Exploding Propaganda Series (Part 3 of 7): Section 2's Constitutional Debt Limit
The Compact for a Balanced Budget advances a specific Balanced Budget Amendment that you can read today, and which four states have already contractually committed to ratify. Read it here. Section 2 of the Compact's Balanced Budget Amendment limits the federal government's borrowing capacity, initially, to no more than 105% of the outstanding full faith and credit debt owed by the federal government on ratification of the amendment. So if $20 trillion in debt were outstanding on ratification, the new constitutional debt limit will be $21 trillion. The opposition does not like the fact that the section "accepts debt as a permanent feature of our Country." Here, again, the opposition drops the existing context of the Constitution. Simply put, the unlimited borrowing capacity of the federal government already "accepts debt as a permanent feature of our Country." The opposition also disregards (or is ignorant) of the fact that the 14th Amendment further reinforces the national debt as a permanent feature of our Country by stating the "validity of the public debt... shall not be questioned." Thus, whether we like it or not, the Constitution as it currently exists already enshrines the national debt as a permanent feature of our Country. Worse, the national debt is also constitutionally unlimited. The big difference the Compact's BBA makes is that it sets an initial constitutional debt limit AND that limit cannot be increased without approval of a majority of State legislatures. In other words, our Amendment adds two constitutional hurdles to what would otherwise be limitless federal borrowing authority. More than that; the states are once again empowered with an oversight role for federal policy making. This ensures that the entire borrowing power for the federal government is not held entirely by the same congressional hands that directly abuse it. That is clearly an improvement on the status quo. Stay tuned for Part 4 of this series, discussing Section 3 of the Compact's BBAEndFragment
