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It took a while, but it's now perfectly clear that most of the supporters of the Balanced Budget Amendment are not really interested in balancing the budget. Instead, their agenda is to make sure that their taxes are not raised and that it is as difficult as possible to spend money.

There are only two ways to balance a budget: bring in more revenue or spend less money. Thus, if you were really interested in achieving a balanced budget, you wouldn't make it more difficult to raise money. Although the effort by the Amendment's most fervent supporters to require a three-fifths vote to increase revenues failed to achieve the necessary two-thirds vote in the House, the Amendment as approved in the House does require a roll call approval by an absolute majority of each House -- absentees are counted as voting no -- for any "bill to increase revenue," whatever that may mean.

On the other side, the deck is also stacked against spending. The House-passed Amendment would require that a three-fifths supermajority of each House approve an increase in the debt ceiling, which is a necessity if the government runs a deficit and needs to borrow money, even for a short time. The result here is that 41% of either House will be able to hold the entire federal government hostage, unless spending cuts are made in the programs they oppose. That's not democracy, but tyranny of the minority, and it's only in one direction -- reducing spending.

Or take the issue of enforcement. True balanced budget proponents would want to be sure that a constitutional amendment was crystal clear as to how their goal was to be reached, including, in particular, the role of the courts in making the other two branches tow the line. But despite persistent pleas for a clarification, the proponents refuse to tell the public what they envision the courts will do.

It nonetheless seems clear that, in the absence of any specific language authorizing the courts to stop the budget from becoming unbalanced, those who complain about unbalanced budgets will be thrown out of court for lack of "standing" because they have only a generalized grievance shared by the citizenry at large. The only people who will have the right to sue under this amendment are those who claim that their taxes were increased, but that the special procedures application to bills to "increase revenue" were not satisfied. Once again, the anti-tax, anti- spending bias is plain from the choice of the remedy.

Especially if the courts cannot enforce the balanced budget requirement, it appears that the President would be permitted, if not required, to cut spending, on his own, without Congressional approval if the budget looks like it is going to be unbalanced. The Clinton Administration has argued before Congress that it would have precisely that power, and no one has taken any measures that would prevent future Presidents, acting on their own, from deciding to cut defense, social security, or food stamps, as well as to decide where within defense spending the cuts should occur -- helicopters, tanks, submarines, or salaries, to cite a few of his options.

This process, known as impoundment, was stopped by the courts when attempted by President Nixon in the early 1970s. It also brought forth massive opposition from Congress, including many Republicans, because of what they properly recognized would be a major shift in power to the White House. The fact that the sponsors of the amendment are not simply willing to tolerate impoundment, but are actually pushing it on the President, leads to only one conclusion: they don't really care how spending is cut, so long as their taxes are not increased. That may or may not be sound policy, but it is surely a very different concept than that underlying the balanced budget.

Unfortunately, sloganeering seems to be the principal order of the day as far as a balanced budget is concerned, while other principles, like checks and balances and majority rule, take a back seat. Unless the process is slowed down, and cooler heads start to prevail, a balanced budget amendment is likely to be heading for ratification by the States very soon.

If that should occur, Congress should at least enact, as a preview of a balanced budget future, a "Truth in Budget Balancing Act," so that the American people can try the amendment on for size before deciding whether to buy it. Such a statute would not mandate a balanced budget, but would require the President to submit to Congress both a budget that would be in balance (so that everyone would know what the consequences would be), and the budget that he would like enacted for that year. Congress would then, as it does now, adopt its own budget and would either agree with the President's balanced budget proposal or adopt its own non- binding balanced budget. Furthermore, as a check against unreasonable estimates, when the President sends his budget to Congress, he would be required to explain why last year's actual spending and revenues figures didn't add up, as they almost certainly won't.

If Congress passed such a law, the American people, and most importantly the State legislatures called on to ratify the amendment, could see exactly what both the President and Congress thought a balanced budget would look like, and could decide for themselves just how important a balanced budget actually was, before it became enshrined in the Constitution.

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