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For years, politicians and economists have debated the merits of a theoretical legal requirement that the U.S. federal government spend within its means. The idea, championed by groups like the conservative Heritage Foundation, has been a part of the nation’s public discourse since its founding. The issue was raised during a 12 April 2018 vote on a bill introduced by Rep. Robert Goodlatte, a Republican from Virginia who argued: Politicians from both sides of the aisle have argued that this specific move was a cynical attempt at presenting an appearance of concern over the national debt, following a disastrous report from the Congressional Budget Office revealing that the tax cuts signed into law by President Donald Trump could add as much as $1.9 trillion to the national deficit by 2028. Mo Brooks, a Republican from Alabama who voted in favor of the amendment, told the New York Times that despite his vote, the act was an effort to fool the American people into believing that this Congress is financially responsible when quite clearly, based on the votes of the past year, it is wholly and completely irresponsible. The bill received 233 votes, short of the two-thirds majority it required. In response to this failed vote, a group named Social Security Works published a press release (Legislation That Would Surreptitiously Steal Social Security’s $2.9 Trillion Surplus Has Been Defeated – But 97% of Republicans Voted For It) framing the vote as evidence of Republican (and some Democratic) willingness to endanger a surplus of money reserved for future Social Security beneficiaries: Though this statement was released on 12 April 2018 — the day of the vote — prominent liberal Facebook pages have periodically reshared the release as new, causing additional waves of web virality — most recently in June 2018. The argument that a balanced budget amendment could endanger Social Security stems from its overarching goal of having expenditures match revenues each year, as argued by the progressive think tank the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities: Marc Goldwein, a senior vice president and senior policy director for the nonpartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, another Washington, D.C. think tank dedicated to budgetary issues, told us that he understands why one would make Social Security Works' argument, but that it is largely sensationalized and ignores the bigger problems facing Social Security and the federal deficit: If you were to have a balanced budget amendment pass, that means we effectively would have to cut deficits pretty quickly by a trillion dollars, and Social Security is the largest government spending program so it’s not unlikely that policymakers would look to [it] for some of those savings, Goldwein told us. But, he said, that argument misses the larger point that the Social Security trust is currently projected to be insolvent by the year 2034, regardless of any amendment: The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities argues that the Goodlatte bill, if it had passed, would have limited the government’s ability to restore solvency to Social Security, as well: Both the CBPP and the CRFB regard balanced budget amendments as a poor solution to the complex and growing problem of the United States debt, even if they view the potential ramifications of such an amendment about to Social Security in different ways. However, claims made by Social Security Works that politicians voted on the balanced budget amendment with the express intent to use Social Security to cover the national debt are largely false, as this was not the intent of the amendment; the amendment’s effect on Social Security is not as clearly defined as the press release states. It is true, however, that 233 representatives in Congress voted in favor of the most recent attempt at a balanced budget amendment.
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