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Rep. Burton Co-Signs on to Constitutional Amendment Requiring a Balanced Budget
Congressman Burton, who has always been a fighter for fiscal stewardship in the House, signed onto legislation today that would provide for a Constitutional amendment requiring a balanced budget. This isn't the first time that Burton has supported a Constitutional balanced budget amdendment. In 1995, after the Republicans took the majority in Congress, Representative Burton also co-signed on to similar legislation. And while it got a vote on the House floor, it did not get the required 2/3 majority vote to pass the House.
Recently, Congressman Burton also signed on to a letter to President Obama supporting his rumored decision to put forth budgets that would include freezes and cuts on non essential funding for the upcoming fiscal year. That letter has since been redirected to the House Budget Committee though since the President announced that he would be including a spending freeze this morning.
You can read the text of the Dear Colleague being circulated by Congressman Paul Broun, who is the lead sponsor, regarding proposed Constitutional amendment below.
Dear Colleague:
For most of our nation’s history, deficits were only temporary in nature, brought on by wars or other emergencies, and the accumulated national debt was reduced once the crises passed.
Our nation’s debt recently passed $12 trillion, having more than doubled in less than a decade. Last year’s $700 billion bailout and the $787 billion "stimulus" bill have added record amounts to our obligations with no end in sight. To many in Congress, the debt is an incomprehensible, incalculable number with no effect on one's daily life. The reality, however, is that it imposes significant costs on American taxpayers every day and will only continue to get worse if Congress doesn't rein in out-of-control spending.
Over the next decade, the Congressional Budget Office has estimated that the President's budget would spend nearly $9.3 trillion more than what is expected in revenue - roughly equal to the total amount of debt we accumulated from 1791 through the beginning of February 2008. This unsustainable pattern cannot continue.
We must act to constitutionally protect future generations of Americans from excessive federal debt. Today, forty-nine states have balanced budget requirements, most of which are written into their constitutions. It is time that Congress abides by the same restrictions that states have placed on themselves.
My Balanced Budget Amendment would:
- Other bills require a majority, or in some cases 3/5 to raise taxes or the debt ceiling. My bill requires a 2/3 majority vote to raise revenue and allow an excess of outlays over receipts.
- Other bills do not have spending constraints. This bill limits spending growth of the entire budget to no more than population growth plus inflation.
- Other bills allow waivers during declaration of war OR military conflict. This bill allows only for waivers during actual Declarations of War. Such waivers, since they would only be during actual war, need only a regular majority.
- Other bills do not account for what happens when estimates are wrong. In other words, they can cook the books by saying they’ll have more tax revenues than they will. This bill forces the NEXT fiscal year to account for any imbalance in the previous year’s estimates by placing that amount in the spending column for that year.
- This bill requires all excess revenue at the end of a fiscal year to be returned to the American taxpayer.
Paul C. Broun, M.D. (GA-10)
Member of Congress
Tom Caputo - January 27, 2010
I support this position and ask that you take an even more conservative position to reduce federal spending, reduce the number of federal agencies, and reduce the federal payroll including the number of federal employees. More than $12 trillion debt is not tenable. Our country is at risk. I encourage you to take extreme positions that are commensurate with the size of the problem. Freezing spending will not right the ship. We'll just sink slower.
Timothy Bair - February 21, 2010
The fraud that is the requirement of a "balanced budget" is similar to requiring that the Titanic balance the flow of water breaching its hull from stem to stern so as to allow for an orderly demise of all souls on board. I would simply suggest that any such effort be limited to a percentage of GDP or GNP, not merely "balancing" the budget. As the President and a willing Congress have doubled the annual deficit in but one year, we must "reset" our budget first and foremost to that which is within the means of all, rich and poor alike, to sustain. To this issue I would therefore also refer to Alexander Hamilton's prescient words in Federalist Paper No. 12, wherein he concludes: "What will be the consequence, if we are not able to avail ourselves of the resource in question in its full extent? A nation cannot long exist without revenues. Destitute of this essential support, it must resign its independence, and sink into the degraded condition of a province. This is an extremity to which no government will of choice accede. Revenue, therefore, must be had at all events. In this country, if the principal part be not drawn from commerce, it must fall with oppressive weight upon land. It has been already intimated that excises, in their true signification, are too little in unison with the feelings of the people, to admit of great use being made of that mode of taxation; nor, indeed, in the States where almost the sole employment is agriculture, are the objects proper for excise sufficiently numerous to permit very ample collections in that way. Personal estate (as has been before remarked), from the difficulty in tracing it, cannot be subjected to large contributions, by any other means than by taxes on consumption. In populous cities, it may be enough the subject of conjecture, to occasion the oppression of individuals, without much aggregate benefit to the State; but beyond these circles, it must, in a great measure, escape the eye and the hand of the tax-gatherer. As the necessities of the State, nevertheless, must be satisfied in some mode or other, the defect of other resources must throw the principal weight of public burdens on the possessors of land. And as, on the other hand, the wants of the government can never obtain an adequate supply, unless all the sources of revenue are open to its demands, the finances of the community, under such embarrassments, cannot be put into a situation consistent with its respectability or its security. Thus we shall not even have the consolations of a full treasury, to atone for the oppression of that valuable class of the citizens who are employed in the cultivation of the soil. But public and private distress will keep pace with each other in gloomy concert; and unite in deploring the infatuation of those counsels which led to disunion. FEDERALIST No. 12 The Utility of the Union In Respect to Revenue From the New York Packet. Tuesday, November 27, 1787. Alexander Hamilton" http://www.foundingfathers.info/federalistpapers/fed12.htm If my fellow citizens do not "get it", I will not explain further. I will leave this point of clarity to Mr. Hamilton, who spoke loudly and clearly of the dangers of government devolved to becoming an industry unto itself, save, this observation: Federalism is not some "vague notion" conjured by our founders by a whim. It is the product of much hardship borne from experience at the hand of tyrants and government bureaucratic schemers and absconding of private wealth and property. In a time when many lands and properties, public and private, have become exempt or overtaxed by an ever expanding government and self dealing legislative action, the self infatuation of those within that government shall learn quickly the law of diminishing result and returns upon the capitalist and financial system for which they make such lofty pretense to hold great affection. Timothy W. Bair