A balanced budget amendment

Republicans in the House have been arguing for a balanced budget amendment.  I believe this is a good idea and merits serious attention.

It is a simple truth about democracy that it is politically difficult to impose taxes and politically easy to spend money.   We the voters pretty much all dislike paying taxes and we all like getting things from the government.   History demonstrates the universality of the result from that basic truth.  Democratic Governments around the world are saddled with pension and debt obligations they can no longer hide behind accounting tricks and rosy economic forecasts.

This is not a good time for the US to start trying to immediately balance its budget.  In our current economic condition it would cause further economic weakness and higher unemployment.  But it is an opportunity to begin the long process of having States adopt a balanced budget amendment that would take effect in the future.  For example the amendment could be worded so it would not take effect until the US economy hit some specified targets in unemployment and GDP growth.

What else might we want in a balanced budget amendment package?

How about requiring Congress to index tax rates so they can't use inflation and the subsequent bracket creep to impose stealth taxes?  In the same way benefits should be indexed to whatever assumptions they are based on.  For example the life expectancy data that Social Security is based on should adjust automatically as our data about life expectancy changes.

How about we require Congress enact any appropriation, tax credit or other monetary benefit be enacted in a separate bill from substantive law provisions, and provide an item veto for the President to give voters one person to hold accountable for nonsensical earmarks?  Congress currently passes thousands of little perks and tax cuts every year that almost nobody knows about until after the fact because they are buried in huge bills that are hundreds, or thousands of pages long.

I know that some argue a balanced budget amendment is unnecessary, that Congress could/should create rules to impose the necessary discipline on the process.  But the historical reality is Congress won't.  In the last thirty years the only time having a balanced budget became an important political issue is when Republicans are out of power and have used the issue to bully the Democrats into paying attention to the deficit.  But the biggest deficits have been generated by the Republicans when they have taken over the Congressional agenda.  All the rules the Republicans and Democrats imposed in the early 1990's that led to balanced budgets in the late 1990's have been repealed, sidestepped or ignored from 2002 to the present.

A balanced budget amendment would remove the issue from political football status.  It would limit the ability of both Republicans and Democrats to buy votes ( - ooops, I mean "serve their constituents") by spending government money now and forcing voters of the future to deal with the paying the bill.