The Perpetual Death of the Balanced Budget Amendment

How can we expect Congress to vote to constrain itself?

Jay Rogers | June 26, 2026

The United States has passed $39 trillion in national debt.  Interest payments will exceed $1 trillion this fiscal year — the first time debt service has topped ten figures in American history.  That exceeds the entire defense budget.  It exceeds Medicaid.  And the debt accumulates at roughly $8 billion a day.

There is a constitutional amendment that would fix this.  It has been introduced in some form in every Congress for four decades.  Virtually every Republican in the House and Senate supports it.  The constitutions of 49 states already require something equivalent.  Polling consistently shows supermajority public support.  It came within a single Senate vote of passing in 1995 and 1997 — one vote each time, in a body of 100.

It will never pass Congress. That’s a realistic analysis of the structural problem, which is that the institution being asked to constrain itself is the one doing the asking.

A balanced budget amendment follows a straightforward constitutional path.  Article V gives Congress two ways to propose amendments: a two-thirds vote in both chambers or a convention called at the application of two thirds of state legislatures (34 states), with ratification by three quarters of states in either case.  Every balanced budget amendment that has ever reached the floor has used the congressional route.  Every one has failed.

The closest the country ever came was March 1995.  The Republican House, running on the Contract with America, passed the amendment 300-132 — clearing two thirds with room to spare.  The Senate needed 67 votes.  The recorded tally was 65-35, though Majority Leader Dole voted no for the procedural purpose of preserving reconsideration rights.  True support stood at 66, one vote short.  The single decisive Republican no came from Sen. Mark Hatfield of Oregon.  His vote would not have been needed at all had Sen. Tom Daschle of South Dakota not reversed years of public support under direct pressure from the........

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