The Wisconsin Legislature is rushing to vote on a dangerous set of proposals that could throw the United States Constitution up for grabs. In early April, the Legislature may vote on a resolution calling for a constitutional convention seeking to amend the United States Constitution by adding a requirement for a balanced federal budget.
Holding the first constitutional convention in 230 years would be an extremely risky way to amend the Constitution and to set national fiscal policy. The process of amending our nation’s founding document should not be put in the hands of an unpredictable constitutional convention.
Many constitutional experts have concluded that such a convention cannot be controlled and could initiate wide-ranging and perilous changes to the United States Constitution. For example, Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia stated, “I certainly would not want a constitutional convention. Whoa! Who knows what would come of it?”
The risk of an out-of-control convention is illustrated by the one and only constitutional convention that was ever called, 230 years ago. The convention in 1787 had a narrow mandate to amend the Articles of Confederation, but rather than following the instructions from state legislatures, that convention wrote an entirely new governing document.
The potential perils of amending the Constitution through this process were explained by a former Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, Warren Burger:
“[T]here is no way to effectively limit or muzzle the actions of a Constitutional Convention. The Convention could make its own rules and set its own agenda. Congress might try to limit the convention to one amendment or one issue, but there is no way to assure that the Convention would obey.”
The concerns expressed by Justice Burger help explain why all of the amendments to the Constitution adopted over the last 225 years have gone through a different process – initiated by a super-majority vote in both houses of Congress – rather than a constitutional convention.
Another fundamental problem with the proposed resolution is that amending the U.S. Constitution is simply the wrong way to go about balancing the federal budget. A balanced budget amendment is likely to make it very difficult for Congress to respond to national disasters and other emergencies. Try to imagine the currently gridlocked Congress coming up with savings to pay for disaster relief or an unexpected military operation.
Putting a balanced budget requirement into the Constitution could have drastic economic consequences during a severe economic downturn. Recessions simultaneously reduce federal revenue and increase the need for vital assistance programs, such as Medicaid, food stamps, and unemployment insurance. A balanced budget requirement would necessitate either making cuts to critical safety net programs at the worst possible time, or increasing taxes, also at a very bad time for the economy.
It is sometimes argued that the federal government should have to balance its budget just the way that we balance our family budgets. But all of us have had periods in our lives when we needed to make investments that required spending more in a year than we were taking in. It would be foolish for families not to borrow for rational investments like our homes and automobiles, or our children’s education. The same principle applies to the federal government, which plays the critical role of responding to national emergencies and mitigating the effects of recessions.
The United States Constitution has served our nation well for more than two centuries. The current period of political turmoil and divisiveness should not become the first time in more than 200 years that we throw our Constitution up for grabs.
