Two years ago, a New Hampshire lawmaker filed a constitutional amendment that would have set the state on a path to independence if the federal debt ever crossed $40 trillion. It went nowhere. On August 18, the debt crossed $40 trillion.
That measure, CACR 20, was Representative Jason Gerhard’s in 2024, and it was not the first. New Hampshire lawmakers have filed to leave the union for years. A 2022 attempt drew 13 votes on the House floor, and another bill, HB 1130, asked only for a commission to study the question. This month the idea is back, pushed by Carla Gericke, a former Free State Project chair who now runs a group called NH Exit. “America was never supposed to have such a strong, unaccountable federal boss in Washington, D.C.,” she told InDepthNH.
The political class answered the way it always does. The Democratic House leader, Alexis Simpson, said independence was “absolutely not what I am hearing from Granite Staters.” The Republican majority leader, Jason Osborne, managed “LOL, no and no.” A poll was waved around, 16 percent for and 70 percent against. Question closed. On to the next thing.
None of them argued the number. Not one explained how a government that has doubled its debt in under a decade, that now borrows six billion dollars a day and burns more than half of it servicing debt it already owes, ever climbs back out. No plan was offered, because there is no plan. There was a laugh and a poll. That is the entire establishment answer to a $40 trillion debt: mock whoever says the figure out loud, and count on everyone being too polite to ask the follow-up. The people who ran the tab to forty trillion would like it understood that the rude part is naming it.
The reflex is the same one every independence question meets, and it is wearing thin. New Hampshire is not alone in asking. Alberta votes on its own independence in October, and the list of places putting the question on the table keeps growing while the answer keeps shrinking to a snicker. Texas is further down that road than any of them. The Republican Party of Texas wrote independence and a referendum into its 2026 platform. Texas First Pledge signers hold the party’s chair and its vice chair. The movement says its own polling has long shown the question winning the moment it reaches a ballot, which may be why the laughter is so loud. It is easy to mock a vote you can keep from ever happening.
The debt did not care about the poll. It crossed $40 trillion right on the line New Hampshire drew, and early for everyone else, and it is still climbing, six billion dollars a day. The naysayers will keep laughing until the math stops being funny. In Texas, that day is closer than anywhere, and “LOL, no” is not going to hold much longer.
Comments have moved. The real debate about Texas independence now happens with thousands of Texians in the app.
Get the TEXIAN app
