May 7, 2015 2 min read

The last time the U.S. Constitution was amended was in 1992, mandating that congressional salary decisions cannot take effect until after the next election. It took a mere 202 years for the amendment to be ratified.

Before then, the 26th Amendment, lowering the voting age to 18, was ratified in 1971. Short of a constitutional convention, an amendment requires a two-thirds majority approval in both the House and Senate and the ratification of at least 38 states. It’s an arduous process, and for this we all can be glad – it prevents shoddy ideas and proposals that respond to current political exigencies from being stitched into the Constitution.

Imagine, for instance, if an amendment outlawing same-sex marriage made it into the Constitution, as some were suggesting just a decade ago? It would already seem musty and ripe for repeal given multiple court rulings striking down gay marriage bans and the dramatic shift in public opinion supporting same-sex unions.

For that reason, no one should wait with a fluttering pulse for a balanced-budget amendment to become part of the Constitution, which several GOP presidential candidates are proposing. And that’s a good thing, because a balanced-budget amendment, requiring three-fifths of each house to approve spending beyond what the government takes in every year, is a monumentally bad proposal.

Of course, there’s nothing wrong with being careful with taxpayer money and trying to keep deficits to a minimum. But a balanced-budget amendment would straitjacket the federal government and likely prevent it from engaging in deficit spending at points when it would desperately need to do so.

What if the government had not engaged in deficit spending during World War II? In more recent times, as an article on the website Vox pointed out the other day, if Uncle Sam hadn’t intervened following the 2008 financial collapse, unemployment could have soared to 16 percent, and the GDP would have declined to 12 percent – a decline that would have had a good many of us striking up a chorus of “Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?”

And, it must be said, nearly all of us engage in deficit spending. What, after all, are the loans we take out for cars, to attend college and to buy homes?