ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Tuesday, December 10, 1996 TAG: 9612100077
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A-6 EDITION: METRO
THE U.S. Constitution is pretty darn good at outlining the basic processes of government, allocating powers, specifying individual rights and liberties.
But it is not so good at policy-making. The Constitution is hard to amend, and its provisions trump easier-to-pass statutory law. There's a reason: The purpose of constitutions is to establish enduring principles, not set policy that inevitably must change as circumstances change.
On the evidence of the states' experience, we editorially noted the other day, a balanced-budget amendment to the U.S. Constitution probably wouldn't work very well, and might even prove counterproductive to the aims of its sponsors. But utilitarian considerations aren't the amendment's only difficulties. It also reflects confused theoretical thinking.
The amendment assumes that balanced budgets (and the somewhat peculiar accounting method by which federal deficits are calculated) are inherently virtuous, and that unbalanced budgets are inherently unprincipled. This is simply not so, and seems of a piece with the contemporary tendency to turn disagreements into uncivil hostility and political campaigns into moral crusades.
At times, the federal budget ought to be balanced, even to show surpluses. One of those times happens to be now. But this is because of certain conditions - the impending retirement of the huge baby-boomer generation, the nation's relatively low savings rate, a massive load of public debt inherited from the '80s - that have not always been, nor always will be, the case.
At other times, the federal government should run deficits. During the Great Depression, for example, the nation's savings rate was too high; a speedier and more thoroughgoing use of the federal-deficit tool might have spared Americans some misery and restored prosperity more quickly.
Oversized debt and deficits have not been a persistent problem throughout the history of the republic; they do not reflect a fatal flaw in the American system. They are the creation, rather, of conscious decisions of fairly recent vintage - first, Lyndon Johnson's guns-and-butter economics in the '60s; then, even more damaging, Ronald Reagan's supply-side candy in the '80s. As Americans are seeing in the '90s, such policies are reversible, even if the reversal is not as fast as many of us would like.
Unchanging formulas do not sound fiscal policy make. For that, the country must depend on the wisdom of its leaders and the willingness of the people to act responsibly in choosing those leaders. These are things, like balanced budgets themselves, that no constitution can guarantee.
LENGTH: Short : 49 linesby CNB