A Great Deal More Than a Balanced Budget

Amendment Carries Lots of Baggage

“The budget should be balanced. Public debt should be reduced. The arrogance of officialdom should be tempered, and assistance to foreign lands should be curtailed, lest Rome become bankrupt.” –Marcus Tullius Cicero, 106-43 BC.

A gaggle of GOP senators gathered for a press conference March 31st. Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-KY, the minority leader, announced that all 47 Republican senators had signed on to a resolution calling for a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution.

Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-UT, who has taken the lead on this issue, said, “I think most of us would agree that this government is incapable of living within its means, and we have to go to this extent in order to get things done.”

Hatch’s new junior senator, Republican Mike Lee, pointed out that “perpetual deficit spending brings about a particularly pernicious form of taxation without representation.” In other words, congressional overspending today increases the interest that future generations will have to pay.

Sen. Pat Roberts, R-KS, said such an amendment would lead to long-term fiscal stability. “If we send a message like this,” he said, “I think it will signal to the American people we’re serious, and more especially to the world, and more especially to the financial community.”

Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-SC, finally mentioned in passing the one factor in the fiscal equation that Republicans usually avoid: “You’d have to tighten your belts,” he said. “You’d have to deal with entitlements. You’d have to look at revenue. You’d have to do things that people in the real world do every day.”

It’s the “you’d have to look at revenue” part that I was listening for, and only Graham mentioned it.

Sen. John Barrasso, R-WY, said he met with constituents back home and asked them if they believed they had a better life than their parents had, “and every hand goes up,” he said. “And then I ask the question, ‘How many of you believe that your kids will have a better life than you have right now?’ and the hands all come down. And we talk about why that is, and the reason, fundamentally, is the debt. The debt is the threat to our future.”

Well, I like the idea of working toward a balanced budget, and I’m all for a government that lives within its means, and I don’t like taxation without representation, and I’m all for long-term fiscal stability, and so on. But I’ve noticed over the years that Republicans tend to say a lot less than they mean, so I downloaded the resolution.

I didn’t find anything to criticize in the first section of the proposed amendment:

“Total outlays for any fiscal year shall not exceed total receipts for that fiscal year, unless two-thirds of the duly chosen and sworn Members of each House of Congress shall provide by law for a specific excess of outlays over receipts by a roll call vote.”

Well, I thought, that’s one way to go about it. Now all that’s needed is some sort of provision for wartime or national emergency, when we might have to spend more money than we have, and spend it quickly. I don’t see why they couldn’t get enough Democrats to go along to pass it, and I think they could probably get the necessary ratifications from 38 states. I read on.

The second section threw the monkey wrench into the machinery: “Total outlays for any fiscal year shall not exceed 18 percent of the gross domestic product of the United States for the calendar year ending before the beginning of such fiscal year, unless two-thirds of the duly chosen and sworn Members of each House of Congress shall provide by law for a specific amount in excess of such 18 percent by roll call vote.”

Huh? What has that got to do with a balanced budget? That’s an arbitrary limit on the size of the federal government. It might be an appropriate limit, but it has nothing to do with collecting as much money as is spent. And why put that into the Constitution?

The third section requires the president to propose a budget, within the 18% of GDP limit, each year.

The fourth section adds other non-germane stipulations: “Any bill that imposes a new tax or increases the statutory rate of any tax or the aggregate amount of revenue may pass only by a two-thirds majority of the duly chosen and sworn Members of each House of Congress by a roll call vote. For the purpose of determining any increase in revenue under this section, there shall be excluded any increase resulting from the lowering of the statutory rate of any tax.”

Where have I heard that crap before? Oh, yeah. I think the House of Representatives passed something very close to that at the beginning of this session. Now I’m getting mad. This resolution isn’t about a balanced budget. It’s a package of all the Republican wet dreams they’ve been espousing since Saint Ronald Reagan took office. I’m not going to parse it further; you can read it yourself here: http://www.scribd.com/doc/52020805/GOP-Balanced-Budget-Amendment-Text, if you don’t mind having your browser history forever revealing that you signed on to an official Republican website.

It becomes clear that the Republicans have no intention of getting this resolution passed. Oh sure, they’d pass it in a minute if they had super majorities in both houses and a president who would sign it, but they just want to be able to whine to the electorate that, “Well, we tried to get a balanced budget amendment passed, but the Democrat[ic] Party wouldn’t hear of it.”

“You’d have to look at revenue,” Lindsey Graham said, but he obviously didn’t mean it.

I should have known. The last time that Republican senators were unanimous about something was in last winter’s lame-duck session, when they all signed a letter saying they would block all legislation until and unless all of the Bush tax cuts – including those affecting people with the highest incomes – were reauthorized.

We are going to have to “look at” revenue. We can’t get out of the hole we’re in by just cutting spending, but the proposed resolution would all but prevent any increase in taxes. It is a disingenuous, hypocritical, fraudulent deception to call this travesty of legislative phraseology a balanced budget amendment, and every one of those 47 senators knows it. It’s grandstanding at its worst, and, once again, it distracts Congress from its pressing business: helping the economy recover and getting people back to work.