Editorial

Balancing the budget in one difficult step

David Martosko Executive Editor
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Our national hue and cry about balancing the federal budget is nothing new. Balanced-budget-amendment proposals emerge, cicada-like, about every 13 years. After 15 minutes of fame, they typically go underground again.

The prospect of amending the Constitution usually brings us around to one of the great immutable laws of Washington, D.C.: For every politician, there’s an equal and opposite politician. Or, more precisely, for every balanced-budget-amendment hawk, there’s a hand-wringer cautioning against tying Congress’s hands in times of war or other calamity.

Maybe there’s another way to go about this.

In 411 B.C., Athenians got their first taste of an Aristophanes play called “Lysistrata.” The plot is simple: Greek women are tired of their husbands’ excuses for prolonging the Peloponnesian War, so they exercise the only real leverage they have. Led by Lysistrata, Athenian women withhold sex.

What leverage do Americans have? Those who want to see Washington balance its collective checkbook have traditionally looked to the ballot box. But even when an electoral sea-change arrives, the wheels grind slowly. Just ask Tea Party-affiliated House freshmen, many of whose necks now sport Washington Post-shaped boot marks for the crime of sticking to their — and their constituents’ — guns.

And it’s not like we can fall back on Lysistrata’s old ruse. Withhold sexual gratification from members of Congress? With Weiners, Lees, Massas, Craigs, Ensigns, Foleys, Mahoneys, Fossellas, Souders and Wus dropping like flies in recent years, we may be fresh out of base carnal urges soon. It’s almost enough to make you pine for those halcyon days of Wilbur Mills and Wayne Hays. (Go ahead. Google them.)

We just might have to look for new leverage.

How about congressional salaries?

Linking paychecks — both of members of Congress and all their staffers — with balancing the federal budget is an approach that has never been tried.

Advocates of a balanced-budget amendment constantly have to contend with colleagues whose political fortunes are tied to pork projects. Big spenders will simply never vote to permanently scramble their constituents’ golden eggs.

The idea of withholding congressional salaries suffers from a similar challenge. It would take an unusual aligning of planets to convince Congress to place its members’ personal incomes in jeopardy. And those who are independently wealthy, particularly the Senate’s patrician class, would scoff at the loss of a mere $174,000 per year.

But in the hands of the right committee lawyers, turning red ink into voided Capitol Hill paychecks would require only a bare majority of House members and a filibuster-proof 60 Senate votes. And let’s require a supermajority to repeal it, in case some future majority leader on food stamps decides it’s unwise.

Sending a constitutional amendment to the states for ratification requires two-thirds majorities in both houses, a near impossibility for all but the most universally acknowledged causes. No wonder passing a balanced-budget amendment wasn’t attempted until 1936.

Congress came within a whisker of pulling it off in 1995, failing by a single Senate vote when South Dakota Democrat Tom Daschle flip-flopped. Overnight, what was originally known as “The Daschle Plan” (no joke!) became legislative road kill. He would later claim he voted “no” because the amendment made no room for funding wars and other emergencies. (Either he was lying or he never read the bill.)

If the best of our political prognosticators are right, and providing Standard & Poor’s hasn’t rendered their crystal balls inert, the GOP will retain control of the House in 2012. It also stands to pick up enough Senate seats to form a new majority. Perhaps a substantial one.

Twenty-one Democratic Senate incumbents are up for re-election, plus two nominal “independents” who caucus with Harry Reid. Just 10 Republicans seats are up for grabs.

If things play out as expected, a perfect storm will materialize. And even if Americans simultaneously returned Barack Obama to the White House, would he veto such a law? Really?

It may seem heartless to make congressional staffers feel the same pain as their bosses. The Hill employs thousands of people, including a generous pool of entry-level college grads who have rent to pay.

So much the better. Congress will have an incentive to stop spending like drunken sailors when House and Senate staffers tighten the screws themselves. (Where’s the public employees union when you actually need organized labor to call an illegal strike?) With the right amount of pressure from the lowly legislative aides who actually draft our laws, deficits could become as passé as disco.

And don’t get me started about our spiraling debt. We could move the needle in the right direction by erecting a new National Debt Clock within spitting distance of Statuary Hall. Preferably near where Hill staffers get off the Metro each morning.

David is The Daily Caller’s executive editor. Follow him on Twitter