THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Saturday, March 4, 1995 TAG: 9503040012
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A10 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Editorial
LENGTH: Medium: 74 lines
The federal government needs to get on the path to a balanced budget. But the Constitution didn't need a balanced-budget amendment, and its defeat in the Senate on Thursday was the right move.
The longer the scramble for votes went on, the more flaws became apparent in this turkey. The Constitution is the place for the great organizing principles of our democracy, not for legislative nuts and bolts or moral crusades.
The Balanced Budget Amendment was shaping up as the worst well-intentioned constitutional mistake since the 18th Amendment produced the disaster of Prohibition. As written, it was no bold pronouncement but a weaselly monument to equivocation with loopholes aplenty.
It would have required a balanced budget - years in the future. Unless Congress voted not to balance the budget because of an emergency. There was pressure to exempt Social Security. And judicial review of cases arising from the amendment would have been forbidden.
That unprecedented provision, included to satisfy Sen. Sam Nunn's scruples, was an attack on the fundamental constitutional principle of checks and balances. It would have placed the Balanced Budget Amendment, and only the Balanced Budget Amendment, off-limits to interpretation by the Supreme Court.
Leaving the amendment subject to judicial review could have put courts in charge of deciding the budget for the federal government, which is what Mr. Nunn feared. But removing the court from the picture also removed any plausible mechanism of enforcement. Thus the amendment had no teeth and could have been ignored with impunity.
Proponents in Congress argued that the amendment was essential since members are so untrustworthy and spendthrift that they couldn't be relied on to balance the budget unless forced to by the Constitution. But the amendment would have had no power to compel good behavior, and the Constitution already provides a remedy for bad men in public office who won't do their duty. It is called an election.
If voters want a balanced budget and members of Congress don't provide it, they can do what they did last November - fire the rascals and hire representatives more to their liking.
Rather than dragging the red herring of a Balanced Budget Amendment across the political landscape, Congress should now get down to the difficult business it has been sidestepping during this debate. It should craft a budget that will achieve balance by 2002, as promised. And voters should hold Congress accountable for delivering the goods.
To get there, Congress will have to put everything on the table - Social Security, Medicare, defense, farm subsidies, entitlements for the rich, the poor and the middle class. The problem is so immense that Congress may even have to consider raising taxes. Voters may not like that. No wonder Congress wanted an amendment to hide behind. It is easier to tell voters ``the Constitution made me do it'' than to do your duty and take the consequences.
But the Balanced Budget Amendment would have tarnished the Constitution and wouldn't have worked any better than previous failed attempts to devise a mechanical way to make Congress live up to its fiscal responsibility. An escape hatch can always be found to circumvent an unwelcome task. That's what happened with Gramm-Rudman, and that's what Congress was building into the amendment.
Ultimately, only Congress can balance the budget and only voters can stiffen the spines of members - not statutes, not amendments, not contracts. If our representatives flinch from balancing the budget, it may be because their constituents send them mixed messages.
Polls showed that 75 percent of the public favored the amendment until told Social Security might have to take a hit. Then support dropped to only 30 percent. The fault, dear citizens, may not be in our Congress but in ourselves. by CNB