Part of the deal for raising the debt ceiling last summer was that Congress would vote on a balanced budget amendment. The House is doing just that, but unlike the BBA fights of the Clinton years (which seem like a lifetime ago), the prospects for passage seem remote.
Those Democrats who once supported the idea are less likely to do so today. In part, this is because some in the Republican caucus wanted a BBA with teeth, That’s not what they got:
After an intense internal debate, House Republicans decided to bring to the floor a “clean” balanced budget constitutional amendment that is similar to the version that almost passed in the 1990s, rather than a stricter version, which many conservatives prefer, that would have written tighter spending limits into the Constitution and required a higher threshold for breaching the caps.
So what’s on the table is similar to what passed the House easily in the mid-1990s. Except Democrats who voted for it then aren’t keen on the idea now:
Some Democrats say the events of the intervening years have changed their minds.
“I have learned and seen what the country has learned and seen. Since 1995, we saw that balancing the budget doesn’t require a constitutional amendment,” said Rep. Rob Andrews of New Jersey. “In the late ‘90s, we balanced the budget with a set of reasonable and fair judgments.”
He said budget challenges brought by the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks and the Wall Street meltdown of 2008 make it tougher to accept “arbitrary restraints on our decision-making process.”
Which is another way of saying it crimps their style.
Not everyone on the right is eager for a BBA, either. The Wall Street Journal editorialized against the idea this morning:
Republicans have walked into this box canyon by putting political symbolism above fiscal substance. They know the balanced-budget amendment is popular because Americans instinctively like the idea that government should live within its means, never mind the details. GOP freshmen in particular have turned the amendment into a political fetish—to the point that they’re now willing to endorse a version that could increase the size of government.
I’ve long had sympathy for a balanced budget amendment. If it prevents Congress from indulging in spending on cowboy poets and crony capitalism, so be it. But the details do matter, and the Journal is right to raise the red flag that the amendment under consideration:
…could easily become an engine for tax increases, as it so often has in the 50 states. Under Mr. Boehner’s amendment, spending could rise to 25% or 30% or more of GDP, so long as the budget is balanced. This is a recipe for politicians to tell voters that taxes must go up because the Constitution made them do it.
Which would make it the cruelest of jokes.
But still not as cruel as the $15 trillion in outstanding government debt.
