Constitution Check: Must the Next Federal Budget Be Balanced?

"The Secretary of the Treasury shall not exercise... additional borrowing authority... until the Archivist of the United States transmits to the states... a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution."

- Sec. 301, Bill H.R. 2560, adopted by the House of Representatives on Tuesday by a vote of 234-190. The measure now goes to the Senate.

The constitutional response:

It's a safe bet that when the new fiscal year for the federal government begins on October 1, the Constitution will not require a balanced budget. And, probably, neither will it be required of any budget after that (read more about the constitution and the National Debt here).

But that won't be for lack of trying. Library of Congress analyst James V. Saturno once wrote:

Since the 1930s, dozens of proposals have called for laws or constitutional amendments that would require a balanced budget... The accumulation of large deficits since the 1970s has heightened the feeling of some policymakers and other observers that the Constitution should be amended to require the federal government to balance revenues and expenditures.

That was written 13 years ago. Today that "heightened feeling" not only persists, but seems to be even more intense. As the U.S. Treasury approaches the limit of its borrowing capacity on August 2, deficits are now so routine in federal budgets that they are at the center of Washington bargaining over what to do next.

The approval in the House of Representatives on Tuesday of a call for a balanced budget amendment was widely regarded by Washington insiders as a symbolic gesture that now clears the way, politically, for a supposedly final round of negotiations about whether, and how, to raise the debt ceiling, and cut the budget in the process. On that, there is surely more to come, perhaps even later this week.

In the meantime, whether symbolic or not, the House vote does send a lesson in constitutional arithmetic: while the proposal drew 234 "yea" votes, it was still 56 votes short of what the Constitution would require to propose a constitutional amendment -- a two-thirds majority in both houses to send the measure to the states for consideration, at which point three-quarters of the states (38) would have to approve to actually put it into the Constitution. (The president, by the way, has no say in the amending process.)

Given the difficulty of amending the Constitution (that has been done only 27 times since the original document was ratified in June 1788), the popularity of proposals to amend the Constitution far outshines the prospect of actually doing so. And few ideas for amendments are as popular as the one to mandate that the government live within its fiscal means.

A closer examination of what the House adopted on Tuesday shows some other ideas for fundamentally altering the existing Constitution:

* While it would raise the federal debt ceiling, the added borrowing power could not be used until the House and Senate had approved the proposed balanced budget amendment.

* The amendment described in the bill would require a three-fifths vote in both the House and Senate to unbalance any budget.

* Any increase in the debt limit would also need three-fifths approval in each chamber.

* No bill to raise revenue -- either by increasing tax rates or closing loopholes -- could be adopted unless it had the approval of two-thirds of each chamber.

* The amendment could be suspended by Congress in any year in which Congress had formally declared war. It also could be suspended during a military conflict -- short of declared war -- that threatened national security.

As a political reality, the super-majority requirements probably could seldom if ever be reached. Thus, balanced budgets would be the norm, except in war time. And that, of course, is precisely the idea.

This post first appeared on Constitution Daily.

 

Follow Lyle Denniston on Twitter: www.twitter.com/ConstitutionCtr

Comments

[cwaged1002]

11:07 PM on 07/21/2011

USA has been involved in "Military Actions" since Korea (1953) so demanding a balanced budget is another con by the cons.

[shryock]

10:46 PM on 07/21/2011

how would you address emergency spending? like for a war? say, for instance, the country was attacked? wouldn't you have to have a vote to borrow money before the vote to go to war to defend the country? what would you do in the meanwhile? wait for congress to meet and discuss and vote to fund and then vote to tax and then vote to go to war? and what would you do if congress votes not to increase taxes to pay for the war, (which is the situation we already have, an unpaid war) so would you then simply not have a war, even if the country was attacked? not that i am a warmonger in any way, i think we go to war too easily, really, but i have not seen any mechanism for this kind of emergency spending included in any of the talk of a balanced budget amendment, and cannot see how it could possibly work.
how about a national natural disaster? would there be no disaster funding if congress did not meet and vote to borrow money or to increase taxes? and wouldn't you have to borrow money while you wait for the new taxes to go into effect? so wouldn't that require a separate vote?
i cannot see this doing anything other than making government even more cumbersome than it is now, which is supposedly the exact opposite of what everyone wants.

[cwaged1002]

11:12 PM on 07/21/2011

War and Military Actions would be the exception to the balanced budget law.

No law passes in DC without exceptions for the chosen.

[Dosadi]

10:29 PM on 07/21/2011

If a country prints its own money there is never any interest due. That country is in control of its finances, is economy and its future. We are not.

[jimtodd]

12:34 PM on 07/22/2011

The mint prints the money, but it enters the economy as a loan at the discount window. Every dollar put into circulation is in the form of a loan.

[Dosadi]

03:58 PM on 07/22/2011

Exactly my point. Those dollars in our pockets represent loans. But the interest owed is non existent. That means one of us borrowers must receive money from another borrower so we can pay the interest on our own loan. This process must continue with other borrowers if our present banking system is to continue. But it can't. The world is running out of borrowers.

[rich07]

09:51 PM on 07/21/2011

We need to have an honest and serious conversation about a balance budget amendment. It really is not fair for the next 3 generations to be burdened with our war mongering debt...it is ours because our elected officials have done this. It is also apparent the even during the best of times we cannot pay down our ever growing debt...it has to end a some point. I don't know if I agree with the super majorities and we do need to get a clear understanding of how it would work, but it pretty simple math that you cannot spend more than you take in forever and not have severe consequences for those actions. Lets get it under control before it really does control us.

[Dosadi]

10:28 PM on 07/21/2011

That is a great initiative to undertake. But can we do it? There is no earthly way for the US or any other country to pay off all of their debts. The problem is interest. Interest is something that does not exist at the time a loan is taken out. But when the loan is paid back interest is due. But where does it come from? Unless this is a ponzi or pyramid scheme it cannot ever come forth. if the bank loans you ten marbles you can put those in a can but to pay the bank back you have to come up with eleven marbles. Where is that extra marble going to come from? There are only ten marbles in existence so what do you do? Simple, you get someone else to take out a loan so he can give you a marble (perhaps you can sell the can and keep your marbles in your pocket). That puts the burden of making up the interest on someone elses back. That is the way our economic system was designed centuries ago. And that is how it works today. You need people to constantly take out loans so that money can be passed around to let others pay their interest. But there never will be enough money in existence to pay of all of the principle plus interest. It just can't happen. Our world wide economic system is non sustainable and will eventually crash.

[shryock]

10:55 PM on 07/21/2011

don't think so, dosadi.
when you borrow those ten marbles, they are not the only marbles ever anywhere. they are only ten of the billion or so marbles that exist.
so you borrow ten of them from wherever.
you pay back one every month. means you have to go to work for someone who is willing to pay you a marble to do a job. then you have a marble to pay back.
you pay back for eleven months so you can cover the interest on your marble loan.

the idea here is that if it is a personal loan, you go get a job so you have income to make payments. if you are a nation, you must have income as well. where does it come from? a nation's income comes from taxes, tariffs, fees, fines, and sales of nationally held commodities like oil and gas or by selling bonds like it sold war bonds to help finance world war 2. we are doing all that now, except for the tax part. we have not increased taxes to a point that they can cover the cost of the war and the cost of the interest on the loans we took out to pay for the war since we could not pay for it in cash.
http://zfacts.com/p/318.html

[LA2000]

08:56 PM on 07/21/2011

According to this, it takes a mere 60 votes to "unbalance" a budget in the Senate. But it takes nearly 70 votes to raise revenue to balance a budget.

This is not a formula for balanced budgets. This is a formula for going broke and strapping the costs onto the middle class.

And it makes sure that even a tiny minority of republicans (34) could hold up the entire business of the Senate if they don't get their way.

Republicans know their numbers are fading and they need to find ways to give their ever shrinking minority more power.

This thing is a disaster.

[Nancy J Powell]

08:34 PM on 07/21/2011

Can we just raise the debt limit ......please !

[chadizzy]

05:20 PM on 07/21/2011

A balanced budget in the constitution would be huge. It would save so many headaches and future debt problems. I like it!

[justsaying101]

05:15 PM on 07/21/2011

It's a good idea, too!