Unbalanced amendment - Balanced Budget Amendment

Reason, June, 1995 by Alan Reynolds

At the end of 1931, President Herbert Hoover asked for a temporary tax increase, jacking income tax rates back up to levels not seen since the previous depression of 1920-21 (when there was also an emergency tariff increase, as in 1930). "Nothing is more important than balancing the budget," reasoned President Hoover. It was, he said, "indispensable to the restoration of confidence and to the very start of economic recovery....We cannot maintain public confidence nor stability of the Federal Government without undertaking some temporary tax increases."

In June 1932, Congress increased the top tax rate to 63 percent at an income of $1 million, up from the previous maximum of 25 percent at $100,000. The bottom tax rate rose to 4 percent from 1.1 percent. The Treasury Department promised that the revenue gained from hiking tax rates would result in a balanced budget. And that, Hoover guaranteed, would restore confidence in financial markets and thus ensure economic recovery.

The relevance of the 1932 experience to today's ongoing debate over the Balanced Budget Amendment goes beyond the obvious point that it is foolish to raise tax rates during a depression. The important lesson is that, then as now, Congress and the president swore by "static" revenue estimates. If the proposed amendment ever comes to pass, it will inevitably promote higher tax rates, not less spending. The amendment's focus on short-term budget estimates tilts the odds away from big spending cuts--which rarely can be done quickly--in favor of an endless series of seemingly small tax increases. Indeed, the Balanced Budget Amendment could scarcely be better designed to encourage an extremely myopic focus on a "quick fix" for next year's budget. That means delegating enormous authority to bookkeeping bureaucrats in charge of revenue estimates.

Consider this: If the Balanced Budget Amendment had been in place in 1932, the tax increase enacted at that time would have been in perfect conformity with law. But there is nothing in the amendment that requires that the budget ever has to be balanced. All it requires is that next year's estimated revenue equal next year's estimated spending. The 1932 tax increase met that criterion completely. Yet tripling tax rates did not result in a balanced budget.

To the contrary, revenue from the individual income tax dropped from $1.1 billion in 1930 to $834 million in 1931, $427 million in 1932, and $353 million in 1933. The drop in revenue could, of course, be blamed on the collapse of the economy. But that begs the question of the extent to which the Depression was at least aggravated by higher tax rates and tariffs.

At the end of 1933, President Hoover complained that "the increases in revenues enacted at the last session had not had the results hoped for," so he asked Congress to enact a national sales tax. "The time has come when, if the Government is to have an adequate basis of revenue to assure a balanced budget,...excise taxes should be extended to cover practically all manufacturers at a uniform rate, except necessary food and possibly some grades of clothing," said Hoover.

"Some assured me that no man could propose increased taxes in the United States to balance the budget in the midst of a depression and survive an election," Hoover remarked in an October 1932 campaign speech. He was genuinely surprised later, when the voters did not appreciate his manly display of "fiscal responsibility."

Suppose, for the sake of argument, that Hoover had managed to balance the budget, or that the current Congress reduces the deficit to zero in, say, the year 2002 (the target year mentioned in the proposed legislation). What happens next? Sweden had a balanced budget from 1987 to 1991. So did Britain from 1988 to 1990, and Mexico from 1990 to 1994. Even with balanced budgets, however, inflation and interest rates in those countries were not nearly as low as in the United States. Sweden and Mexico have since experienced major currency crises, and budget deficits in all three countries soon blew up again.

Minimizing government borrowing is not a unwise goal, but it is not sufficient to ensure economic success. And without economic success, a balanced budget in 2002 would soon prove as ephemeral in the United States as it has been in Sweden, Britain, and Mexico.

The economic arguments for a permanent prohibition on federal borrowing are far too dubious to justify enshrining conservative Keynesianism in the Constitution. Devotees of a balanced federal budget claim, for example, that the federal government should have to live within its annual income, "just like American families and businesses do." That's a good soundbite, but a shaky analogy. Families, businesses, and state and city governments borrow about half a trillion dollars a year. If there were no borrowers, there could be no lenders (i.e., savers).

Amendment backers also say that failure to balance the budget will impose a heavy burden on our children and grandchildren. Actually, the debt-service burden will neither increase nor decrease very much unless the government actually retires debt (for instance, by auctioning off the Presidio of San Francisco and other federal property). The Congressional Budget Office estimates that if Congress did nothing at all to reduce "current services" deficits, the cost of paying interest on the national debt would rise from 3.3 percent in 1995 to 3.4 percent of GDP by 2002. That is a lot of money, almost as much as projected Medicare spending.