Democratic balanced-budget amendment fails in Senate vote, 21-79

A balanced-budget amendment sponsored by Sen. Mark Udall (D-Colo.) has failed in the Senate by a vote of 21-79.

Just as the Senate started voting on the Democratic version of a balanced-budget amendment Wednesday, the White House had weighed in to say it strongly opposes the bill.

President Obama has no role in the constitutional amendment process, so the official statement was not a veto threat. Instead, the message was intended to limit Democratic votes on the amendment.

“We do not need to amend the Constitution for only the 28th time in our Nation’s history to do the job of restoring fiscal discipline.  Instead, we must — as members of both parties have done in the past — move beyond politics as usual and find bipartisan common ground to restore us to a sustainable fiscal path,” the White House said.

“If S. J. Res. 24 had been in effect in recent years, such a minority in one house would have been able to prevent efforts to override the requirement for tax increases or spending cuts, risking an even deeper contraction and pushing the economy into a second Great Depression,” the statement said.

The Senate is voting on Democratic and Republican versions of a balanced-budget amendment Wednesday to fulfill an obligation agreed to in the summer’s debt-ceiling deal. The House last month failed to approve its version of the amendment, which requires a two-thirds majority to pass.

Neither Senate bill had been expected to pass. The Republican version, sponsored by Sen. Orrin Hatch (Utah), contains a requirement that any new taxes be approved by two-thirds votes in each house of Congress and that spending be capped at 18 percent of gross domestic product.

The Udall version, on the other hand, forbids cutting taxes for the wealthy except in times of surplus and shields Social Security from being used to balance the budget.

Republicans said the Udall version is too weak and could force massive tax increases.

“It creates the possibility that unelected judges would, contrary to constitutional order, enter judgment to take more money from American citizens if Congress fails to control spending. The amendment would also prevent Congress from adopting fiscal reforms that combine lower taxes with reduced spending. And it creates a loophole for entitlement spending that will spare Congress from making needed fiscal reforms,” Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.), the ranking member on the Budget Committee, said.

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