Free Republic

SECTION 1. The outstanding debt of the United States shall not be increased above its level on the date of ratification of this amendment, unless three-fifths of the whole number of each House shall provide by law for such an increase by a rollcall vote. SECTION 2. Should the President determine that expenditures appropriated by law will necessitate borrowing in excess of the limit provided in Section 1 during any fiscal year, he or she shall impound any expenditures as necessary and expedient to remain within said limit. The compensation of members of Congress or of Judges of the supreme...

U.S. Sen. Scott P. Brown has voted in favor of a proposal to amend the Constitution to compel Congress to come up with a balanced budget every year. Brown said 49 states, including Massachusetts, are required to balance their budgets and it’s time for the federal government to impose a similar condition on itself. The Massachusetts Republican said a balanced budget amendment would make the government live within its means without tricks or gimmicks. Democrats said the amendment would put the government in a fiscal straitjacket making it unable to respond to economic cycles, wars or natural disasters.

The beauty of the Republican Study Committee’s “Cut, Cap and Balance� program was that it made the passage of a balanced budget amendment in both the House and the Senate a condition for any increase in the debt ceiling. In contrast to that, the eventual watered-down deal clumsily engineered by the president and Republican leadership allowed an increase in the debt ceiling in exchange for the inaction of the Super Committee and a mere vote on a balanced budget amendment in both the House and the Senate.The result has been predictable: Both the House and the Senate have now voted...

Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin and Mao Zedong each killed tens of millions of people, and John Maynard Keynes was a pacifist who never fired a shot in anger. However economically, when the billions come to be totted up, it may well be the case that Keynes was the most destructive of the four. He cannot entirely be blamed for mistakes in monetary policy, which he never understood, and even his “stimulus” ideas owed much to those who came before him – for example Arthur Pigou – and after him – for example Joan Robinson. Yet the other value destroyers had...

The House this afternoon voted down by 261-165 a balanced budget amendment that its  supporters hoped would impose sweeping and permanent austerity upon the United States with massive budget cuts. It needed a two-thirds majority to pass.  Click here for more from Think Progress and here our recent coverage.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The House has rejected a proposed constitutional amendment that would have forced Congress to balance its budget every year as a way to reverse years of deficit spending. A majority of House members supported the balanced budget measure, but supporters fell short of achieving the two-thirds majority needed to amend the Constitution. Republicans who backed the amendment said it was the only way to get Congress to put its fiscal house in order. Democratic critics said a balanced budget requirement would result in drastic cuts in Medicare and other social programs when economic downturns put the budget...

The Republican-controlled House of Representatives on Friday rejected a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution -- a setback to GOP leaders and conservative activists who claim the measure is necessary to end the federal government's spiraling deficit spending. A total of 261 members voted for the measure --- 23 votes shy of the two-thirds majority required for passage -- while 165 members opposed it. Most Republicans supported the measure; most Democrats voted no. The vote on the amendment was agreed to by both parties over the summer as part of the agreement raising Washington's debt ceiling. Democratic leaders, however, are...

Conservatives are rallying in support of a balanced-budget amendment in the run-up to a Friday vote, warning fellow lawmakers that it's just about the only way to ensure Congress follows through on vows to cut spending. The debate comes the same week the national debt crossed the $15 trillion mark. The milestone was a timely reminder of Washington's hard-to-break habit of spending way more than it takes in. As a bipartisan committee remains stuck on how to cut $1.2 trillion from the 10-year deficit, lawmakers skeptical about the government's fiscal track record pushed Thursday for the amendment. "We need a...

The Blue Dog Coalition of moderate lawmakers endorsed a bill put forward by House Republicans to pass a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution. The endorsement puts them at odds with President Barack Obama, whose administration said it opposed such an amendment. "We do not need to amend the Constitution for only the 28th time in our nation’s history to do the job of restoring fiscal discipline," the Office of Management and Budget said on Tuesday. Speaker of the House John Boehner said he was "disappointed" in Obama for opposing the bill — which is certain to fail in the...

House Republicans are set to vote later this week on a balanced budget amendment (BBA) that would not cap federal spending as a percentage of GDP or require a supermajority to raise taxes. Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) said the vote would probably take place this Friday. Cantor said that this version of a BBA, H.J. Res 2 -- rather than one that would cap federal spending, H.J. Res 1 -- was the version “overwhelmingly” favored by House Republicans.

[Click here for a PDF version of this document.]1. It Would Cut Federal Spending By One Percent for Six Consecutive Fiscal Years. The Penny Plan would require Congress to cut just one penny out of each dollar it spends every year for six years. These gradual cuts over the next six years will balance the federal budget. 2. It Would Cap Overall Spending at 18 Percent of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) Starting in Fiscal Year 2018. Congressional spending consumes approximately 25 percent of GDP. Federal revenue from taxes over the past 40 years has averaged about 18 percent of...

A source on the Rick Perry campaign tells Hot Air that the Texas governor conducted some Texas-size fundraising in the third quarter. Coming in just a little over halfway through, Perry raised $17.1 million. That number would put Perry somewhere between $4-6 million ahead of Mitt Romney’s rumored total for Q3, according to this report last week from the Boston Globe. It’s also likely to far outpace Herman Cain’s fundraising or that of the other Republicans currently in the race. The pace is even more impressive. Perry had 49 days in which to raise funds, rather than the full 92...

Republicans want President Barack Obama to demand a balanced budget amendment in his upcoming jobs speech to Congress. "This would ensure spending cuts made today don't easily disappear tomorrow," said Virginia Rep. Bob Goodlatte in the GOP weekly address Saturday. "That doesn't just mean a fiscal house in order; it also means more certainty for the private sector and a better environment for job creation." ... A balanced budget, he said, would ensure that Washington spends within its means, therefore providing a stronger environment for investment and job growth. When Congress passed the debt bill in the first week of...

Republicans made significant progress towards a balanced-budget amendment (BBA) vote in the debt-ceiling debate. While Democratic leadership initially mocked the idea, polls showed that voters broadly support a constitutional bar on deficit spending — including wide majorities of Democrats and liberals. Some Democrats in Congress later expressed support for the concept of a balanced-budget amendment to the Constitution, and a vote on some form of BBA is expected later this year.But what form will get a vote? Brent Bozell worries that Republicans might give away the key to controlling tax rates: The version attached to the House Republicans’ Cut, Cap...

Madison—One month after the 2011-13 state budget was signed into law, tangible results from the reforms put in place by Governor Walker and the Legislature are being realized. According to media reports, local units of government and school districts have already saved more than $220 million, with millions more in potential savings not yet reported. The state is also adding jobs. Between December 2007 and December 2010, Wisconsin lost over 153,600 private sector jobs. The state has netted over 39,000 new private sector jobs since the Governor called a special session to open Wisconsin for business. The state has seen...

House and Senate Republicans have rallied around the notion of a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution as a solution to the country’s dire fiscal straits. But over the weekend, the head of Standard & Poor’s sovereign ratings division dismissed the idea, arguing that it would be more harmful than helpful to the country’s creditworthiness. “In general, we think that fiscal rules like these just diminish the flexibility of the government to respond” to crises, S&P managing director John Chambers told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer on Saturday when asked whether it’s important that Congress send a balanced budget amendment to the...

“When I talk about enforcing the Tenth Amendment, it’s not just Tea Parties, but there’s a broad understanding that there’s too much power in Washington, too much bureaucracy and we need to take a different approach,” Gingrich said today on a conference call. The end product of Team 10 will be actual legislation, Gingrich said. But that a need even exists for additional legislation to enforce the Constitution says something about the state of the government and society today. (Incidentally, that’s an objection some folks make to the push for a Balanced Budget Amendment — if the president and Congress...

Now that the national debt-ceiling deal is done — and liberals like me are unhappy and conservatives deservedly have more to cheer about — Thanksgiving 2011 will be more than about good turkeys. This is the deadline for the so-called “super” congressional committee of six Democrats and six Republicans from the House and Senate to cut at least $1.2 trillion in the projected budget deficit for the next 10 years. I favor at least one-half of this $1.2 trillion to be funded by a combination of tax reform — closing tax loopholes — and increases in marginal tax rates of...

WASHINGTON — House Republicans, feeling they have scored significant fiscal victories, are moving on to an even bigger challenge: persuading voters, state legislatures and Democrats to alter the Constitution with a balanced budget amendment. In a meeting with his conference on Monday, Speaker John A. Boehner told members that the best thing they could do during the August recess was to sell their constituents on the idea that the amendment — which essentially stipulates that government cannot spend more than it takes in — is necessary and good. Republican leaders on the Hill have pivoted from railing against Democrats about...

"We, the Senate Majority Leader, The President, and myself, the Speaker of the House of Representatives, have had a further meeting today and are agreed in recognizing that the question of the debt ceiling and possible default is of the first importance for both houses of Congress, the President, and for our country. "We regard the Bill passed by the House and the companion Bill in the Senate and the President's promise to sign the reconciled bill as symbolic of the desire of both Parties never to put politics above country again. "We are resolved that the method of consultation...

The "limited magnitude" of both debt plans put forward by congressional leaders would not put the nation's AAA credit rating back on solid footing, Moody's Investors Service announced Friday.

Matt Bruce a sharp eyed talk show host based in Tampa has made a discovery that turns the debate over a Balanced Budget Amendment on its ear. His research has developed the fact that regardless of all of the chatter coming from Washington, both Republicans and Democrats are overlooking the specific and clear language of a bill passed on October 10, 1978. Representative Stephen L. Neal, a North Carolina Democrat, was the one and only sponsor of HR 9214, “A bill to amend the Bretton Woods Agreement Act to authorize the United States to participate in the Supplementary Financing Facility...

In response to Dan Timm's letter published (July 26), Senator Ben Nelson supports a balanced budget amendment to the U.S. Constitution that would require Washington to balance its budget and force cuts in spending. In fact, earlier this year, Senator Nelson voted for a resolution that said, "Congress should pass, and the States should agree to, an amendment to the Constitution requiring a Federal balanced budget." Senator Nelson has said that what he will not do, however, is vote for a plan to balance the budget on the backs of seniors. That is precisely what the balanced budget amendment in...

House of Representatives Speaker John Boehner told fellow Republicans on Sunday that he is considering a balanced-budget amendment to the Constitution as part of a bill that would raise the debt ceiling, a source who heard his message said.

GOP members on Cut, Cap, and Balance: From Earlier Site page article excerpt: White House talks with Congressional leaders resumed as President Obama’s hopes for a deficit reduction deal to coincide with an increase to the debt ceiling resurfaced. President Obama called Congressional leaders to the White House in separate meetings to discuss the “Gang of Six” proposal. VIDEO

Real Clear Politics Reports: "...[W]'re going to have a vote tomorrow. I'm not going to wait until Saturday. We're going to have a vote tomorrow. I feel confident that this legislation will be disposed of one way or the other...." Sen. Harry Reid (D-NV) said on the Senate floor. Reid said he would allow debate of the bill that passed in the House earlier this week. A vote is scheduled for Friday. http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2011/07/21/harry_reid_cap_cap_and_balance_worst_piece_of_legislation_ever.html Sen. Jim DeMint has a list of 22 Democratic or Independant Senators who have expressed support for a balanced budget. These folks need to get A LOT...

To listen to the president, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, the mainstream media and even some of my favorite conservative pundits, you’d think the House of Representatives hadn’t passed “Cut, Cap and Balance� Monday. The plan, carefully crafted by the Republican Study Committee and then improved upon by various members of the House, is routinely dismissed as extreme — if it’s acknowledged at all.Reid yesterday actually said he’s waiting for Speaker John Boehner to inform him what kind of deficit reduction and debt limit increase deal would pass the House. RSC Chairman Jim Jordan quickly put Reid in his place,...

Earlier today Obama threatened he would veto the Cut, Cap, and Balance bill if it reaches his desk. Levin says the only problem with this is that, while he can veto the Cut and Cap part, if the Balanced Budget Amendment passes both the House and the Senate it goes to the states, not Obama. He’s got nothing to do with it. One would expect a brilliant, ivy league Constitutional Law Professor to know these things:

If Congress has trouble staying within constitutional bounds now, just wait until the Constitution mandates that it must balance the federal budget. Republicans have made a late entry into the debt-ceiling debate with a push for adding such a requirement to the Constitution. The balanced-budget amendment is not only an implausible way out of the debt-ceiling dilemma — it’s unlikely to pass Congress with the necessary two-thirds vote to send it to the states — it risks doing the worst disservice to the Constitution since Prohibition. The balanced-budget amendment came to prominence in the Contract With America back in the...

With the House poised to vote on a debt-ceiling increase tomorrow, the White House has released a threat to veto the bill if it reaches the President’s desk. This statement was just released by e-mail, emphasis in the original: The Administration strongly opposes H.R. 2560, the “Cut, Cap and Balance Act of 2011.” Neither setting arbitrary spending levels nor amending the Constitution is necessary to restore fiscal responsibility. Increasing the Federal debt limit, which is needed to avoid a Federal government default on its obligations and a severe blow to the economy, should not be conditioned on taking these actions....

House Republican leaders have missed a 36-hour deadline President Obama set during a Thursday meeting for lawmakers to give him a plan to avert a national default. The deadline came and went Saturday morning without a response from House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio). Instead, Boehner and House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) plan to move the Cut, Cap and Balance Act on the floor next week, which would require passage of a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution before the debt limit is raised. A House GOP leadership aide said at noontime Saturday that Boehner and Cantor did not send...

Yesterday, I offered it as a hopeful sign amid all the gloom-and-doom of the debt debate (optimism for a deal at an all-time low and all that) that the House Republicans still plan to vote on a balanced budget amendment next week. Now, it looks like the Senate will follow suit. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell is expected to force a vote on a BBA in the Senate sometime in the next two weeks.Obviously, a balanced budget amendment is a very different proposition in the Senate than it is in the House. As is always much discussed in relation to...

House Speaker Boehner Calls for Revival of Balanced Budget Amendment (Story Developing) Headline only.

Hundreds of labor organizations, human rights promoters and other advocacy groups are uniting to try and kill the balanced budget amendment that Republicans plan to bring up for a vote next week. In a letter sent to every member of Congress, the coalition of 247 organizations warned that requiring the federal government to cap and offset its annual spending is a recipe for economic disaster, particularly in lean times when the government is often the spender of last resort. "Demanding that policymakers cut spending and/or raise taxes, even when the economy slows, is the opposite of what is needed to...

There is growing sentiment that one or more constitutional amendments may be necessary to rein in the runaway Congress. The principal mechanism the Founders built into the Constitution for such contingencies is the procedure in Article V by which two thirds of the state legislatures force what the Constitution calls a “Convention for proposing Amendments.” Essentially this is a meeting of state legislative representatives for the drafting of one or more amendments on subjects designated by the legislatures. Of course, Congress and its apologists have every reason to prevent such a convention from being called, so they have widely misled...

The banner at the start of the CNBC segment reads “What’s the Deal?” And that’s a question some viewers may have asked by the end of the segment after watching CNBC’s Rick Santelli go very nearly grandma-punching crazy in a segment about spending and the debt ceiling. “I don’t believe in compromise on spending,” Santelli shouted. “There’s no compromise. Stop spending.” And from there it got weirder. Referring to a comment from Warren Buffet about the debt ceiling negotiations referring to the negotiations as a game of Russian roulette, Santelli said “there’s a bullet in the gun. If we keep...

No deal to raise the debt ceiling is complete without an amendment to the Constitution requiring a balanced federal budget to prevent Congress “from hijacking the promise of American prosperity,” two Senate Republicans are arguing as a bipartisan group of congressional leaders heads to the White House on Thursday. Read more: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0711/58472.html#ixzz1RRttF3EL

He belies his age as he navigates the neighborhoods near his home in Belmont Park where he has resided for 51 years with his wife and where they raised their three children. The gait is firm, the voice is strong, the eyes are alert, the posture is erect, the hair is plentiful, and the face is unlined. His birth certificate insists he's 83, but the laws of time have been rescinded with George Deukmejian, who doesn't look that dramatically different now than he did when serving two terms as governor of California. He was in the political maelstrom for 28...

House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) is not the only GOP leader in Washington with a Tea Party problem. Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.) is coming under some Tea Party pressure of his own in the debate over deficit reduction and raising the debt limit. Tea Party-backed lawmakers are pushing McConnell to insist on passage of a balanced budget amendment in exchange for allowing an increase in the debt limit. McConnell has resisted, however. He argues that a balanced budget amendment, which requires a two-thirds vote in both chambers, simply doesn’t have enough votes to pass the upper chamber. But...

You can not responsibly support a proposed Amendment to Our Constitution unless you have read and understand the proposal and how it would change our Constitution. You must look behind the nice sounding name! Will the Balanced Budget Amendment (BBA) really “reign in” the federal government? Will it really “show them” that they have to balance their budget the same as we do? Or does it actually legalize spending which is now unconstitutional? Is it actually a massive grant of new constitutional powers to the President and the federal courts - a grant which will cut the Heart out of...

So, let's see a show of hands. Who really trusts politicians to do the right thing rather than the self-serving thing? Precisely. An argument being made by a scattering of conservatives against a constitutional amendment mandating a balanced budget is that there's no need to make any fundamental structural changes to the process of government in Washington; electing right-thinking Congressmen who respect the Constitution as is should suffice in restoring fiscal sanity and limited government. Good luck. The argument that the nation can return to the Promised Land of limited government and fiscal prudence by just sending a better caliber...

Currently, Washington Republicans are mulling over two versions of a Balanced Budget Amendment. One, sponsored by Sens. Orrin Hatch and John Cornyn, would limit government spending to 20% of GDP and require a balanced budget (i.e., without a deficit) five years after the amendment is ratified. The version introduced by Sen. Mike Lee would be similar, but it would limit government spending to 18% of GDP, the lowest in decades. Both versions, however, are fundamentally flawed and therefore utterly unacceptable. Let me explain. Firstly, and most worryingly, both proposed amendments would effectively undo all the limitations on the federal government...

On Sunday, Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) suggested that he might vote for an increase in the debt ceiling if it came attached to a balanced-budget amendment to the Constitution. The latter has been a goal of fiscal conservatives for some time, but in my latest column at The Week, it’s a trap in two key ways. Not only will it take years to pass, but the effect may be far from what conservatives intend — and in the end, it leaves us with the same problem: But let’s assume that all the stars align for a balanced budget amendment, one...

  Public NoticeA table by Public Notice shows how much more taxpayers would have to pay of their income in order to match current spending. It's Tax Day, and the Washington chatter is all about whether America's top earners should be taxed more.But, as the dim outlook from a key ratings agency showed Monday, Uncle Sam's deficit problem is deep. And if the federal government really wanted to use the tax code to close the deficit, it turns out everybody would feel the burn.A new Tax Day study showed that if Washington wanted to balance the budget using tax increases...

Freshman Sen. Mike Lee tells Newsmax that he will vote against passage of the federal spending bill agreed to last week because the cuts being discussed are “absolutely miniscule” compared to the overall fiscal problems. The Utah Republican also says he will oppose raising the ceiling on federal debt and “use every tool at my disposal” to see that it won’t be raised. [Snip] “I intend to vote no, because I think it’s not nearly enough,” he responds. “And more importantly it’s not accompanied by any kind of structural reform mechanism designed to change the way we spend money, and...

Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) said Tuesday that he's considering a filibuster of the budget agreement to fund the government for the remainder of this fiscal year.  Paul, who said yesterday that he would vote against the agreement reached last Friday to cut $39.9 billion between now and September, acknowledged that he's considering waging a filibuster, which would make it so that leaders need 60 votes to pass the deal and advance it to President Obama's desk. "Yes, but we haven't really made a final decision on that yet," Paul said on conservative talker Sean Hannity's radio show.  A filibuster would...

The House Republican Study Committee (RSC) on Thursday released an alternative to the 2012 budget resolution from Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) that would cut $9.1 trillion in spending over the next decade. The RSC, a 176-member caucus, will offer its “Honest Solutions” plan as a floor amendment to the budget resolution next week. The House Budget Committee passed the GOP budget plan late Wednesday. Like a failed RSC effort in February to cut $40 billion more from 2011 spending, the amendment is expected to fail, but it sends a strong signal to GOP leadership and to Democrats that...

Fiscal Policy: The balanced budget amendment idea has lain dormant for years. But Republicans are bringing it back. In a day when runaway spending is running away faster than ever, we need a mechanism to rein it in. GOP leaders expect in the next two weeks to introduce to the public a balanced budget amendment that they believe will fix the profound debt and deficit problems that lawmakers have created for the taxpayers. Done correctly, a balanced budget amendment might do just that. Congressional Republicans had planned to announce their intention to amend the Constitution in the middle of the...

The current Texas State Senate passed a resolution to consider making application for a Constitutional Convention for the purpose of amending the United States Constitution. The stated purpose would be to create a Balanced Budget Amendment making balancing the Federal budget mandatory. In that context, I recently I had the opportunity to briefly speak to State Representative Gary Elkins and State Senator Dan Patrick regarding my concerns about a Constitutional Convention (or even threatening to have one). I applaud the motivation for which John Cornyn has suggested that each State consider making application for one. I greatly respect the very...

Currently, Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels is being billed as a genuine conservative who can defeat Barack Obama, reform the federal government, and balance the budget. Yet a close examination of the governor's record and statements reveals that he is actually a strident liberal who cannot be taken seriously. It has frequently been said about Mitch Daniels that he "turned deficits into surpluses" as governor. The only problem with this claim is that it's not true. According to the CNBC/Forbes.com, which annually ranks states according to business climate, Indiana has a $1.4-billion budget deficit as of FY2011. That same CNBC/Forbes.com list...