House Republicans to vote on a balanced budget amendment amid conservative ire over spending

Correction: An earlier version of this story misstated the required threshold for passing a constitutional amendment. Both the House and Senate would have to approve the proposed amendment by supermajority votes.

WASHINGTON – The Republican-led House of Representatives will vote this week on a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution, an effort to quell anger from conservative activists who say Congress presides over a ballooning debt and out-of-control spending.

Lawmakers return to Washington after a two-week recess, during which many fielded complaints from constituents unhappy with the $1.3 trillion spending bill Congress passed last month. President Trump grudgingly signed the measure but vowed never to support such a massive spending bill again. 

"I had people calling me up saying, ‘I’m done, I quit, I’m not voting. I’m totally fed up,’ ” said Rep. Dave Brat, R-Va. Brat and dozens of other conservatives voted against the legislation and railed against GOP lawmakers who supported it.

House conservatives said voting on a balanced budget amendment could calm some of the ire, though the measure is not popular with everyone on the right, and it's unlikely to pass the Senate.

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“If lawmakers think they can use a balanced budget amendment as a fig leaf of fiscal responsibility after just voting for such an irresponsible spending bill, they should think again," said Tim Phillips, president of Americans for Prosperity. "Congress had an opportunity to exercise fiscal discipline, and they blew it."

Democrats said the push for a balanced budget amendment is a political ploy — and a hypocritical move from Republicans who passed a tax cut law projected to add $1.5 trillion to the debt.   

House members are all up for re-election in November. Some Republicans said the best way to win is to hold votes on GOP campaign promises, even if those measures have little chance of becoming law.

“I look at this as much more than a showboat, but actually putting some teeth in it and putting some people on record,” said Rep. Mark Walker, R-N.C., chair of the Republican Study Committee, a conservative caucus of more than 150 House members.

Walker helped GOP leaders win enough votes for a budget bill last fall, in exchange for a promise that the House would vote to balance the budget. He said this week's vote on a balanced budget amendment has been in the works for a while and is not a direct result of the voter pushback over the spending bill — though he acknowledged the base outrage adds to the amendment's urgency.

The measure the House will consider this week, introduced by Judiciary Chairman Bob Goodlatte of Virginia, would amend the Constitution to say Congress can't spend more than it takes in in federal revenue, unless three-fifths of both the House and Senate vote to do so. Congress could achieve the balanced budget through spending cuts or by raising taxes, though the latter step would also require a three-fifths vote in both the House and the Senate. Similarly, Congress could not raise the debt ceiling without super majority votes.

That’s where the problem lies for many fiscal hard-liners, such as Andrew Roth, vice president of government affairs for the Club for Growth. Roth said a balanced budget "has to be solved through spending cuts.”

“It looks like a way for Republicans and Democrats to tax their way out of all of this spending that they’re doing, rather than having hardwired spending caps,” Roth said of the budget proposal. Roth said Republicans often talk a good game when they run for office or serve in the minority, but when it's time to govern, they have trouble delivering what they promised.

Jenny Beth Martin, head of the conservative Tea Party Patriots, said last week that she was excited to hear Congress was going to consider a balanced budget amendment — until she saw the text. If Congress can vote to increase taxes or raise the debt ceiling, that “may not actually prevent overtaxing and overspending the way that it’s being written,” Martin said.

Because this is a proposed amendment to the Constitution, it would have to pass the House and Senate by a two-thirds majority vote — requiring bipartisan support in both chambers. It would also have to be ratified by three-fourths of the states within seven years. 

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif, blasted the Goodlatte bill as "an act of breathtaking hypocrisy and an open assault on Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security." Those programs could be subject to cuts to balance the budget under Goodlatte's proposal. 

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There are conversations between House Republican leaders and the White House about ways to rescind sections of the spending bill Trump signed into law, a leadership aide confirmed to USA TODAY.

Michael Steel, a Republican strategist, said a vote on a so-called rescission package would be “very smart politically, to remind people that the Republican Party is dedicated to fiscal conservatism.”

Steel, an aide to John Boehner when he was House speaker, said passing the spending bill was necessary to give the military a spending boost, but coming back and cutting out certain provisions is a good way to show Republicans are committed to cut “wasteful Washington spending.” 

Other Republicans worry about the effects of making cuts to a law they worked to pass weeks ago.

“Why enter into a budget agreement and then an omnibus appropriations bill if you intend to undo it in a few weeks?” said Rep. Charlie Dent, R-Pa., a moderate member of the Appropriations Committee who helped write the spending bill. “I’m very concerned that rescinding the dollars that were just agreed to will make it extremely difficult to enter into future agreements on appropriations.”

Democrats echoed that message.

"Abandoning the (spending bill) commitments in this way represents a serious breach of trust, which will only serve to make future compromise more difficult," Rep. Carol Shea-Porter, D-N.H., wrote in a letter to House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., dated April 5.