Table of Contents
To my children, James, John, and Eliza.
Introduction
Every day, America comes one step closer to fiscal insolvency. Federal spending has skyrocketed from roughly 2 percent of GDP a hundred years ago to over 25 percent in 2011a staggering 1,500 percent increase in spending as a percentage of GDP. Our national debt now stands at more than $14 trillionroughly $50,000 for every man, woman, and child in America. And we are adding around $1.65 trillion to that debt every yearabout $5,500 per living American. Stated differently, for every family of four, the federal government has already incurred $200,000 in debt and is adding new debt of roughly $22,000 per year.
At this rate, we could more than double our debt by 2020. Our annual interest payments alone could then reach nearly a trillion dollarsmore than we currently spend on national defense, Social Security, or Medicare and Medicaid combined. Meanwhile, our entitlement liabilities will be expanding so fast that mandatory spendingdefined as entitlement spending and interest on national debt combinedwill likely match or exceed our entire annual budget.
Our economy cannot survive this ruinous level of debt. But the federal government is incapable of pulling us back from the brink of fiscal Armageddon. In its spending mania, it has run roughshod over the careful constitutional checks and balances our Founders designed to prevent the emergence of the exact kind of overly powerful, spendthrift government we have today. A government that is too powerful and has access to too much money simply cant be relied upon to self-correct.
Politicians recognize the problem but are incapable of fixing it. For example, President Obama spoke boldly of the need for spending restraint in his 2011 State of the Union Address to Congress. Every day, families sacrifice to live within their means, he declared. They deserve a government that does the same. However, in the very same speech Obama undermined this message by advocating a host of new federal spending measuresusing the euphemism investmentsto speed up our economic recovery.
This was the same argument the president used to justify his exorbitant, $800 billion stimulus program. Although that spending binge failed to improve the economy, with unemployment rising from 7.6 percent when the stimulus passed to roughly 9 percent today, it looks like Obamas prescription is more of the same. A few weeks after his State of the Union speech, the president proposed a budget with yet another record deficitone exceeding $1.65 trillion. Unsurprisingly, as I write these words, the federal government hit its debt ceiling, sparking demands from the Obama administration to raise the ceiling even higher.
Congress has proven no more responsible than President Obama. For decades, members of Congress have resorted to perpetual deficit spending to keep and expand all the government programs demanded by their influential supporters and other special interests.
Due to all this unsustainable spending, eventually the federal government will be forced to either increase taxes or inflate the currency to stave off fiscal insolvency. Either of those moves, which are only short-term fixes anyway, will severely degrade the liberty and prosperity of the taxpayers.
Even if Congress and the president somehow agreed on a balanced budget, it would undoubtedly prove to be another short-term fixhistory shows there is nothing more impermanent than a balanced budget. For example, look at New Jersey. After taking office in 2010, Governor Chris Christie erased an estimated $11 billion budget deficit almost entirely through spending cuts. Thanks to Christies policies, by May 2011 New Jerseys economy was turning around, and the state treasurer projected the Garden State would rake in half a billion dollars in extra tax revenue.
And what was the reaction of the Democrat-controlled New Jersey legislature? Did its members hail Christie for his fiscal rectitude? Of course not. In fact, they cited the unexpected tax windfall as proof that the state didnt need austerity. The governor has balanced his budgets on the backs of the middle class, now this gives us an opportunity to undo that, said State Senator Paul Sarlo. Assembly budget committee chairman Lou Greenwald, seemingly rendered incoherent by his dismay at a balanced budget, insisted the extra tax money should be used to restore [sic] some of the pain caused by Christies spending cuts. Eventually, the decision on how to use the extra tax revenue was largely taken out of Christies hands; the New Jersey Supreme Court, apparently agreeing there was no need for austerity, ordered Christie to increase education funding by $500 millionthe same amount as the estimated tax windfall.
The trend is the same on the federal levelCongress balanced the budget in the late 1990s, but look where we are now. Far from permanently enshrining responsible spending policies, a balanced budget more often ushers in a new spending spree, as politicians feel absolutely obligated to spend themselves back into deficits.
With our government incapable of staving off our looming fiscal doomsday, we have reached the point where we need to adopt a far-reaching, structural reform that will provide not a short-term fix, but a long-term solution to the kind of reckless over-spending and expansion of federal power that now threaten our republic. While statutory reforms will prove both helpful and necessary, we need something strongera permanent mechanism that restricts Congresss spending authority.
This book argues that a balanced budget amendment is the solution for extricating America from our fiscal crisis and for limiting the size and scope of government. Conservatives sometimes argue that passing such an amendment, though desirable, is politically impossible. I used to think so myself, and in fact, I thought the entire idea of emphasizing constitutional issues to be a losing political platformuntil I got elected to the U.S. Senate on just such a platform.
Heres how my campaign unfolded: in early 2009, I found myself wondering what would become of the Republican Party and of the conservative cause in general. America had just elected a liberal Democrat to the White House and had increased the Democrats majorities in both houses of Congress. The Democrats agenda was clear: more government spending, bigger and more intrusive government, socialized medicine, rising deficits, and a ballooning national debt.
Like many Republicans, I blamed my own party for much of this disaster. Our national debt had increased more during the twelve-year period in which the GOP controlled Congress (including a six-year stretch in which Republicans also controlled the White House) than it had in any comparable period in history. Despite their small-government rhetoric, congressional Republicans during that time had expanded the size, reach, and cost of the federal government and had even nudged America toward nationalized healthcare, often breaching the constitutional limits on their authority in the process. With this sorry record, Republicans got crushed at the polls in 2008 because they failed to provide a real alternative to the Democratic agenda.
In February 2009, I was explaining my frustrations to my friend Monte Bateman, a Utah conservative activist. I told him that the antidote to the perpetual expansion and mission creep of the federal government is found in the enumerated-powers doctrinethat is, the notion that the Constitution gives the federal government only limited, enumerated powers, while reserving all other powers to the states. This doctrine, I argued, could serve as the basis for a new, limited-government political movementone focusing on the Constitutions bedrock, party-neutral principles of federalism.
