Balanced-Budget Amendment

• Author: Robert D. Goldstein
• Pages: 153-154

Page 153

Since one was first introduced in 1936, various versions of a balanced-budget amendment to the United States Constitution have been proposed in Congress. Such proposals have been introduced regularly since the 1970s. Moreover, since 1975, such an amendment has been the subject of applications (approximately thirty-two by 1990) by state legislatures for a CONSTITUTIONAL CONVENTION. All such proposals seek to encourage or mandate the adoption of a balanced BUDGET. Some of them have additional goals and would more accurately be denominated "balanced-budget and tax limitation," "deficit limitation," or "federal government limitation" amendments.

The only such proposed amendment to have passed either house is S.J. Res. 58, adopted by the Senate in 1982. It provided that Congress must annually adopt (and may subsequently amend as needed) a prospective statement in which anticipated total outlays (other than principal payments) do not exceed anticipated total receipts (other than borrowing), unless such an anticipated deficit is authorized by three-fifths of the whole number of each house. It charged Congress and the President with assuring that actual outlays do not exceed the anticipated outlays provided in the statement, although they may exceed actual receipts. It limited each year's rate of growth of planned receipts to the previous year's rate of growth in the national income, unless otherwise authorized by a majority of the whole number of each house. It also fixed the deficit as of the date of ratification, subject to enlargement by a vote of three-fifths of the whole number of each house. In wartime these requirements could be suspended by a simple majority.

Enforcement of such an amendment could affect the SEPARATION OF POWERS. It could enhance presidential

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power by justifying the IMPOUNDMENT OF FUNDS, for example, or involve the judiciary in overseeing the BUDGET PROCESS, an area heretofore at the very center of majoritarian decision making. Whether current doctrines of STANDING, JUSTICIABILITY, and POLITICAL QUESTION would preclude this judicial supervision is uncertain, and was left uncertain in the congressional debates.

Quoting Justice OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES, JR. 's dissent in LOCHNER V. NEW YORK (1905) to the effect that "a constitution is not intended to embody a particular economic theory.? It is made for people of fundamentally differing views," critics argue that the proposed amendment...