Affordability and Sound Money

We have a crisis in America, and it is a major issue for the entire class of those under 40 years of age. It is a housing crisis. Today the average age of a first-time home buyer is 40 years old, the oldest at any time in modern history. For those under 40, the American Dream is gone.

What was the “American Dream”? The American Dream was born in the mind of the English colonial settler who came to America seeking a better life and more opportunity to worship God as they saw fit. Being so far from England and its resources, the American colonists had to be self-reliant in a hostile New World. Old World conflicts also visited the New World, and these colonists needed to be trained for military campaigns too.

This self-reliant approach to life, and the individual relationship each colonist had with their Creator, outside of formal church bureaucracies of the Old World, spawned the philosophy of a “Man is King of his own Castle”. It also gave birth to the concept of Allodial Title, where one had absolute title to their land and local governments could not tax it.

A homestead, where the man was King of his own Castle, and property with Allodial Title that was unreachable by local government gave birth to the “American Dream”.

Today, new homes cost a fortune, regulations on home-building are knee-deep and the younger generation is shut out of home ownership. Younger people are delaying marriage and delaying having a family. The birth rate in Idaho recently declined by 30 percent. This is an existential threat to our continued existence in both Idaho and America.

I recently met with a professional money manager who complained to me that none of his five adult children could afford a home. He was Ivy League educated in finance, yet he had no idea how to make homes affordable for his children. I asked the question several ways, and not a thought crossed his mind as to how to solve the problem.

Homes will be unaffordable to our youngest generation, and our elderly will struggle to keep up with just the property taxes on their now expensive homes as long as we have a debt-based money system. In 1913, and again in 1933, in 1964 and finally in 1971 we incrementally abandoned the sound money system required by our Constitution and substituted debt-based money, which has the effect of slowly stealing our purchasing power. We are gradually being impoverished by the targeted 2 percent annual inflation rate, which actually runs at more like 5 percent.

After 121 years of targeted 2 percent annual inflation your money will be worthless. Five thousand dollars an ounce for gold is evidence of the weakness of the Federal Reserve Note that masquerades as the U.S. Dollar.

Debt-based money is money that is created when it is borrowed into existence. Prior to the loan, the money did not exist. When loan documents are signed, the money is created by a bank to loan to the borrower. In the case of a home-loan, the borrower takes 30 years and a lot of sweat and tears to pay off the loan. Whereas the bank, who lent the money, created this money out of nothing in seconds. This system favors banks. All money enters the economy as debt, it carries an interest payment requirement, and the creation of new money is required each year to pay the interest on the older money.

We are in a never-ending money creation cycle, which ends when either we reach our natural debt capacity limit, or we run out of crises that justify massive new money creation.

Too much money creation leads to inflation and unattainable asset values. And now the cost of a home is out of sight for most Americans, especially the youngest among us. For them, the American Dream has vanished.

Beginning with the Coinage Act of 1792, and until the Federal Reserve Act of 1913, we had 17 percent inflation. Over that 121-year period, it works out to an inflation rate of a tenth of a percent per year. If gas costs $1.00 a gallon, it would take 10 years before the cost of gas rose to $1.01 a gallon.

The solution to the unaffordability of housing and the death of the American Dream is to return to sound money, the constitutional money required by the Constitution’s Framers, who inked our 1787 Constitution written on hemp paper.

The most direct path back to constitutional money needs to be handled at the federal level, but there are things that can be done in the states. For me, as a state senator, this is the biggest issue. Debt-based money funds forever wars. Debt-based money funds the welfare state. Debt-based money greases the wheels of corruption all over the planet. Debt-based money is actually not money, it is anti-money.

In Idaho, in 2026, I am running three sound money bills. These 3 bills are all stuck in House State Affairs. Senate bill 1338 is being run for the fifth time to provide authority for the state treasurer to invest the “IDLE Money Fund” in gold and silver bullion. This bill was vetoed by Governor Little in 2024, for what he said was a weak fiscal note. This year the fiscal note is much more detailed. Had the authorized amount of gold bullion been purchased back in 2024 at the time of the veto, the state would have made $375 million. Had the investment been in silver, the gain would have been $933 million.

Senate Bill 1323, also stuck in House State Affairs, would provide that Idaho courts enforce contracts that call for payment in gold or silver species. These are called “gold clauses” and “silver clauses” and were commonly used in commerce before we got debt-based money.

Lastly, I am running Senate Joint Memorial 113 which calls on the U. S. Treasury and the Trump Administration to issue gold back bonds with a 50 year maturity. This is a Dr. Judy Shelton idea, who earned her PhD in Economics at the University of Utah and is a fellow at the Hoover Institute at Stanford University. Arizona and Utah have run similar memorials. The idea is that these gold-backed bonds would be issued on July 4, 2026 and redeemable on the 300th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence in 2076. There is speculation that President Trump will announce these gold-backed bonds this July Forth.

All 3 bills are stuck in House State Affairs. Yesterday, the House State Affairs Chairman told me “Phil, I am not hearing your bills. I asked you for your help, and I didn’t get it. So, I am not hearing your bills.”

Weeks earlier, in an indirect way, House State Affairs Chairman Crane implied to me that he would hear my sound money bills only if I supported his brother’s House Bill 542 related to Social Media. The idea behind H542 is good, but in my opinion, H542 needs more work. So I voted against it on the Senate side.

Back in 2024, the same thing happened. That was with Senate Bill 1314, which is similar to today’s Senate Bill 1338. In 2024, S1314 got held in House State Affairs for a month because I wouldn’t change my vote on an adoption bill that had failed in the Senate Judiciary Rules Committee. Then, the House State Affairs vice-chairman told me my sound money bill would get a hearing only after I flipped my vote on her failed adoption bill. I refused, and S1314 didn’t get heard until the very end of the session. This probably contributed greatly to S1314 getting vetoed by the Governor after the legislature had left town. I didn’t cry when that vice-chairman lost her primary election a couple months later.

In 2024, $375 million in forfeited gains for gold, or $933 million in forfeited gains for silver was a lot to gamble to get a committee vote flipped on an adoption bill. Now the same thing is happening again in 2026.

If you agree with me that the path back to sound money is also the path to revive the American Dream and home ownership for the youngest Americans, please do what you can to get a hearing for these 3 Senate bills that are currently dead in House State Affairs. By the way, these are not “my bills”, they appropriately belong to the People of Idaho.

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