A Fool's Budget

Do Democrats stand for anything? We'll find out early in this Congress, when the balanced budget amendment comes to a vote. If Democrats cave to political pressure and let this thing through, little else they do for the rest of the Congress will matter.

The balanced budget amendment is, on its face, a simple idea: It would add a provision to the Constitution requiring that Congress enact balanced budgets. To run any sort of deficit, Congress would have to muster a three-fifths majority.

Right off the top, this should kill the idea. For more than two centuries, the United States government has run its fiscal affairs on the basis of majority rule. Our system has wisely stayed away from "supermajorities" for short-term measures. It has required them only for hard-to-revoke decisions, such as approving treaties or amending the Constitution.

Majority rule didn't get in the way of fiscal sanity. On the contrary, until matters budgetary went haywire in the 1980s, this was a rather prudent country. Our big deficits came during wartime. Otherwise, they tended to be moderate, and our government often managed a surplus.

If you mistrust the way Washington works, you should be petrified by this amendment. Assume a year in which there is an economic downturn. Government revenues drop, and most sane people, including fiscal conservatives, agree that running a modest deficit would be better than slashing Medicare, Social Security and everything else. A willful minority of two-fifths plus one could hold up the budget and demand anything it pleased as the price for a budget containing a small deficit. This is good government? The opportunities for the worst kinds of special interest politics would be limitless.

The premise that a balanced budget is always good proposes that we forget everything we've learned since the Great Depression about keeping the economy steady. We've avoided big depressions since the 1930s in part because of what are known as "automatic stabilizers" created by government spending. When recessions hit, government expenditures go up for such things as unemployment compensation, Medicaid and the like. Sometimes Congress pumps up public works spending to get things moving. Those expenditures tide individuals through hard times and put new life back into the economy.

The fact that Congress has had trouble over the past 16 years passing balanced budgets is no excuse for inflicting economic foolishness on everybody else and destroying economic policies that have worked.

Republicans shouldn't even be playing around with this thing. Some in their ranks know it. Former Republican senator Mark Hatfield of Oregon showed great courage in casting the decisive vote that killed the amendment in the last Congress. But the amendment has become Republican dogma, so Democrats must muster the bulk of the votes to kill the monster.

A few Democrats support the amendment on principle. But most who are contemplating a vote for it know it's a mistake and contrive all sorts of excuses. Since most Democrats are already on record as favoring a balanced budget, many in the party argue it shouldn't muddle its budgetary "message" by opposing the amendment. Other Democrats figure the amendment is Republican demagoguery, and they don't want to give the Republicans an issue by casting a "no" vote. So they'll vote yes on demagoguery instead.

For Democrats to give in to such thinking would be an act of astonishing shortsightedness that would tie the hands of any future Democratic majority. This amendment would prevent the federal government from running even modest deficits to finance programs Democrats routinely argue are good for the nation's long-term growth: the construction of roads, bridges, environmental projects, schools, colleges and hospitals. States can borrow money for such purposes. Individuals and companies routinely borrow for investments that pay off in the long term. Is the federal government to be the only entity in America required to pretend that all forms of debt are equally bad?

Democrats spent a lot of money last year arguing that there are things even worse than a budget deficit, such as efforts to balance the budget in the wrong way. Democrats who made such arguments and then turn around and support the balanced budget amendment will prove themselves to be even more dangerous demagogues than the Republicans. Many of the Republicans, at least, truly believe that balancing the books, every year, is more important than anything else. They're wrong about that. But if the Democrats don't have the courage to say so, loudly and convincingly, the Republicans will deserve to get their way. Each party will then have its politics in order. Only the country will lose.