As the country celebrated the Fourth of July, I found myself thinking back to Memorial Day . I thought about all the men and women who sacrificed for you to be reading this right now. I went to Port Arthur, Texas , to my father’s grave. He was a World War I veteran. Go to a veteran’s cemetery and look at all those little flags across the cemetery. Their sacrifice is why you can be reading this today. We must ensure that one thing they sacrificed for, the promise of America, prevails.

When we are more than $32 trillion in the hole, we are failing that promise. When we continue to print money to pay the debt on borrowed money, we are failing. When we put a Band-Aid on the national debt crisis to extend our line of credit so we can continue digging ourselves a hole, we are failing future generations.

$32 trillion is a big number. Big enough that it does not seem real to most of us. But when we run out of money, Social Security and Medicare will have to take a big cut. Some people believe it won't happen — we’ll just borrow more money and keep entitlements fully funded. They are wrong. We've got to stop the bleeding. This is a critical point in American history. Sooner or later, true leaders will have to make a stand.

I think most Americans understand that we're spending too much. House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) was right to recently force President Joe Biden to the negotiating table. I commend him for getting Biden to compromise. But it’s not enough. The Fiscal Responsibility Act was just a Band-Aid to get us by, so that we didn't technically default on our debt, so that we can pay Social Security or Medicare, so the post office can stay open. The problem is that a Band-Aid does not cure the infection. And our fiscal wound is so infected right now that we are going to have to do something drastic to heal it.

Thanks to our national debt, our economic opportunity is increasingly propped up like a house of cards. We're borrowing money today with our grandchildren’s future, and then putting that on top of the debt. Put simply, we're digging the fiscal hole that much deeper. What is the end game? Are we just going to continue to borrow trillions of dollars that are going to cost our children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren, everything? Maybe they'll never overcome it.

This is not common sense. Are we trying to break America? Do we want to get to where we have to sell America just to get out of our debt? America needs to realize that if our government doesn’t straighten this out and start using common sense to balance our budget, the suffering will be immense. We have people that are so dependent on Medicare and Social Security, like my family was. If our Social Security was cut 20% or 25%, I'm sure we would have had to turn the lights off.

Put simply, we better do something before we run ourselves completely off the track. It's the truth and somebody needs to speak it. I don't mind because I have no axe to grind with anybody and I don't want anything. Anything except for this country and its future generations to be taken care of.

To have a chance at keeping that promise that so many have died for not just alive, but flourishing.

Joe Penland Sr. is the founder and chairman of Quality Mat Company — one of the oldest and largest producers of rig, oilfield, and crane mats in the world. Joe has extensive banking experience having served on several bank boards for over 25 years. He lives North of Beaumont in Hardin County Texas, with his wife Linda. His website is JoeFromTexas.com