To many Americans, the balanced budget amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which is being debated in Congress, is simply good sense. A family has to live within its income, and the government, they reason, should be capable of doing this, too.
But do the majority of families have balanced budgets? And is it always desirable for a country to have one? People generally hesitate to go into debt in order to throw a big party. It's a different story when it comes to a purchase that will last years or a lifetime -- like a house or college education for their kids or even a new car. Families consider that kind of indebtedness essential and acceptable as long as they know what the limits are and stay within them.
Most economists do not consider balancing a nation's budget a virtue in itself, either. They see the budget as a useful tool for keeping a country's economy on track. In times of recession, they say, the government should increase spending and cut taxes. The idea is to put money in people's pockets so they can spend it and stimulate the economy. But times of inflation call for an entirely different budgetary strategy. Then the government should cut back on expenditures and increase taxes in order to inhibit consumer spending and cool down the economy. If we insist on a balanced budget, these economists say, we will deprive the U.S. of the flexibility that every other industrialized country uses to help maintain its economic health.
Furthermore, requiring a balanced budget is not the same thing as getting one. Budget writing is an art, not a science. How much the government takes in and how much it will spend in a given year is only an educated guess, and as a result, politicians tend to be very optimistic about receipts and expenditures. That's why few budgets over the past 15 years have been accurate -- even though Republicans have been in the White House most of the time. There is no reason to think that a constitutional amendment will make the process of balancing the budget any easier: It does not tell the Congress how to achieve a balanced budget, only that it must.
And what will happen at the end of the year when an imbalance becomes obvious? Will Congress and the President engage in some new guesses? Will the problem go to the courts to be decided? Nobody knows, but the distinguished conservative Robert Bork has offered some unpleasant scenarios. If the courts decided not to get involved, the amendment might turn out to be unenforceable. Americans are already convinced that their government is not working; that is why they favor a measure as extreme as a constitutional amendment. If this ultimate recourse turns out to be nothing more than what Bork calls an "exhortation addressed to Congress," it "would demean the Constitution and increase the cynicism of those Americans who had expected the amendment to cure an urgent problem."
If, on the other hand, the courts agree that they have jurisdiction over the budget, we might see judges telling Congress what measures should be taken in order to balance the budget. Does anybody think we will be better off when unelected officials can decide how much tax an individual will pay ( or what benefits he or she will lose) rather than members of Congress, who are accountable to the voters? This shift of power to the courts would be a disaster.
According to a recent poll (The Washington Post, January 6, 1995), 80 percent of the American public say they favor a balanced budget amendment, but when you ask how many would favor the amendment if it meant cutting federal spending on education or Social Security, the number drops below 40 percent. The American people believe that Congress can balance the budget by cutting a few unpopular programs, but it that were possible, we would already have a balanced budget, and nobody would be talking about amending the Constitution. Why don't those who support the balanced budget amendment tell the public the truth -- that we will never have a balanced budget without major cuts in federal aid to education and Social Security and health care or an increase in taxes or both?
The country has managed very well without a balanced budget for more than 200 years. And we should have learned from Prohibition that it's a mistake to muck around with the Constitution to solve the problem that people are most passionate about at the moment. The last presidential election and the recent congressional elections demonstrated that people are concerned about the budget deficit and the national debt, and we have been in the process of slowly but surely reducing the deficit without devastating government programs or putting the budget process in a straitjacket. We should let that process work.