Balanced budget proposal too risky
There’s a move afoot in the Wisconsin Legislature to join 28 other states in calling for a constitutional convention to write a balanced budget amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
It’s a bad idea for two reasons: First, the amendment is a political gimmick; nothing more than a trick. Second, such a convention could create a path to essentially rewrite the Constitution, as Karen Hobert Flynn argued in an online commentary the other day.
That’s just too risky a path to start down.
On the first point, Republicans who argue that the federal government needs to be more fiscally responsible are absolutely right. On Friday, the federal government owed $19.8 trillion, according to the U.S. debt clock. We agree: that’s not good or sustainable. And Congress, despite all its bellyaching, hasn’t done much to fix it.
So now state legislators are trying to force the issue with a call for a constitutional convention. That’s never happened but is allowable under Article V of the U.S. Constitution if two-thirds of state legislatures make the call. That means 34 states need to do so. So we’re six away.
Here’s the rub on the national debt issue: The United States has pretty much carried debt since before there was a United States. The colonies had to go into debt to win their freedom from the British. The highest national debt occurred just after World War II, when it stood at 119% of GDP in 1946, according to usgovernmentspending.com. Without that debt, the United States would not have won World War II and might still be part of the British Empire. God save the queen.
Since there are times when it is necessary to incur debt, as any family knows, of course there will have to be an escape clause in any balanced budget amendment: in case of a national emergency, the country can go into debt.
And that’s why this is a trick. What constitutes an emergency? Anything Congress says is an emergency. And anyone who believes that Congress would declare an emergency only in the case of war or an asteroid strike also may be interested in any other snake oil politicians like to sell.
In the end, there is no guarantee the amendment would ever work as intended.
On the second point, supporters will tell you that the convention would be limited to writing an amendment on a balanced budget. But once assembled, those in attendance might find they have an appetite for more changes. Maybe there’d be a temptation to curb all those annoying protests by limiting the freedom to assemble. Or to make this a more Christian nation by messing with the freedom to worship. Or to act against mass shootings by taking out any right to bear arms. Or to move against what the president has labeled as “the enemy of the people,” a free media.
Ridiculous, you say? Maybe and maybe not. The fact is no one can predict what would happen. And why run that risk? Why come even close to running that risk?
If supporters of a balanced budget want to amend the Constitution, let them try the route of all previous amendments: get Congress to pass one and then get the states to agree.
But let’s not go down a path fraught with dangerous unintended consequences.