My name is Congress. I'm a spendaholic.

• Author: Roy, P. Norman
• Position: From the President

In 1986, the Balanced Budget Amendment to the Constitution was defeated in the U.S. Senate by a single vote. Since that time, the national debt has more than doubled from $2 trillion to $4.4 trillion. That works out to about $9,000 worth of new debt for every man, woman and child in the United States, in just eight years! And today every newborn American child comes into this world already owing some $17,000 to the nation's creditors.

For long-suffering taxpayers, the Balanced Budget Amendment looked like the last hope for avoiding disaster. We cannot balance one mountain of debt on top of another forever without having the whole thing come tumbling down on our heads. Yet the amendment failed once again to pass through Congress.

Financial Executives Institute commends those in Congress who sponsored and supported the amendment, especially Senate sponsor Paul Simon. Individual senators and representatives have long argued that they can rein in the waste without the compulsion of a constitutional amendment. The facts refute them. They also argue that such an amendment would throw the economy into recession and bring a host of calamities upon us. We don't buy that. We believe that the ongoing economic malaise is being fed to a great extent by the government's waste of precious financial resources. Rather than creating calamities, the amendment would prevent them.

Why has so much been squandered? Because Congress lacks the backbone to solve the problem. Besides forcing Congress to balance outgo against income, the amendment would also compel the federal government to manage its resources more intelligently.

For years FEI has been waging a battle against financial mismanagement within the federal government. Weak internal controls, unreliable information and antiquated financial systems result in billions of dollars of waste every year and make the federal government a ripe target for fraud and abuse. That is why FEI worked so long and so hard to...