Politico‘s James Hohman has a nice piece up this morning on Gov. John Kasich (R-OH) and his quest for a balanced budget amendment to the US Constitution. Kasich has formed a non-profit organization, Balanced Budget Forever, to promote the effort. Though the article is ostensibly about the legislative quest, the sub-theme is Kasich’s possible presidential bid in 2016.  The governor coyly bats away questions about a possible run, though he does not deny the potential.

Kasich hopes to amend the US Constitution through a process put forward in Article 5. The more common approach is for the US Congress, with 2/3 support in both Houses, to propose amendments and then for 3/4 of states to ratify those proposals. Since there is very little chance Congress would fetter its own power to spend us into oblivion, Kasich is relying on the less known, and never attempted, provision. The text declares that 2/3 of states (34) are needed to call for a convention that would put forward amendments that would then require ratification from 3/4 (38) of the states to take effect.

Two questions seem obvious. One, is the balanced budget amendment a good idea? Two, are there any downsides to this amendment method?

I am of a split mind when it comes to a balanced budget amendment. There is little doubt that our government has lost all notions of fiscal sanity. Like sailors sidling up to a drink while hoping to get squiffy,* Congress has never met a dollar it wouldn’t spend. Unless our elected officials enter a twelve step program (“Hi, my name is Nancy. I am a spend-a-holic.”), I see no reason why Congress would limit itself. In that sense, a balanced budget amendment seems like a grand idea. However, a b.b.a. would not guarantee reduced spending and it may not even guarantee a truly balanced budget. Can you imagine the amount of chicanery Congress might engage in to pretend to balance the budget? Accounting gimmicks would proliferate like rabbits in a confined space. But even if we assume Congress would truly produce a budget that aligns expenditures and revenue, reducing expenditures is only one way to do that. Increasing revenue, in the form of new or higher taxes, is the other way.

In essence, I would prefer that Congress adopt a culture of fiscal restraint as opposed to shackling them with paper handcuffs in the form of a balanced budget amendment. But, as James Buchanan reminds us, as of now the culture, and the rules that proceed from that culture, do not function to limit spending. Instead, the budget process allows “our political agents to escape the discipline of opportunity cost.”** Basically, there is no mechanism in place that forces Congress to make choices between priorities since it can fund outside of a zero sum environment. A balanced budget amendment would, at least in theory, force Congress to engage in a more disciplined approach to either taxing or spending, which is more than it does now.

While I am ambivalent about the balanced budget amendment, though it would probably do more good than harm, I am positively giddy about the possibility of a state driven convention to amend the Constitution. Kasich, in attempting to get eleven more states (23 have done so already) to call the convention, is assuming that such a convention would limit itself to things like a balanced budget amendment. According to Article V, no such inherent limitation exists. It is true that whatever such a convention might produce would need to be ratified by 38 states, so the potential for something radical being implemented is minimized. At the same time, things like privacy, marriage, legalized marijuana, surveillance, term limits, the electoral college, and so many other things could come up as part of the debate. I have strong opinions on most of those items, and it is possible the convention would make mistakes, but as a political scientist, the spectacle would be, well, spectacular.

The downside, of course, is that while Washington, Madison, Hamilton, Morris, and Mason strode across the floors of the Philadelphia convention, who might preside over and dominate such an event today? The new delegates would be more a more diverse lot, they might also be more modestly equipped for such an enterprise. If the delegates began with our current Constitution, they would stand on the shoulders of giants, so at least they might see far into the future. At the same time, if the delegates began in an intemperate mood, as our founders did when they scrapped the Articles of Confederation, we might end up with something remarkably different. Regardless of the possibilities, I hope it happens because I want to see it.

*While I would love to take credit for the invention of the word “squiffy” as a synonym for drunkenness, to do so would be literary thievery. P.G. Wodehouse, one of the finest wranglers of English the world has ever seen, filled a storehouse with descriptors of that particular condition. In no order of concern, my favorites are: woozled, polluted, oiled, fried to the tonsils, and tanked to the uvula.

**James M. Buchanan. 1995. “Clarifying Confusion About the Balanced Budget Amendment.” National Tax Journal 48(3): 347-355.