If Congress has trouble staying within constitutional bounds now, just wait until the Constitution mandates that it must balance the federal budget.
Republicans have made a late entry into the debt-ceiling debate with a push for adding such a requirement to the Constitution. The balanced-budget amendment is not only an implausible way out of the debt-ceiling dilemma — it’s unlikely to pass Congress with the necessary two-thirds vote to send it to the states — it risks doing the worst disservice to the Constitution since Prohibition.
The balanced-budget amendment came to prominence in the Contract With America back in the 1990s. It fell a vote short in the Senate and was soon forgotten — and deserved to be.
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A simple balanced-budget amendment threatens Republican fiscal priorities; it would create even more pressure to raise taxes. A straightforward amendment recognizes no difference between balance at 24 percent of GDP and at 15 percent of GDP.
Realizing this, House Republicans have crafted a version that essentially mandates their favored fiscal policies. It requires that spending not exceed 18 percent of GDP and stipulates that only a two-thirds majority can raise taxes. Only modesty, presumably, prevented the amendment’s authors from spelling out budgetary levels for the Department of Health and Human Services.
The Constitution is meant to set out the basic rules of the road for American governance. It’s not an appropriate vehicle for enshrining transitory or controversial policy preferences. This is what the 18th Amendment establishing Prohibition did, and so ensured widespread defiance of the nation’s foundational law.
A balanced-budget amendment could befall the same fate at the hands of the fiscal bootleggers of Congress. Even House Republicans voted for a budget that doesn’t balance the federal books until roughly 2030. It’s easy to imagine Congress playing definitional games to evade the strictures of the amendment, inevitably inviting lawsuits.
That the amendment would precipitate legal action is acknowledged in the amendment’s own language: “No court of the United States or of any State shall order any increase in revenue to enforce this article.” Judicial interventions in budgetary matters are, by implication, acceptable so long as they bring spending cuts. Let’s hope the federal courts are packed with judges favoring Medicare reform.
The Republican amendment acknowledges there are circumstances when the budget shouldn’t necessarily be balanced. It allows for a waiver in fiscal years in which a declaration of war against a nation-state is in effect. As a plot to get Nancy Pelosi to declare war on Switzerland or another handy inoffensive country, this is brilliant. Otherwise, it’s wholly inadequate.
We haven’t declared war on anyone since World War II. The amendment’s exception wouldn’t have accounted for the Cold War or the War on Terror, neither of which entailed declarations of war on nation-states.
Another provision allows three-fifths of Congress to waive the amendment for expenditures related to a military conflict “that causes an imminent and serious threat to national security.” If you believe the Cold War or the War on Terror qualifies, this could have led to constant exceptions from 1947 to 1991, and from 2001 to perhaps the present.
The impulse behind the amendment is certainly laudable — to attack the debt problem at its root. But a strictly balanced budget is not important enough to be written into the Constitution. The difference between balance and a small deficit is meaningless in the long run; it certainly doesn’t rise to the level of protecting free speech or ending slavery. We ran budget deficits from 1970 to 1997, and the republic survived.
The current threat to the country is historic deficits driven by historic levels of spending. Favoring the balanced-budget amendment does nothing to address those problems in the here and now. Realistically, building the coalition necessary to pass the amendment as envisioned by Republicans would take years, by which time it will be gloriously irrelevant or altogether too late.
"Even House Republicans voted for a budget that doesn’t balance the federal books until roughly 2030."
No, that budget NEVER balances the federal books. The only budget that matters is next years. What are we Communist China with 5,10, and 20 year plans?
"The amendment’s exception wouldn’t have accounted for the Cold War or the War on Terror, neither of which entailed declarations of war on nation-states."
As it should be. When conflict is the normal state of affairs the budget should be balanced. If not it will never be balanced. Since WWII how many years has the US not had some sort of major threat on the horizon?
Thank you...thank you...thank you! I have been saying these things to anyone who will listen, especially my conservative and Republican friends some of whom have jumped on the balanced budget bandwagon, or who have not thought it through carefully enough. You make the point I try to argue frequently - that a Congress that cannot stay within the Constitution now will not respond like we want to a Constitutional fix to the budget problem. And this amendment will only put pressure on Congress to raise taxes!
Tired, inside the beltway thinking that doesn't recognize the magnitude of the problem or the requirement to tie these knucklehead's hands. Sorry Rich. Time for you get out into America.
In order to have a balanced budget, you first have to have a budget, and the democrats clearly have no intention of passing one of those. Harry Reid believes it would be "foolish" to accomplish the legislative branch's explicit task.
The most essential move to control both taxes and spending is to do away with the weekly withholdings from paychecks. A requirement that a check be sent in weekly/monthly by taxpayers would put a screeching halt to Big Government and spending.
Try getting THAT signed into law!
Amen and amen! As a self-employed person who writes quarterly checks to Uncle Sam, I could not agree more!! If everyone had to write a check like I do, the attitudes of all Americans toward taxation would change.
I would add one item. I think there is a single law that would get a far better result in at most three years.
Specifically, eliminate the payroll with-holding tax, requiring people to submit a physical check or electronic transfer to the Federal government on a monthly basis. This includes all federal taxes customarily deducted from paychecks: income, FICA, Medicare/Medicaid.
Make people viscerally aware of the degree to which the Federal government eats out their substance.
Expect the revolt to start when people have had about six months to notice that the biggest single expense on their individual budgets is government.
I absolutely agree with you, with one exception. I don't think it would tax six months for a tax revolt. More like two months. That second check would hurt.
Geoph,
I think you are dead on. Most people do not think about their taxes as often as they should. It could very well be the biggest item in their budget. I find it shocking that people are happy that they get a big refund check. A woman that works for me recieved a refund check of 18K. She just could not understand that she lent the government that 18K at zero percent interest.
Milton Friedman was instrumental in the creation of tax withholding. I wonder how much he regretted it later in life.
The Volsted act did lead to the lowest rate of aloholism,the lowest incidences of cirrosis of the liver and the lowest numbers of DWI related traffic fatalities in the 1920s. Prohibition really did work from the stand point of reducing social evils of too much liquor. It also made Joseph P. Kennedy a very rich man who made millions by 'investing' in booze filled swiftboats. He needed the income because Gloria Swanson was an expensive adorment to his life style. The problem was that the cost of enforcing the law was prohibitive. Prohibition as "social reform" achieved its goals. It was a Republican (Harding) attempt to piggyback off a Democratic wartime measure to use the power of the federal goverment to regulate what goes down the old gullet. Being sick and fat is a freedom of choice decision best left to the individual conscious. Some counties in the South are still dry. Only problem is they usually border wet counties with all the bars clustered at the county line.
This is a hard position to take for a conservative as naturally, you will be discouraged by others telling you that you aren't being conservative enough, but as Rich lays out here, this amendment is foolhardy and will not accomplish what it sets out to do. I had some doubts when I heard about the amendment and this column confirmed those and created a few others.
"The current threat to the country is historic deficits driven by historic levels of spending. Favoring the balanced-budget amendment does nothing to address those problems in the here and now."
Way to keep things in perspective. The emotions of these times shouldn't be used to motivate irrational behaviors such as this.
There's a fundamental problem with solving our current fiscal problems with a constitutional amendment, no matter how shrewdly constructed.
This nation's political class -- the entirety of one party and a disconcerting number of the leaders of the other party -- have no respect for what's already written into the Constitution. They hold the document in sometimes quite open contempt, and adding to the document's contents isn't going to address that basic problem.
Conservatives should have no problem identifying foolish and demagogic ideas. A balanced budget ammendment is one of those, as Rich Lowry points out here. Muscular conservatism should ferret out bad ideas whether proposed by Democrats (almost always) and Republicans (too often).
This particular version of the BBA may not be the right one, and it may not be the right time to do it. But I disagree with Rich on his main point -- the Constitution is the right place to address this issue.
When government takes 50% or more of your income, liberty is threatened. No one should ever be a minority shareholder of their own life's work. We absolutely need a constitutional mechanism to establish this fundamental principle.
"The current threat to the country is historic deficits driven by historic levels of spending."
False:
"The Great Recession is the source of much of the increase in spending, less from the stimulus than from the automatic social supports that expand when the economy declines – unemployment insurance, food stamps, Medicaid, and other supports. These work to sustain families that have lost their jobs, while sustaining demand in the economy and limiting the downturn. Thus federal spending will automatically decline if the economy recovers and people get good-paying jobs."
maksuktov,
"The current threat to the country is historic deficits driven by historic levels of spending."
False:
Actually, it is true. Your link is an explaination why spending and deficits are at historic levels it is not an invalidation of that fact. Or are you claiming that spending on entitlements is not spending?
The current threat to the country is unemployment. (I know conservatives don't care about revenue, but the fact is we need more taxpayers.)
As for entitlement spending, that's a long-term problem that can only be solved by reforming the entire system of health care delivery. Paul Ryan's chintzy Medicare vouchers do nothing in that regard.
My suggestion for a BBA: "The budget for the next year may not exceed the average revenue from the past three years."
Simple. Direct. No wiggle room. It'll never happen, of course. No BBA would pass that didn't have some sort of exception in it, and that exception would always be invoked. Or they would redefine 'revenue' to mean whatever they want; the Left is good at redefining the Constitution. Or they'll find some way to just ignore it entirely. That seems to be the MO for the past 50 years or so.
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