Why a Balanced Budget Amendment is Not the Way to Go

How will an amendment requiring increased revenues to meet congressional spending help?

Everyone knows that federal spending is out of control, resulting in a monstrous budget deficit and long-term financial indebtedness that our children, grandchildren and their children will have to pay. However, seeking a solution to the problem such as Senator Cornyn’s proposed Balanced Budget Amendment, however well-intended, carries with it, unintended consequences. A spending cap is what is needed, allowing for national defense and true emergency needs.

The Difference between state and federal balanced budget requirements

State legislators are more responsive to the people within their districts. Fortunately, here in Texas they look for ways to cut budgets and spending without increasing taxes. A federal BBA would not mandate a reduction in spending thereby resulting in an increase in taxes to raise the revenue needed to balance the budget. (Ever wonder what the federal taxes and fees would have to be to balance the multi-trillion dollar budget?) The big spenders could then explain the tax increases away by pointing to the ‘constitutional requirement’ that the budget be balanced and they ‘have no other choice.’ The electorate always has the right to vote out of office fiscally irresponsible office holders.

Call on Free-Market Economists for Solutions

Over the years the Heritage Foundation has submitted budget cuts to the congress which have been ignored. We hear of ridiculous, costly, taxpayer-funded programs which are unnecessary that could and should be eliminated if someone in Washington would take the time to study programs where big cuts could and should be made. There are plenty of conservative free-market economists who could be called upon to show how to stop the fiscal insanity that is destroying our nation instead of listening to Keynesian politicos who insist on following economic policies that have failed wherever they have been tried. Elected officials who refuse to heed sound economic policy should be voted out of office.

Senator Cornyn and others who are looking for ‘quick fixes’ to our economic dilemma can only make matters worse if they are willing to submit our constitution to an unaccountable Constitutional Convention and risk a leftist re-write of one of the greatest documents of freedom, next to the Holy Bible, that has ever been written. The argument that the ‘threat of calling a ConCon’ would result in congressional action for balancing the budget and curbing spending may have been true at one time. However, now that progressive socialism is in full sway in congress and in the elite media, and because the push for Gun Control, Limits on Religious and Patriotic Expression and Demonstrations, Globalism, and Forfeiture of our National Sovereignty are on the table, chances are the president and the Marxists would welcome a chance to re-write our constitution under the noble, if misleading, call for ‘Balancing the Budget.’ If a BBA should make its way through the congress to the states for ratification or rejection (not through a ConCon), that is the only acceptable means of amending the constitution for any reason.

Senator Cornyn and all other Republican Senators and members of congress are charged with stopping the federal unworkable, wasteful spending and letting our free enterprise system become healthy once again. Don’t mess with our constitution!

Good advice against a ConCon
www.eagleforum.org/column/2010/apr10/10-04-09.html