Representative Bob Goodlatte doesn’t look like Don Quixote, but the reliably conservative, low-key congressman from Virginia’s sixth district is doing something that in the eyes of some looks a lot like tilting at windmills. He’s pushing for a balanced budget amendment, the perennial favorite of budget hawks who believe that only hard constitutional language will break D.C.’s spendthrift ways.
Over the weekend, we interviewed Rep. Goodlatte on “The Score” radio show and asked him about this latest attempt to get the BBA, as it has long-been known by supporters, off the ground.
He first reminded us that the federal government doesn’t have a budget right now. Rather, it is limping from continuing resolution to continuing resolution. Goodlatte said this is forcing House Republicans to do two things at once: craft a budget for the next fiscal year while trying to keep their promise to cut $100 billion dollars from the budget the President proposed.
This has caused the GOP any number of headaches, as their tea party right criticizes them for not being aggressive enough on spending, while Democrats and the left howl at even token cuts. Goodlatte wondered how different all this might be if the last major fight over the BBA, back in 1995, had been one (the amendment passed the House but failed by a single vote on the Senate).
On the chances that the BBA would make it out of the Congress, Goodlatte is confident it could pass the House (where the measure has more than 200 co-sponsors), but even that would require around 50 Democrats to embrace the idea. Given the ideological make-up of the current Democratic caucus, that may be a struggle.
But even if Goodlatte and his allies can muster the necessary Democratic support in the House, it’s the Democratic Senate where things get dicey. Recall that Republicans held a Senate majority in 1995, and that deciding vote against the amendment was cast by Republican Sen. Mark Hatfield of Oregon. Fourteen Democrats voted for the measure.
And today? Goodlatte tried to sound hopeful, but agreed that “they are probably short of the two-thirds they need.” But he still believes it will be a valuable exercise for showing who supports the idea and who doesn’t.
Goodlatte reserved his most pointed remarks for the President, who he characterizes as a “Keynesian” determined to spend (and borrow) money even when others are being forced to cut back. This he calls unsustainable, and that while there are times when the government might be forced to run deficits, Goodlatte specifically mentioned the economic crisis of 2008 and 9/11, persistent and growing deficit spending may leads the nation toward bankruptcy.
That sentiment fits directly with the tea party mood. And while trying to get the amendment through Congress may indeed be illuminating, there’s also something else to recall from the last go-round in 1995.
Senate majority leader Bob Dole intended to bring the amendment back up for a vote in 1996, in advance of the election in which he was the GOP presidential nominee.
Republicans believed it would give them an electoral bounce. It failed again, this time falling short by three votes. The measure came up one last time in 1997, and again fell short…by one vote.
There hasn’t been a roll call vote on the concept in either chamber since then. It’s long overdue.
