Former Gov. Scott Walker, R-Wis., recently became the national face of the state-led movement to propose a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution. In his role as national honorary chairman of the Center for State-led National Debt Solutions, Walker will champion an issue that first came to nationwide prominence when then-President Ronald Reagan recognized that “We don’t have a trillion-dollar debt because we haven’t taxed enough; we have a trillion-dollar debt because we spend too much.”
Ultimately, Reagan’s leadership led to the crafting of a balanced budget amendment proposal, which passed the Senate in 1982 but failed in the Democratic-controlled House. In 1996, House Speaker Newt Gingrich led a similar effort, which passed in the House but failed in the Senate by a single vote.
As Walker takes up the challenge advanced by his predecessors, he will be facing an entirely different fiscal landscape. The $1 trillion in federal debt that prompted the Senate to take action in 1982 is roughly equivalent to the amount Congress now borrows every year to fund its deficits. The national debt has soared past $22 trillion, or $180,000 per taxpayer, and the interest alone is soon projected to surpass spending on national defense.
So why hasn’t Congress fixed this problem? The Gramm-Rudman-Hollings balanced budget act, the debt ceiling, and pay-as-you-go were all designed to control government spending. Yet none of these instruments interrupted the steady acceleration of debt. As legislative restrictions became uncomfortable, Congress simply softened their language or replaced them with new, more accommodating budgetary policies.
This abuse of congressional power is exactly the kind of scenario our Founders tried to protect against in the intricate system of checks and balances they designed in the Constitution. Among those balances was their design for constitutional amendment. Under Article V, either a majority vote in both chambers of Congress may advance a proposal, or, on the application of two-thirds of the states, a convention for proposing amendments may be convened. Whether passed by Congress or by state-led convention, any proposed amendment must be ratified by a three-fourths majority of the states.
The effort Walker is now leading will encourage the use of the state-initiated method for the proposal of a balanced budget amendment. Though the high threshold of consensus required to trigger such a convention has never been achieved, the debt crisis may become its inspiration. According to Congressional Budget Office projections, unprecedented debt to GDP levels will lead to lower productivity and wages, higher interest rates, and increasing fiscal instability.
Almost 40 years ago, America passed on an opportunity to prevent the dangerous debt vulnerabilities we now face. Walker realizes that, on its current path, this nation doesn’t have 40 more years of stability to make up its mind. Whether proposed by Congress or the states, timing has now become critical for constitutionally mandated fiscal reform.
Mike Huckabee, a Republican, was governor of Arkansas from July 1996 until January 2007. He ran for president in 2008 and 2016.
