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Can you imagine a US Constitutional amendment that, if proposed, would actually get passed these days?
The relevant part of the US Constitution is:
So, either 2/3 of both the House and the Senate, or 2/3 of the states must propose it, and then 3/4 of the state legislatures or conventions in those states must support it, for it to become part of the Constitution... as I understand it at least.
What sort of possible amendments could you imagine would actually pass and become part of the US Constitution in today's political climate, if they were proposed?
I find this to be an interesting question because it is a barometer of what the various factions of US politics actually agree on, despite their various differences, and also a barometer of how much polarization there is in today's US political situation.
In the event of an extreme economic crisis I can see a form of debt brake amendment becoming viable. It would take a lot, but it's possible and Germany passed a constitutional amendment to implement its debt brake (with some exceptions) in 2009. Switzerland also has one (again with limited exceptions, but it's mostly followed).
A combination of a big swing to the GOP, another tea party movement and a huge recession under an unpopular Democratic president trying to shore up support could do it, but it's still pretty unlikely. In the end, I suspect that a debt brake would be more constraining for Republican than Democratic administrations, because the demand for tax cuts would provide (welcome, I'd say, but still) constant downward pressure on spending, which even Republicans are loathe to cut for things like defense and medicare.
I think too many people in power have learned from MMT how money, banking, and government finance actually works, so it would probably take a few generations for people to forget those again for debt-hysteria to strongly return. In addition to the plain logic, all the evidence is that strong fiscal policy is the answer to extreme economic crises, rather than a target for blame.
Even the eurozone seems to have learned that their anti-fiscal-policy stances were a mistake and caused the first big crisis to flatline growth for the last 15 years. So the Maastricht 3% deficit limit is finally being scrutinized and softened to allow for better counter-cyclical fiscal policy. And in the US we've gone from Obama being confused and thinking he needed to fly to China to make sure they'll still 'lend' us money, to now the massive covid stimulus packages without a peep about becoming Greece or bankrupting our grandchildren.
Now the conversation is more correctly about inflation instead of solvency. And while regular people do hate inflation, even way more than is warranted, I'd guess that's too nuanced and subjective for much support of a constitutional amendment around debt/deficit.
The Eurozone situation would have presented an extreme moral hazard if the PIGS had been more generously bailed out with no drama. That's not to say the ECB was particularly intelligent about it or that the Germans and Dutch weren't largely responding to domestic populist demands to cut off those profligate mediterranneans, but if you look at the kind of fiscal climate you had in Italy or Spain during the early-2000s construction booms where like penniless teacher couples were being handed €3m loans to open their own hotel or whatever you can see that change was necessary. Monetary integration without fiscal integration is unustainable, people were rightfully angry that every Greek doctor was reporting an income of €12,000 a year and taking the rest tax-free in cash while Austrian and French doctors had to pay 40%+ tax rates on every penny they made above a low amount, there was a lot of built-up rage about it.
Agreed on all counts I think. But despite the rage and desire to punish, they did have to accept the economic reality and Draghi finally set it right in 2012 with the "whatever it takes" admission, which was correcting the first main issue. Then I think since covid and looking at the 15 years of poor growth, they've been coming around on the problems with deficit limits, which is the second big economic problem. These things reflect what necessary compromises had to be made 30 years ago to get buy-in, and what were the dominant narratives at the time (where central bankers and monetary policy were seen as sufficient wizardry to manage an economy).
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