Fiscal Restraint vs. Balanced Budget Testimony

Attachment: 4652/Fiscal_Restraint_vs_Balanced_Budget_Testimony.docx

Testimony - Fiscal Restraint vs Balanced Budget

Mr Chairman,

I want to clarify the significance of the difference between the Convention of States Fiscal Restraint tenet and a Balanced Budget Amendment.

When Convention of States wrote the application language, consideration was given to provide latitude to the delegates in an eventual meeting of the states to write and propose amendments that enabled restrictions on fiscal mismanagement.

As long as the proposed amendments were germain to the application language, they could be proposed without being as confining as imposing a Balanced Federal Budget.

With the current state of the interest payment on debt, economy, and mandatory spending requirements in our country, imposing a balanced budget could be crippling.

Fiscal Restraint amendments such as imposing a supermajority requirement to pass increases in the federal debt, imposing a debt brake program, as some European countries have done in order to average the normal cycles of recession and growth or a supermajority vote to pass tax increases.

Fiscal Restraint provides a means to favorably impact our financial state without going overboard in one step.

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Created:	2025-03-11 17:59 GMT
Updated:	2025-03-11 17:59 GMT
Published:	2025-03-11 17:59 GMT
Converted:	2025-11-11 12:35 GMT
Change Author:	Daniella Landivar
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