The balanced budget amendment: what impact on states?

• Position: The States' Advocate

Consider the following hypothetical. Early in 1997, Congress passes a proposed amendment to the constitution requiring a balanced federal budget. It is quickly ratified by the states. The text of the amendment does not foreclose the possibility of Congress balancing the federal budget by simply mandating that states pick up a greater share of the costs. Over the next decade, Congress takes political credit for balancing the budget while maintaining the social safety net and popular programs that benefit the middle class. State legislators take the heat for raising taxes or sharply cutting popular state programs in order to meet the cost of federal mandates.

An unlikely scenario? Not at all. It's only a logical extension of the long-established practice of the federal government: take political credit while shifting costs and hard decisions to the states.

The balanced budget amendment is expected to dominate debate in the early months of Congress. And NCSL has adopted an aggressive new lobbying position, in hopes of making our hypothetical scenario less likely.

NCSL adopted a new policy at its winter meeting that should help put the unfunded mandate issues into the debate on the balanced budget amendment. The new policy states that the National Conference of State Legislatures supports enactment of such an amendment if it includes language to protect states from unfunded mandates and similar cost shifts.

NCSL policy for several years has urged Congress to reduce the federal deficit over a period of time and eventually to eliminate it. At the same time, the policy has recognized that states, as partners in the federal system, have a big stake in how the federal government balances its budget.

Without the protection of...