Analysis Of A More Perfect Constitution By Sabato

The Federal Budget has always been a hot topic of debate; whether funds are being allocated properly or not, but what can not be debated is currently America is in a deficit and in debt. In A More Perfect Constitution by Larry Sabato, Sabato proposes adding an amendment that would require federal expenditures in any given fiscal year to not exceed federal revenues in that same year; unless three-fifths of both houses of the Legislative branch waived the balanced budget requirement. The only other exception would be during recession or war, declared or undeclared, a simple majority in both the Senate and the House could circumvent the balanced budget requirement. The amendment would require any surplus to be spent on repaying the federal debt.

One main issue is the requirement that any surplus be spent on paying of the federal debt rather than accumulating a savings. According to Robert Greenstein of the liberal Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a research institute that conducts analyses on government policies and programs, the BBA opposes how businesses and families operate because both examples often spend in deficit. A family does not buy a house all at once, rather the family relies on investments, savings, and short term loans to pay off more expensive purchases. Similar practices are used in the business world by borrowing to modernize equipment so the business can remain competitive. Sabato also mentions that the government would need to create a distinction between the federal operating budget and long-term investments. His own idea defeats the purpose of the BBA because a politician would be able to argue the proposed part of the budget into a long-term investment and thus

As shown in the chart, forty-six of the fifty states have balanced budget regulations involved in the budget making process. The reason it would not work is because of what Sabato fears happening at a federal level happens at the state level; the political body spent money but the money was not spent in a way that merited it being recorded. According to the Institute for Truth in Accounting (IFTA), a non-profit organization whose purpose is to inform the public of the truth behind governmental budgets, most states claim the budget is balanced, but not everything is included in the state budget such as retirement fees. Billions of dollars are used in retirement costs but the budget does not account for these costs. Illinois reported that the cost of pensions was fourteen billion dollars according to the standards of the Governmental Accounting Standards Board but after the IFTA found the schedule in the Illinois Comprehensive Annual Financial Report that shows three years of actuarial information for each of the five pension plans; the IFTA calculated the actual spending to be forty billion dollars, leaving a total twenty-six billion dollars unaccounted for in the budget. Governors and legislatures intentionally circumvent balanced budget requirements endangering fiscal sustainability and evading public scrutiny. At least a quarter of a state's revenue comes from federal grants