Hello Libertarians. This is the tenth of a series of opinion articles I’ll be privileged to write for you once per month on an “inside baseball” topic for the Libertarian Party. I encourage everyone who has an opinion on whatever we’re talking about this month to comment or send phillies@4liberty.net your longer editorials, which may well be published.
A few people already have. Todd Hagopian already wrote an article, which you can find at https://thirdpartywatch.com/2025/12/01/2026-budget-disaster-action-needed/, about the budget for the Libertarian Party next year. I agree with almost everything he wrote in that article and don’t have much to add to the discussion about the budget for this year specifically, but I would like to take a step back and talk about LP budgeting generally.
First, I would like to caution everyone who may be on the Libertarian National Committee in the future about the perils of going into debt. The few times in our history that the Libertarian Party has been near death have been mostly the result of the national committee borrowing money to gain some temporary advantage. I have said it before and I will say it again: The primary duty of the LNC is to not bankrupt us.
The second thing I’d like to note for any future LNC members, and for everyone who might vote for one, is that even though the budget is set in December of every year, amendments are made to that budget nearly every month. It is important when making those amendments that any increases to any line on the budget come either from decreases on another line or from additional, unexpected revenue that we already have in hand. Adding to a budget item with money that we hope will appear or that someone has promised to donate in the future is a risky habit to indulge. Discipline on that front over the next few decades will keep us from having many of the crises which we have had in the past.
Finally, I’d like to advertise something I hope will happen. Around the end of January I’d like to get every declared candidate for an LNC position on a Youtube stream to go over the budget and talk about how they would approach the budget they’ll inherit if they are elected. One benefit from it would be that delegates to the convention will have a better idea about which candidates are likely to be responsible with their money and which aren’t. But the main thing I hope that it will achieve is that it’ll give every candidate an incentive to dive into the details of how our party uses its resources instead of considering it for the first time once they’re elected. I hope it becomes a tradition that we do every two years around the same time, and I hope that the candidates who participate are more likely to get elected than those who don’t.
In any case, small incremental good decisions over time lead to success. Over the next few years, and over the next few decades, I hope that we make our decisions well.
This is a great idea George, and every declared candidate should absolutely do this.