The bill which would have joined Arizona in a compact with other states to create a federal constitutional amendment requiring a balanced budget failed in the Arizona Legislature on Tuesday. While Republicans supported the concept, attorneys for the legislature advised that the bill could create serious legal issues down the road.
House Speaker Andy Tobin, who voted for the bill, expressed concerns about whether future legislatures would be illegally bound to the bill’s direction. Tobin said it was important for the federal government to “get its fiscal house in order.”
Still, the bill pushed most vocally by Representative Adam Kwasman, failed when some republican members joined democrats on the Rules Committee in rejecting it by a 6-3 margin. Kwasman’s notorious grandstanding has won him few friends at the Capitol, and even fewer who are willing to risk supporting a legally questionable bill for him.
In early February, Nick Dranias, of the Goldwater Institute who helped write the legislation told the Maricopa Monitor, “One of the more interesting aspects of this issue is the group of people they’ve pulled together. We’re at the point now where this is going to pop and go huge or it’s going to fizzle.”
It fizzled. Speaker Tobin told the AP that the bill was “killed in rules. It’s not going anywhere now. It’s dead-dead.”
According to the Goldwater Institute, “HB2328 proposed an agreement among the states that would advance a powerful balanced budget amendment for the federal government. At its core, HB2328 requires state legislative approval for any increase in the federal debt. Some have expressed opposition to this concept because they are concerned about the lack of an explicit exemption to finance wars. The Compact for America furnishes plenty of flexibility to finance truly necessary wars—without allowing Washington to write itself a blank check.”