Political Science
A Bold Proposal
Political scientist recommends constitutional convention to tame federal budget mess. By Kate Perry
SPENDING SOLUTION? In his new book, political scientist David Primo suggests calling a national constitutional convention, the first since 1787, to help rein in federal spending.
U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson said this fall that he expects the nation to hit the national debt limit at a whopping $8.965 trillion. And in his memoir released this year, former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan blasted President George Bush and Congress for letting spending get out of control.
It’s clear America’s leaders like to spend. But why do they do it when rules they’ve created say they shouldn’t? University political scientist David Primo answers that question in his new book, Rules and Restraint: Government Spending and the Design of Institutions (University of Chicago Press). He also offers a unique suggestion for managing the problem: a national constitutional convention, the first since 1787.
Primo says legislators don’t deal with the fiscal challenges facing the country because serving their constituents—often with financial support of community and state projects—produces the most immediate reward. Failure to bring home government dollars could cost them future elections, he says, and that’s more motivating than the benefits the whole country could gain by sticking to a stricter budget and reforming programs like Social Security and Medicare.
“Unfortunately immediate, short-term temptations override long-term goals,” Primo says. “Members of Congress are just responding rationally to the re-election incentive.”
Primo says reforms have failed because they are rife with loopholes and often only apply to new spending, while old, already approved spending programs go unchecked. Some legislators are masters of manipulating—and even ignoring—legislative procedures when their own budgetary rules prove inconvenient, he notes.
But while the federal government has struggled with this problem for decades, many states haven’t. In a study examining 30 years of state spending data, Primo finds that states with strict balanced budget rules enforced by an elected state high court spend less than states without such rules in place.
That is evidence, Primo says in Rules and Restraint, that the states should consider mounting a national constitutional convention. He says it would offer Americans a unique way to police the budget process. A constitutional convention can be called by two-thirds of the states, and budget rules could be placed into the Constitution if approved by three-quarters of them, Primo notes. Scholars have debated how such a convention would proceed, and Primo calls for a careful consideration of the pros and cons of a convention.
Even if it never came to pass, the threat of a convention might prod Congress to enact meaningful budget reform. Primo acknowledges that this solution may sound extreme, but also says most states have budget rules in their constitutions.
“This may seem like a radical step, but I would argue that these are radical times,” he says.
Kate Perry writes about the social sciences for the University Communications Office.
