GOP revives the "Starve the Beast" amendment

"My goal is to cut government in half in twenty-five years," Reagan Revolutionary Grover Norquist boasted, "to get it down to the size where we can drown it in the bathtub." Now, a generation after Norquist launched his crusade, Republican White House hopefuls Newt Gingrich and Tim Pawlenty are leading a new charge to "starve the beast." Even as these Republicans call for new Treasury-draining tax cuts, they are resurrecting a bad idea whose time never came: a balanced budget amendment to the United States Constitution.

While conveniently ignoring the supply-side snake oil which tripled the national debt under Ronald Reagan and doubled it again under George W. Bush, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich warned that "Washington's total disregard for fiscal discipline has jeopardized America's moral, political and economic authority within the world community." His solution to save the "foundation of personal and economic liberty upon which our nation is built" is the balanced budget amendment:

Since members of Congress has given no indication that they intend to alter their behavior, reject unbridled spending and return to the traditions of fiscal restraint, we believe that there is little likelihood that they will propose an amendment. As a result, the American people must act. Let us begin by calling upon every member of Congress and every candidate seeking office to commit to voting for a Federal Balanced Budget Amendment immediately. By raising a united voice in every district in every state in America, we can build the political will for Congress to act.

If Gingrich's litmus test for candidates sounds familiar, it should.

In 1992 and again in 1995, Republicans in the House and Senate narrowly failed in their first effort to drown government in a bathtub through a balanced budget amendment. Clinton Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin, no wild-eyed liberal by any stretch of the imagination, warned Congress that the GOP gambit would be ''a terrible mistake'' that would pose ''unacceptable economic risks to the nation.'' As the New York Times recalled in 1997:

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