Rewriting the Constitution to Balance the Budget

Apparently most conservatives and populists want to re-write some or all of the US constitution. One mechanism to do that is via a constitutional convention.

Article V of the United States Constitution says that when two thirds (currently 34) of state legislatures apply for a constitutional convention proposing amendments, Congress has to convene one. That is up from 28 states at the beginning of 2017 (see map below).[1] Congress first determines if a convention has actually been triggered. It does that by counting the state applications. The counting process is called aggregating applications. One unknown is whether different kinds of state applications can all be lumped together or aggregated, or whether they have to be of the same kind. Some state applications (plenary applications) are open-ended and ask for the entire constitution to be open to amendments. Other state applications just call for specific amendments.

Presently, 27 state legislatures have applications that propose a balanced budget amendment. Six states are calling for a plenary convention. Thus, if aggregation allowed, probably 33 of the 34 applications needed to call a convention are present. Radical far right anti-government groups such as the The Federalist Society want all applications to be aggregated, and when the total reaches 34, a convention convened to consider a constitutional balanced budget amendment, but not for a plenary reconsideration of the entire constitution.

If a balanced budget amendment is baked into the constitution by a convention, the effects of that would probably be enormous. The impact will be dictated by how balanced spending is to be attained. Regardless of the details, federal spending would need to be drastically cut. Even before the Covid-19 pandemic hit, the president and GOP members of congress increased the federal debt by cutting taxes without commensurate spending cuts. That fiscal irresponsibility was during a decade-long economic recovery. Cuts during a recession would need to be large to balance the budget and pay for existing federal debt. According to one source, on-the-books debt for 2020 is projected to reach $23.8 trillion.[2] To balance the budget, millions of Americans will feel real pain and hunger.

The GOP has made its hostility to most domestic spending clear. If the GOP gets its way, social security, medicare, medicaid food stamps and probably all other non-military spending would be reduced or in some cases might be entirely eliminated. Democrats would oppose that and would probably demand major defense spending cuts in reasonable parity with domestic spending cuts. If a balanced budget ever came to pass, the ensuing political disputes would be a food fight of epic proportions. The balanced budget amendment is the Trojan Horse the GOP wants to sneak in on to decimate domestic spending and the federal government.

Footnote:
1. The 2017 article comments on the conservative strategy to gut government domestic spending programs:

Most of the resolutions enacted in the last three years add a final clause: “together with any related and appropriate fiscal constraints.” That language opens the door to any constitutional amendments that a convention might decide fit under this broad rubric, including placing a rigid ceiling on federal spending so that all (or virtually all) deficit reduction has to come from cutting federal programs such as Social Security or Medicare, with little or none coming from revenue-raising measures. Such a ceiling would reduce or eliminate any pressure to produce deficit reduction packages that pair spending reductions with increased revenue from closing unproductive special-interest tax loopholes or from combating tax avoidance by powerful corporations.

2. Off-the books debt is unfunded liabilities the federal government has incurred over the decades. It includes things like pension obligations for federal retirees. It is hard to estimate and some politicians lie about it to advance their ideological or political agendas. In 2013, one source estimated the off-the-books liability to be about $70 trillion. A 2017 estimate put the total at $210 trillion. Whatever the real number might be, it is huge. Under a balanced budget amendment, congress will have no choice but to renege on most of those promised obligations. Those people will face real pain and hunger as their pensions vaporize under the intense heat of a balanced budget.