A CLEAR AND PRESENT DANGER : The Politicization of the Constitution

If you win the game, it doesn’t give you the right to change the rules. But that’s what Republicans are trying to do with the balanced-budget amendment. They won the 1994 election. Now they’re trying to change the rules to make sure the game is rigged in their favor.

The balanced-budget amendment would declare the federal budget deficit unconstitutional. So what’s the big deal? There’s a near-universal consensus that the deficit is a bad thing. Why not codify that consensus into constitutional law?

Because deficit reduction isn’t what the debate is really about. It’s about changing the role of the federal government. The GOP’s not-so-hidden agenda is to dismantle the welfare state and limit federal intervention in the economy.

Nothing wrong with those goals. They are perfectly respectable conservative objectives. Ronald Reagan made them explicit when he offered his economic program to Congress in 1981, saying, “Taxes should not be used to regulate the economy or bring about social change.” That conservative agenda is quite properly treated by Republicans as their mandate coming out of the 1994 elections.

But that’s just the point. It’s a political agenda. In fact, it’s the defining issue for Democrats and Republicans. Democrats believe in activist government--whether it’s the old Democratic version (protecting and providing) or the new Democratic version (solving problems). Republicans believe in limited government--out of the boardroom (for traditional conservatives) and out of the bedroom (for libertarian conservatives).

A political agenda should be advanced through the political process, through legislation, policy initiatives, campaigns. It should not be enshrined in the Constitution. The most likely consequence will not be to put the issue “above politics.” The most likely consequence will be to politicize the Constitution.

The Constitution is not a liberal document or a conservative document. It can’t be. It’s the repository of sovereignty in this country, the ultimate source of legal and political authority. The British vest sovereignty in a monarch. The United States vests sovereignty in a document. But the same rule applies: The sovereign must never be identified with a political cause other than the nation’s preservation.

The agency assigned to interpret the Constitution is the U.S. Supreme Court. Is the court above politics? Absolutely not. “The Supreme Court follows th’ iliction returns,” as Finley Peter Dunne’s Mr. Dooley once said. And when it comes to political blunders, the court has made some beauts--like the Dred Scott decision that hastened the Civil War and the Plessy vs. Ferguson decision that endorsed the racial doctrine of “separate but equal.”

But only one political blunder was ever written into the Constitution--Prohibition. It took 14 years to get it out, tumultuous years when every politician had to be either a “wet” or a “dry.” The point is that given a few “iliction returns,” the Supreme Court can change its mind. The Constitution is more permanent.

That’s exactly why Republicans are rushing to get the balanced-budget amendment into the Constitution. It will make permanent the results of the 1994 election and change the role of the federal government, presumably forever. Conservatives expect that, once the amendment is in place, it will become extremely difficult--literally unconstitutional--for the federal government to increase spending.

In fact, the amendment will mandate spending cuts. The kinds of cuts so politically controversial that supporters of the amendment are unwilling to spell them out in advance for fear of undermining passage of the amendment. Once it is ratified, however, politicians will presumably be able to argue that they have no choice but to cut Medicare and veterans’ benefits and farm subsidies. Angry constituents will, of course, understand and forgive. The Constitution must be obeyed!

Some liberals, like Sen. Paul Simon (D-Ill.), support the balanced-budget amendment for similar reasons. They know Congress lacks the political will to raise taxes. But the amendment will force them to do it. Angry taxpayers will, of course, understand and forgive. The budget must be balanced!

In the immortal words of the late Sen. Everett McKinley Dirksen (R-Ill.), “Ha, ha, ha. And I might add, ho, ho, ho.”

For most politicians, reducing the deficit isn’t a cause. It’s a pretext. Reagan’s real cause was to reduce the size of government. The deficit was a convenient device for institutionalizing that goal.

That’s not to say the Reagan Administration deliberately created the deficit. Perish the thought--though Reagan’s budget director, David A. Stockman, did eventually reveal that the idea occurred to him. Instead, the Reaganites allowed themselves to believe a cockamamie theory called supply-side economics--which held that if they cut taxes and increased defense spending, government revenues would go up. Congress did its part by refusing to carry out its promise to cut domestic spending.

Anyway, it worked. For 14 years now, the federal government has been under constant and intense pressure from the deficit to keep spending down. It has been impossible to pass any major new domestic programs--even when Democrats were in control of both the White House and Congress. President Bill Clinton’s national-service program is little more than a pilot project. The crime bill was mutilated. Health-care reform was DOA.

Democrats have been no less guilty of using the deficit as a pretext. As soon as he got into the White House, Clinton declared himself a born-again convert to deficit reduction. The deficit justified his initial program of tax hikes and defense cuts--two things Democrats had been dreaming of ever since Walter F. Mondale ran for President. In Clinton’s budget proposal, two-thirds of the new revenues were earmarked for deficit reduction and one-third for public investments--i.e., new domestic spending.

It didn’t work. Congress got wise to Clinton and cut out most of the new investment spending. That was the end of Clintonomics. The result was still a sizable amount of deficit reduction, about $100 billion a year. For which the voters showed themselves to be supremely ungrateful in last year’s election.

This year, Clinton returned the favor by dropping any plans to expand deficit reduction. Why should he? If the Republicans pass their balanced-budget amendment, that will take care of the problem.

But isn’t there a consensus for deficit-reduction? Yes, and it’s probably strong enough to get a balanced-budget amendment passed. But the amendment would have two intended consequences for which there is no strong consensus.

One would be to curtail the federal government’s ability to stabilize the economy during a recession. In a recession, tax revenues fall and government outlays rise. That instantly throws the budget out of balance.

That couldn’t happen under a balanced-budget amendment, unless three-fifths of both houses of Congress voted to allow emergency spending. Otherwise, the federal government would be forced to raise taxes or cut spending to balance the budget. Either would deepen the recession.

The amendment would also help dismantle the welfare state. The welfare state has meant the gradual expansion of social rights--like the right to free school lunches or unemployment compensation or veterans’ benefits.

These days, they’re called entitlements. Some, like welfare, are unpopular. Others, like Social Security and Medicare, are entrenched. The Republican agenda is to change most of these programs from entitlements to discretionary spending. No one will be “entitled” to assistance.

House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) is clear about his objective. “It doesn’t say anywhere in the Declaration of Independence or the Constitution that anyone is entitled to anything except the right to pursue happiness,” he said.

That’s why Congress is proposing to replace welfare and food stamps and school-lunch programs with block grants. Instead of paying benefits to people directly, the federal government would turn over the money to the states and let them decide what to do with it.

Notice Congress wouldn’t have to cut individual benefits. It could just cut grants to states and let them figure out how to divide up the money. “We can’t give you any more money for food stamps,” Congress could say. “We have to balance the budget. It’s in the Constitution.”

OK, but what happens if the government runs short of money for Social Security or Medicare? The Republicans have promised not to touch Social Security. But they rejected a proposal to write that promise into the balanced-budget amendment. Gingrich has also promised a thorough re-examination of Medicare to figure out how to make it cheaper. Maybe by requiring Medicare recipients to join health maintenance organizations.

These are enormous changes. They are properly the subject of political debate. Putting the GOP agenda into the the Constitution will not mandate a consensus on these issues. But it will endanger the consensus that puts the Constitution above politics.*