Is a balanced budget amendment a good idea?

Is a balanced budget amendment a good idea?


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PROVO -- Republicans in the House and Senate are preparing constitutional amendments that would require the government to run a balanced budget every year. Politically, the lines are already drawn, with Republicans generally in favor and Democrats generally opposed. But does balancing the federal budget each year make economic sense? Like many issues in economics, the answer is, “it depends.” Specifically, it depends on the time horizon over which we balance.

One way to gain some insight into how the government should act is to imagine the parallel with your own household budget. The parallel is not perfect, because the government is big enough to affect the whole economy while your household (even if you are Bill Gates) is not. Nonetheless, the analogy is useful.

So, should you run a balanced budget as a household? The obvious answer is, of course you should. In fact, you really aren’t given much of a choice in the matter, at least in the long run. If you spend more than you earn over a long period of time you will go into debt. And if you fail to pay that debt, your creditors will start seizing your assets. You might get out of paying back the full amount by declaring bankruptcy, but that’s not a good choice when making a personal financial plan.

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A more subtle question is, over what time horizon should you balance your budget? Should it be a year? Clearly you don’t balance it over short periods of time, like a day. Most of us get paid relatively infrequently. If we adopted a strict balanced budget rule, we would spend our paycheck in full each payday. On days when we didn’t get paid we would not be able to spend anything. Clearly a day-to-day balanced budget is silly for most of us. In practice, we set aside most of our paycheck on payday and gradually spend this balance down until the next one arrives.

Financial planners tell us to set some of our income aside each payday and save. One reason for saving is to be prepared for an unexpected expense. In many cases we can’t really avoid running a household deficit. If the transmission goes out on the car, it is usually necessary to repair it or replace the car, even if this exceeds the planned budget for the month. We can dip into savings to do this or borrow money, but either way we are running a budget deficit.

Running this kind of deficit is not such a bad idea if we have the self- discipline to run surpluses later. That is, we either repay our loan or rebuild our savings account to its original level by spending less than our income.

When most of us manage our household expenses, we pay attention to the budget. We are aware of whether we have spent more or less than we intended and whether this is more or less than our income. However, we do not insist on a hard constraint that spending always be less than income. Instead, we keep an eye on our savings and borrowing. When savings falls or borrowing rises, we readjust our budget plans, realizing we need to spend less or do something to earn more.

Almost everyone in the U.S. realizes the government budget is seriously out of whack. We need major adjustments to spending if we are going to avoid bankruptcy. A balanced budget amendment is one way to force fiscal balance. Just as a financial planner might recommend a strict budget for a household that is heavily in debt, a balanced budget may be one part of a responsible plan to reform government spending and taxes. In this case, a strictly-enforced budget is a temporary tool that should be used to bring overall debt down. In fact, a good financial planner would recommend a budget surplus so that spending is significantly less than income and the large outstanding debt is reduced as quickly as is reasonably feasible. However, once the debt is reduced there is much to be gained from allowing borrowing in the face of unexpected events.

A balanced budget amendment is permanent and will bind all future congresses. Therefore, the short run gains in fiscal balance need to be weighed against the long-run losses in ability to respond to economic shocks. A better policy would be to impose spending restrictions until the level of debt reaches a much lower level. The best policy would be to elect a congress that is willing to spend within its means in the long run.

Kerk Phillips is an associate professor of economics at Brigham Young University.

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