Congress shall not pass, and the President shall not sign, any appropriation bill which would cause the total expenditures for any year to exceed the expenditures in the budget for such year. "2) The receipts in any year shall not exceed, as a proportion of the national income, that collected in accordance with this section in the prior year, unless a bill directed solely to approving a specific increase in such proportion has been passed by each house of the Congress by roll-call vote and such bill has become law. "3) The Congress may waive the provisions of Section One with respect to any single year in which a declaration of war is in effect. 4) Terms used in this article shall be construed in accordance with their meaning on the date on which this article was submitted to the States for ratification 5) This article shall take effect on the first day of January of the second calendar year beginning after its ratification." There is this to be said for the draft, that its provisions are shorter, simpler and more constitutional than most of the balanced-budget resolutions that have been advanced in recent years. But with deference to the sponsors, some serious reservations have to be voiced. On Jan. 28, Mr. Carter will send to the Congress a budget for the fiscal year ending Sept. 30, 1981. Like every other budget, it will be a work of hope, hot air and conjecture. The President's estimates of revenue will be or so we assumethe very best and most realistic estimates that can be prepared by his economists, diviners, prophets and readers of entrails. The advance word is that Mr. Carter will predict receipts of $600 billion and expenditures of $615 billion, but the receipts will depend heavily upon tax bills not yet passed, and the expenditures could be knocked awry in a hundred different ways. The proposed amendment says that Congress shall adopt a budget that sets forth "the total receipts and expenditures." But these figures can only be estimates-mere guesses, subject to revision at the stroke of a pen. The provisions of Section One, I submit, are paper barricades, useless against the winds of expedience and impulse. A similar difficulty attaches to Section Two, which is intended to hold federal outlays at about 20 percent of national income. But constitutionally speaking, what is "national income"? It is a figure drawn by professional cogitators from jackstraws and moonbeams. It can never be truly definitive. I have the same mistrust of Congress that Jefferson voiced 182 years ago. I am all in favor of binding man down from mischief by the chains of the Constitution. I simply doubt these chains will work. O |