Why U.S. needs a balanced budget amendment

Even though President Barack Obama and congressional leaders continue to punt on the deficit issue, Washington is awash in budget proposals to deal with a looming fiscal crisis.

Senators Bob Corker, a Tennessee Republican, and Claire McCaskill, a Missouri Democrat, introduced a bill this month that would trim federal spending to 20.6 percent of gross domestic product, from the current 25 percent, over a decade. There is also talk of crafting legislation to enact the recommendations of the president's deficit commission.

All of these proposals lack a crucial element: spending limits enforced through the U.S. Constitution. Without a constitutional amendment, meaningful budget restraint will be put off, and Congress will revert back to the legislative state of nature, where survival means spending, not cutting.

An amendment is necessary because of the latitude the Constitution gives Congress. Article I, Section 5 says "each House may determine the rules of its proceedings." What this means in practice is that today's Congress can't commit a future Congress to spending cuts. Moreover, any internal legislative rule, or even a statute, can be changed or evaded with a large enough congressional majority.

Congress often takes advantage of this prerogative. In 1990, when members realized they would not be able to satisfy the deficit-reduction targets set in the 1985 Gramm-Rudman- Hollings law, they scuttled the targets instead. And for years, legislators have evaded their own rules by calling what most of us would consider routine spending an "emergency."

"All of this talk about rules," U.S. Representative Alcee Hastings, a Florida Democrat, said in a committee hearing last March, "we make 'em up as we go along."

It's no surprise that Congress makes the rules up as it goes along. Members face the same problem we all do when we commit today to making a hard choice tomorrow. Look no further than unused gym memberships (I'll eat during the holidays and take off the weight in January) and non-existent retirement accounts (I'll take a vacation this year and start saving for retirement next year).

Congressmen are, if anything, more susceptible to such failings, because they stand for re-election every two years and it's easier to get credit for new, targeted spending than for the more amorphous achievement of responsible fiscal stewardship.