Balanced Budget Amendment

The Budget Control Act enacted in August required both the House and Senate to vote on a balanced budget amendment (BBA) to the Constitution before the end of this year. As we reported last month, the BBA failed in the House.

Today, two versions of a BBA failed in the Senate: S.J. Res. 10, introduced by Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-UT), and S.J. Res. 24, introduced by Sen. Mark Udall (D-CO). S.J. Res. 10 would have required even more extreme spending cuts than the BBA rejected in the House (H.J. Res. 2), as it imposed a strict cap on annual federal expenditures and required a two-thirds vote to raise taxes in any way. S.J. Res. 24 did not include these provisions and would not have applied to Social Security – but either amendment would have resulted in drastic cuts to programs that women and their families depend on, while making recessions longer and deeper. (See our post here for a refresher on the threats posed by any BBA.) Read more »

Happy anniversary! Forty years ago today, the Supreme Court ruled for the first time in history that a law that discriminated against women violated the Constitution. Reed v. Reed was the first in a series of path-breaking cases that established that the Constitution does not permit government to discriminate on the basis of sex unless it can prove it has an exceedingly persuasive justification for doing so. Today let’s start giving thanks a few days early and celebrate the cases that recognized that women are among those persons who may not be denied equal protection of the law under the Fourteenth Amendment.

But while these victories merit celebration, today it is also important to remember that women still have much at stake in current arguments about the Constitution and its meaning. For example, a week ago, the Supreme Court agreed to consider whether the Affordable Care Act’s expansion of Medicaid and individual responsibility provision are constitutional. The answers to these questions will determine the fate of the Affordable Care Act-- legislation of tremendous importance to women’s health. The Court’s decision may also affect other laws upon which women depend. Read more »

As expected, the House voted this afternoon on a balanced budget constitutional amendment, H.J. Res. 2. The good news: it failed, 261 to 165. (A constitutional amendment requires a two-thirds majority to pass.) If you’re wondering why it’s so great that the House rejected an amendment that would require a balanced budget, check out my recent blog post with the top five reasons why the BBA is such a terrible idea. In short, approval of a BBA in the House would have brought us one big step closer to longer and deeper recessions, with major cuts to programs that women and their families depend on. Read more »

The House plans to vote tomorrow or Friday on H.J. Res. 2, a balanced budget constitutional amendment (BBA) sponsored by Rep. Goodlatte (R-VA).  The amendment is not new – it nearly came to the House floor over the summer, and similar amendments have been proposed many times over the years, especially in the 1990s.  But amending the Constitution to require the federal government to balance its budget every year was a terrible idea then, and it’s a terrible idea today. 

So terrible that a group of more than 1,000 economists, including 11 Nobel laureates, issued a joint statement in 1997 that said, “We condemn the proposed ‘balanced-budget’ amendment to the federal Constitution.  It is unsound and unnecessary…[and] mandates perverse actions in the fact of recessions.”

So terrible that five winners of the Nobel Prize for Economics issued a statement  in July opposing a BBA because of the negative effect it would have on an already troubled economy.

So terrible that Macroeconomic Advisers, a private economic forecasting firm, recently concluded that if a BBA had been ratified and were now being enforced for fiscal year 2012, “the effect on the economy would be catastrophic” and “recessions would be deeper and longer.”  According to the report, if the budget were balanced through spending cuts in 2012, about 15 million more people would lose their jobs and the unemployment rate would double (from 9 percent to a staggering 18 percent).  

Still not convinced?  Here’s a recap of my top five reasons why the House should reject the BBA:  Read more »