Brawner: Don’t Be Fooled By Balanced Budget Debate

Stephens Media columnist Steve Brawner examines the recent votes in Congress regarding a balanced budget amendment.

He warns that voters should be leery of the straw man debate. Democrats and Republicans can’t agree on the details to get a balanced budget passed.

Writes Brawner:

A balanced budget amendment seems like an easy answer — just don’t let Congress keep spending money the government doesn’t have. But it likely wouldn’t work and definitely would create unintended consequences.

The major unintended consequence would be that it would increase the involvement of the judiciary in tax-and-spending decisions. Once Congress passed a budget, someone would sue, and then federal judges and Supreme Court justices would decide where the taxpayers’ money goes. That would be undemocratic and messy.

The amendment probably wouldn’t work because it would have to give Congress the flexibility to deficit-spend in wartime or during a national emergency, as both of Wednesday’s proposals did.

It’s not hard to see where that get-out-of-jail-free card would lead — just declare an emergency, real or manufactured, any time you need one. For the past 25 years, the United States has been fighting somebody somewhere almost continuously.

Brawner spells out the political reality of the balanced budget amendment debate and suggests that responsible governing might require making hard decisions.

What’s happening now is a copout. Instead of making tough choices that would increase revenues and decrease spending, Washington once again is playing games and buying time until the next election cycle is over. Democrats vote for one proposal, Republicans for another, and they both can go home saying they voted for a balanced budget amendment when they really just voted for their version of a resolution they knew would fail.

It’s the equivalent of offsetting penalties in football, where the defense and offense both commit an infraction, so the down has to be replayed. The difference is that in football, it’s a coincidence. In Washington, it’s done on purpose.

You can read his full column at this link.