foundation
https://bofrusa.com/
jhramsey@icloud.com
Telephone:  941-323-9609