Sen. Rand Paul returns a record $500,000 of his office budget to the United States Treasury!

How’s that for fiscal conservatism? At a press conference in Louisville Thursday, the freshman Senator from Kentucky– one of the most visible of 2010′s “Tea Party candidates” on the national stage– announced that he would be returning a whopping $500,000 of his U.S. Senate office’s operating budget to the U.S. Treasury.

The announcement comes as the nation struggles with massive fiscal crises on a local, state, and federal level, with federal spending and even federal deficits not only measuring in the trillions, but growing by the trillions with no end in sight. Make no mistake, every other “major” issue or controversy in politics today is ancillary to the problem of unsustainable (to the point of collective insanity) borrowing and spending by governments, companies, and individuals the world over.

Rand Paul’s Senate office claims that as far as it knows, no U.S. Senator has returned so much of its operating budget to the nation’s taxpayers, noting also that it represents 16% of Senator Paul’s original budget allotment. Presenting an over-sized check for $500,000 to his constituents, Rand Paul said:

“I ran to stop the reckless spending. And I ran to end the damaging process of elected officials acting as errand boys, competing to see who could bring back the biggest check and the most amount of pork.

I hope this sets an example for the rest of government – at all levels. We can carry out our duties in a fiscally responsible way. Government can be both smart and efficient. We are proving that – and trying to convince the rest of Washington.”

Paul’s office claims the savings came despite his being the “most active” of all freshman Senators’ offices, pointing out that Rand Paul introduced more legislation and amendments than any other freshman Senator in his first year, including “spending cut amendments to nearly every bill,” and was one of only three offices in Washington “to produce an entire fiscal blueprint for the federal government.” The Rand Paul plan would balance the federal budget in five years.

Rand Paul is an apple that doesn’t fall far from the tree. His father, a U.S. Congressman from Texas and 2012 presidential candidate also has a detailed federal budget plan that would balance the federal budget in just three years, and is notorious for always returning a portion of his annual office budget to the U.S. Treasury. Last year, Ron Paul returned over $140,000 of his congressional budget.

Across the aisle, Congressman Bill Owens (D-NY), who joined the ranks of Congress after winning the hotly-contested NY-23 special election in 2009, also returned a portion of his congressional office budget in 2011. Last year, his office reported a surplus of over $230,000– 15% of his annual allotment and even more than Congressman Paul’s surplus. Like Senator Rand Paul, for both the elder Paul and Congressman Owens, returning the money is about living out their own principles and sending a message to others in Washington.

Paul says:

“Since my first year in Congress I have managed my office in a frugal manner, instructing staff to provide the greatest possible service to the people of the 14th district at the least possible cost to taxpayers”

Owens agrees, saying:

“We cannot seriously talk about reducing the national debt and deficit without first operating our own offices in a fiscally responsible manner.”

Now of course Rand Paul’s $500,000 is a drop in the bucket of a trillion dollar federal budget with trillion dollar deficits, but imagine if the rest of the government’s offices and agencies could trim 16% from their expenses without legislation, without reform, but by simply choosing to be better stewards of the taxpayers’ money through sheer force of will and principled determination like Rand Paul!

Cutting sixteen percent from Washington’s $3.729 trillion budget for 2012 would mean a savings of over half a trillion dollars at $596,640,000,000, enough to cut 2012′s federal budget deficit (which sits at $1.101 trillion) in half! That would be a REAL stimulus package for a lagging economy.

It would amount to $2000 in savings for the year for every person in the United States if we divide it by 300 million. The White House wanted to know what you could do with an extra $40 in your biweekly paycheck, which amounts to $960 a year. Let’s double that amount and ask what you could do with it.

Now don’t take this article as an endorsement for the Kentucky Senator (who won’t be up for reelection until 2016), as we don’t do electoral endorsements here, but it is certainly an endorsement of his behavior and his principles, specifically the principle that you cannot consume what you have not produced, and its corollary that no person or nation can go on indefinitely spending money that it has not earned.

Unless other Washington politicians and bureaucrats begin to urgently adopt, live out, and legislate these principles, all of this unearned money representing the consumption of uncreated wealth will finally collapse under the weight of its own unsustainability– maybe even before this decade is over just as we depict in our upcoming film, Silver Circle.

If we can just get everyone on board with this principle, they will all soon realize that the best way to stop spending money we don’t have is to stop it at the source. Stop the printing! Stop the “easing!” Stop the lending. End the Fed!

And don’t forget to visit our official website to learn more about the Silver Circle Movie:http://SilverCircleMovie.com