Respectfully, Megan

In political philosophy, there is an enduring question that every generation has to answer: Does the proper role of government expand just because its bank account gets bigger?

In a resource-rich state like North Dakota, this is not an abstract theory from a textbook. This is a real life debate every single legislative session. With energy production and Legacy Fund earnings generating substantial public revenue, policymakers routinely operate under an unexamined premise: if the money is sitting in the treasury, the state ought to find something to spend it on. That habit quietly replaces a foundational principle of free society with a flawed assumption, confusing what government has the cash to afford with what government actually exists to do.

To understand why this happens, it helps to look at two competing views of the state. One mindset treats government as an all-purpose manager. Under this approach, whenever extra revenue appears, public officials step in to create new programs, subsidize favored industries, or direct activities that private citizens and local communities were handling on their own. The alternative view, rooted in the American founding, holds that government has a strictly defined purpose. It exists to secure essential conditions: protecting individual rights, enforcing the rule of law, and maintaining core public infrastructure. Those fundamental duties do not double just because oil prices had a good year.

When a state treats excess revenue as a license to expand, a predictable economic pattern sets in. Lawmakers frequently fund new initiatives by labeling them one-time investments. Yet true one-time spending in public policy is rare. Once administrative staff are hired, grants are distributed, and local dependencies form, rolling back the program becomes politically painful. What began as a temporary surplus turns into a permanent baseline expense.

Surplus capital also acts as a magnet for organized interests, creating strong incentives to lobby for specialized public dollars while the long-term bill is quietly spread across all taxpayers. When commodity prices inevitably fall, the expanded apparatus remains in place, leaving the state struggling to sustain an inflated budget on diminished revenues.

Disciplined stewardship requires asking a straightforward question before any appropriation is made: If this surplus did not exist, would this program justify its own creation?

If the answer is no, having the cash available does not supply that justification. True governance means recognizing that wealth generated within a state belongs to the people and businesses that produced it. When the treasury runs a surplus, sound policy directs those funds toward lowering the tax burden, protecting reserves to absorb future downturns, and paying down long-term liabilities, rather than enlarging the permanent footprint of the state. The measure of good leadership is not how many new projects a government can launch during a boom, but whether it possesses the restraint to remain anchored to its proper, defined purpose.