Making Ends Meet

In his book Making Ends Meet, Daniel P. Franklin addresses questions about the nature of the American economy today and its relationship to the budgeting process undertaken in Congress. To do this, Franklin examines the budget process for a single cycle, ending in 1992. Franklin holds that the process has changed and that the changes instituted in 1990 in particular altered the process and called many common practices into question in an era in which the deficit has become so large and so important. A balanced budget has been suggested as the means to bring the problem of the budget under control and to reduce the deficit, but Franklin suggests that a better method would be a form of line-item veto rather than a balanced-budget amendment. Even then, he is not suggesting that this is the solution to the problem, but what he says about the balanced budget approach is interesting.

At the present time, Americans are faced with the possibility of having both the line-item veto, passed since Franklin wrote his book, and a balanced-budget amendment as is being suggested by the current Republican leadership in Congress. Franklin makes a good argument for preferring the line-item veto over the balanced-budget amendment. He notes that the line-item veto is democratic while the balanced-budget amendment is antidemocratic and would subvert the checks and balances of the Constitution. The line-item veto, he says, "is wielded by political institutions subject to political control

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to gain revenue. States with a balanced budget still need money for certain programs, and Franklin points out that in fact these stats do not really balance their budgets at all, as is pointed out in a 1985 General Accounting Office study: The study reported that most states achieve balanced budgets simply by taking much of their spending off budget. In other words, when states authorize most capital improvement projects, including roads, schools, sewers, or housing, they fund the project by selling bonds. This is simply another way for government to borrow money. States actually balance only 47 to 66 percent of their budgets. The federal government would probably seek to do much the same thing, and so a balanced budget is something of a fiction. As Franklin notes, Congress could already balance the budget if it wanted to do so, and the adoption of a balanced-budget amendment will not magically bring about a balanced budget in any case. Franklin thus says that such an amendment would fail in its purpose and erode public confidence further. Another interesting argument raised by Franklin is that adding an amendment to the Constitution does not isolate the provisions of that amendment, meaning that it could open up a pl

Category: Economics - M