SENATE GOP PUSHES BALANCED BUDGET AMENDMENT

Manu Raju, POLITICO March 26, 2011

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-TN) and other senior Republicans are building a united front behind a constitutional amendment that would require a balanced federal budget, a measure that could serve as a bargaining chip in the debate over raising the debt ceiling.  McConnell’s leadership team circulated documents on Friday afternoon to GOP Senate offices, laying out a new legislative plan to bridge internal differences, and sent an unambiguous call for unity among the 47-member conference.  ‘Leadership strongly encourages members to co-sponsor the amendment and will be actively seeking support at the Tuesday policy lunch,’ Tori Gorman, chief economist of the Senate Republican Policy Committee, said in a memo … If all 47 members sign onto the plan, it could give Republicans new leverage to demand a Senate vote as a condition for agreeing to take up the politically thorny issue of raising the national debt limit” http://bit.ly/dEgrVx Sen. John Cornyn (R-Tex): My hope is that we would force a vote on a Balanced Budget Amendment as a condition to voting on the debt ceiling. … By next week, or shortly thereafter, we will have all 47 Republicans unified behind the effort, and then begin to reach out to our Democratic colleagues. http://bit.ly/f7luWi

Senate GOP “one-pager” on the bill http://politi.co/hCDnQw

PDF of the 4-page proposed bill http://politi.co/gpNxkS