BALANCED BUDGET AMENDMENT

Control Spending, Grow the Economy

Fifteen years ago, a Democrat President and a Republican Congress worked together to control government spending and grow the economy.  The result of this collaboration was four straight years of a budget surplus (1998-2001) and a 4% unemployment rate.

The most important factor in producing a balanced budget is a growing economy.  The federal tax system, like Oregon’s, relies heavily on an income tax for revenue.  As a result, the U.S., like Oregon, has an imbalanced budget reaction to recessions and long periods of high unemployment. If people aren’t working, they can’t do their part to pay taxes.  We know all too well what that means here in our state.

The most important factor in maintaining a balanced budget is to constrain government from borrowing more and more money.  Interest on the national debt alone this year will top $414 billion, and the deficit will be, for the third straight year, one of the largest in U.S. history –  $1.3 trillion.  The ability to deficit spend has become ingrained in the minds of politicians.  For the sake of the coming generations who will be left with a bill they never asked for, it must stop.

I support a Balanced Budget Amendment to the U.S. Constitution because I believe it will force politicians to do what they’ve not shown a willingness to do over time: stop borrowing money we don’t have.  I would hope that we could count on Members of Congress to simply do their job, but that has become wishful thinking.  The U.S. Senate hasn’t produced a budget in nearly three years, preferring to not make any difficult decisions about how they spend taxpayer dollars.  This unwillingness to perform the basic function of government is having real-world implications around the country as businesses concerned about the future hoard cash and the stock market roils to news about the U.S. credit downgrade.

Nevertheless, if we are able to pass a Balanced Budget Amendment, it would be impossible to implement immediately for two reasons.  First, our budget is simply too out of whack.  A Constitutional mandate to balance our books in this recessionary period would require severe tax hikes and dramatic cuts in services and our national defense.  But, with a Balanced Budget Amendment over time, we’d be able to grow the economy and reduce spending to the point where fiscal sanity is restored.  Second, we would need to wait on the states to go through the long, arduous process of ratifying the Amendment.  Thus, it might take years to actually achieve a Balanced Budget Amendment.  These two reasons are not excuses for avoiding a Balanced Budget Amendment, but they do serve as realistic reminders that there is no quick fix to the challenges we now face.

In the end, a Balanced Budget Amendment would put taxpayers back in charge of the federal budget and get it out of the hands of politicians who’ve proven to be poor stewards of our nation’s fiscal health.

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