The U.S. House tanked a balanced budget resolution to curb the federal government’s practice of racking up trillion-dollar deficits every year.
The failed Wednesday vote comes as federal spending pushed the national debt over $39 trillion, roughly $3 trillion higher than it was 12 months ago.
That means the U.S. government was adding nearly $89,000 per second to the national debt over the past year, according to the U.S. Congress Joint Economic Committee.
“Congress has failed our country,” House Budget Committee Chairman Jodey Arrington, R-Texas, said Wednesday. “Our out-of-control spending has jeopardized our economy, our security, our leadership in the world, and, worst of all, compromised our children’s future and the blessing of their inheritance of freedom and opportunity.”
The resolution proposed a Constitutional amendment that would cap federal spending each year at the average annual revenue of the previous three years.
“Total expenditures for a year shall not exceed the average annual receipts collected in the three prior years, adjusted in proportion to the changes in the population of citizens of the United States and inflation,” the resolution reads.
Debt payments are excluded from the definition of “expenditures,” and the amendment would not apply during wartime.
Additionally, lawmakers could override the law if two-thirds of both chambers chose to do so, rendering the amendment effectively toothless with a determined enough Congress.
Arrington chastised the lawmakers who opposed the resolution, saying fiscal irresponsibility is “not a Democrat problem or a Republican problem. It’s an institutional problem that persists and will destroy the greatest nation in human history.”
The resolution’s opponents, however, argue that any balanced budget amendment potentially jeopardizes ever-growing entitlement programs.
Democrats in particular opposed a provision that would have required a two-thirds vote from both chambers in order to impose any tax increases, which would boost federal revenue and could offset deficits.
House Democratic Whip Katherine Clark, D-Mass., said the resolution left “virtually no way to balance the budget without drastic cuts to Medicare and Social Security.”
The resolution needed two-thirds of the chamber’s support to pass, but it received only 211 votes. Eight Republicans and six Democrats did not vote.
U.S. lawmakers have introduced balanced budget proposals hundreds of times over the past 50 years and over 100 times since 1999 alone.
Only twice in American history has any balanced budget proposal passed either chamber of Congress; the Senate in 1982 and the House in 1995.
“Choosing to abandon our fiscal responsibilities like this does not exist in a vacuum; in fact, it wreaks havoc on our economy and everyday life,” Maya MacGuineas, president of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, warned Wednesday.
“Higher debt exacerbates inflationary pressures, squeezes out investment in our economy, allows interest costs to dominate our defense spending, leaves us vulnerable to emergencies and geopolitical turmoil, and could even provoke a fiscal crisis,” MacGuineas said. “Rather than ignoring these milestones as both parties have largely done, policymakers should acknowledge them for what they are and begin pivoting toward a more stable course.”
