We’re coming up on an election year, and once again members of Congress have failed to balance a budget or even to produce a plan that will ever balance the budget. So they are taking the much easier route of proposing a balanced budget amendment. On Wednesday, Democrats and Republicans proposed competing amendments that predictably failed. The Republicans’ plan was voted down largely on party lines, while the Democrats’ amendment was shot down by majorities of both parties. Arkansas’ Republican senator, John Boozman, voted for his party’s plan. Sen. Mark Pryor, a Democrat, voted against both.
A balanced budget amendment seems like an easy answer — just don’t let Congress keep spending money the government doesn’t have.
But it likely wouldn’t work and definitely would create unintended consequences.
The major unintended consequence would be that it would increase the involvement of the judiciary in tax-and-spending decisions. Once Congress passed a budget, someone would sue, and then federal judges and Supreme Court justices would decide where the taxpayers’ money goes. That would be undemocratic and messy.
The amendment probably wouldn’t work because it would have to give Congress the flexibility to deficit-spend in wartime or during a national emergency, as both of Wednesday’s proposals did.
Independent reporting for Pine Bluff & Jefferson County since 1879.
It’s not hard to see where that get-out-of-jail-free card would lead — just declare an emergency, real or manufactured, any time you need one. For the past 25 years, the United States has been fighting somebody somewhere almost continuously.
Besides, the Constitution cannot guarantee a balanced budget or anything else. The nation’s founding document is routinely reinterpreted, sometimes significantly and sometimes out of convenience. The 10th Amendment giving power to the states once was considered important. Now, not so much.
What matters isn’t the piece of parchment. What matters is the commitment of elected officials and voters to the principles spelled out on that parchment. And right now, we’re just not very committed to balancing the budget.
On the other hand, supporters would say that a balanced budget amendment would help create that commitment. And they would have other powerful arguments on their side, chief among them the fact that nothing else is working. The United States has been addicted to debt since 1835, the last time the federal government didn’t owe anybody anything. Now that debt has reached $15 trillion — $50,000 for every man, woman and child in America — and is rising rapidly. It has increased a total of $4 trillion in the past three years under President Bush’s last budget and under President Obama’s first two.
Almost all states have some requirement that their budgets be balanced, and while some are certainly struggling, none is as broke as Washington. Arkansas routinely balances its budget because of a law known as the Revenue Stabilization Act. If it works in Arkansas, maybe it would work in Washington.
But that’s not why some of these elected officials are voting for a balanced budget amendment. What’s happening now is a copout. Instead of making tough choices that would increase revenues and decrease spending, Washington once again is playing games and buying time until the next election cycle is over. Democrats vote for one proposal, Republicans for another, and they both can go home saying they voted for a balanced budget amendment when they really just voted for their version of a resolution they knew would fail.
It’s the equivalent of offsetting penalties in football, where the defense and offense both commit an infraction, so the down has to be replayed. The difference is that in football, it’s a coincidence. In Washington, it’s done on purpose.
Anyway, don’t bet your last dollar on a balanced budget amendment becoming law. Out of 11,000 amendments proposed by Congress through the country’s history, only 27 have been ratified, and 10 of those were the Bill of Rights.
Even if such an amendment passed Congress, it might take a while to be ratified by 38 states. The last to be added, the 27th Amendment requiring Congress to delay raising its own pay until after an election has passed, was proposed in September 1789. It was ratified in 1992 — 203 years later.
We don’t have that long.
So whether or not you favor a balanced budget amendment, don’t be fooled when elected officials express their support for it. Voting for a balanced budget amendment is not the same as voting for a balanced budget. Unfortunately, few in Congress are voting for that.
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Steve Brawner is an independent journalist in Arkansas. His blog — Independent Arkansas — is linked at Arkansasnews.com. His e-mail address is brawnersteve@mac.com.