Trendy Budget Games

.The balanced budget amendment is a silly idea.

From the sound of the squawking of the Cabinet secretaries, one would have thought that something serious was under discussion. But when Janet Reno, Donna Shalala and company testified before a Senate committee this week about a lurking threat to every program they administer, it was just more of the exaggerated conceit that never seems far from a debate on the balanced budget amendment.

For neither the Attorney General nor any other Cabinet officer will anytime in the near future have to countenance any cuts--draconian or otherwise--as a result of the amendment, which, as part of a new yearly ritual, will come to a vote in the Senate this Tuesday. It is not that the balanced budget amendment will not pass the Senate by the required two-thirds majority (the odds are about even on that), nor is it that the proposal wouldn't carry the 38 states necessary for ratification (it probably would); the Balanced Budget Amendment, if passed, will never result in forced spending cuts of any significant size.

Despite the tough talk on the deficit, pro-amendment hawks like Pual Simon--the same bow-tied Potato-Head who thinks that our crime problem can be solved by 24-hour broadcasts of the "Reading Rainbow" on every channeling Rainbow" on every channel--have left themselves a generous escape clause. Though spouting stentorian anti-deficit rhetoric, the pro-amendment forces astutely realize that sometimes deficit spending is necessary and thus have stipulated that Congress could violate its new iron-clad rule by a three-fifths majority. Like the Gramm-Rudman bill that came before it, the Balanced Budget Amendment is as toothless as Superpolygrip shill Marta Raye.

Proponents claim that as Constitutional law rather than mere statute, the Amendment will have an undeniable authority. In fact, it will only reduce a piece of the Consitution to the same laughable level of importance as Gramm-Rudman. If there were a truth-in-naming law for legislation, the BBA should in fact be named the Yearly-Perfunctory-Ritual agreement. As Congress fails to meet the budget targets mandated by the amendment, taxpayers will be treated to yet another annual showdown, like those that often accompany the passage of the budget. A two-fifths minority (not difficult to collect) will attempt to force concessions by threatening to force concessions by threatening to block the now-necessary bypass vote. At worst, the stalemate will subject the federal government to short annual shutdowns; at best, pernicious back-room deals will be, even more than today, the lubricant that keeps the creaky machinery running.

In order to avert these invidious consequences, the Administration would be tempted to further tamper with already mutable accounting procedures. If, on paper, there is no deficit, then the amendment is moot. Nebulous government statistics would become even more bewildering, and accountability would sink amid a morass of bogus technicalities. The amendment would only provoke the government's further abdication of the very budgetary responsibility it was designed to foster.

Counting on the Balanced Budget Amendment to truly reign in a Congress addicted to deficit spending is like expecting a fad diet book to control someone who eats uncontrollably. No amount of calorie-counting tips and clevergastronomic calculations will help--they ignore the cravings that underlie the problem. The budget, like a diet, is a question of will power. It will be tamed only when the American people muster the will power to deal with the sacrifices their goal demands.

Benjamin J. Heller's column appears on alternate Saturdays.