The U.S. Senate will vote this week on a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution. The amendment, sponsored by Senator Paul Simon (D-Ill.), would force the federal government to balance its budget on a yearly basis. This requirement could only be waived by a three-fifths vote of the House of Representatives and Senate.
Despite President Bill Clinton's rhetoric, the federal budget deficit is not under control. Even if you believe the Clinton administration's own figures, the deficit will only hit around $150 billion in 1998 and then begin a sharp rise. When you add in the true costs of the Clinton administration's health care plan, the deficit will be back over $200 billion in no time flat.
Most Democrats, including Clinton, love to use the deficit as an excuse to raise taxes. Unfortunately, the Congress just spends the additional revenue instead of applying it towards reducing the deficit.
As Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-Tex.) says, "We don't have a deficit because we're taxed too little. We have a deficit because the government spends too much."
If you doubt that Congress is addicted to overspending, just look at the example of the recent Los Angeles earthquake relief bill.
This month, the House of Representatives approved a bill to provide over $9 billion in disaster relief. Because the funding was designated as an emergency, the $9 billion was added to the deficit instead of taken from other programs. So, you might say, what's wrong with aiding earthquake victims even if it means increasing the deficit a tad in the process?
First of all, only about $7 billion was designated to help the victims of the Southern California earthquake. The other $2 billion in "emergency funds" was attached to the earthquake aid package. Along with helping the residents of Los Angeles, this bill also funded inner city youth programs and Pentagon operations in Bosnia and Somalia. And in its most laughable portion, the disaster aid package provided "emergency assistance" for victims of the 1989 San Francisco earthquake.
Under the fraudulent cover of professing concern for Los Angeles, the liberal Democrats in the House of Representatives rejected amendments supported by Republicans and conservative Democrats to eliminate the $2 billion in spending unrelated to the recent L.A. earthquake.
Furthermore, the tax-and-spend Democrats also rejected amendments to cut other programs to pay for the disaster relief. Surely in a budget of over $1.5 trillion one could find $9 billion, or less than six-tenths of one percent, to shift towards such an important cause. But rather than make tough choices, the Democratic majority chose to charge the expense to our already burgeoning national debt.
If the Congress is not willing to reduce spending by $7 billion to pay for earthquake relief, then it is certainly not capable of making the painful cuts in Social Security and Medicare necessary to eliminate the deficit.
In order to balance the budget, the rules of the game must be changed. Unless the balanced budget amendment is adopted, the Congress will continue its spending spree and keep passing the bill on to our generation.
In its bid to defeat the balanced budget amendment, the Clinton administration has warned of the drastic spending cuts that would be required if the amendment passes. To me, this is a great argument for adopting the amendment!
It is time to drastically reduce spending on entitlements such as Social Security and Medicare. Unfortunately, given the power of the lobby for the elderly, led by the AARP, the Congress will not make the necessary cuts unless forced to by the balanced budget amendment.
This week, the Senate will stand at a fork in the road. The road preferred by Clinton and many liberal Democrats offers continued $200 billion and $300 billion deficits and trillions of dollars more in red ink.
The road offered by the Republicans and responsible Democrats such as Simon, however, leads to balanced budgets and a brighter future for our generation.
Thomas Jefferson believed that the greatest flaw in the U.S. Constitution was that it did not forbid deficit spending. More than 200 years later, we have a chance to fix our founding fathers' mistake. It is time for the Senate to heed Jefferson's advice and pass the balanced budget amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
