Sen. John Ensign among Republicans pushing for balanced budget amendment

By Karoun Demirjian

Thursday, Jan. 27, 2011 | 9:39 a.m.

With official long-term debt projections off the charts, all eyes in Congress are on the budget -- and the debate is catching Nevada’s senators on diametrically opposite sides of the aisle.

Sen. John Ensign is among a group of Republican senators headlining efforts to pass a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution -- a provision to bind the government to bring the federal budget into balance every year. That sort of provision exists in many state charters, including Nevada’s, but has never been part of the Constitution.

“Votes to cut spending are difficult ... it’s much easier to get re-elected by giving money away than taking tough political votes to cut spending,” Ensign said.

“States across the country are making those tough political decisions ... because they’re forced to. We need to be forced to.”

Lawmakers were presented with two hefty projections Wednesday: an estimate that by 2020, the country would be paying $1 trillion of interest on the federal debt, and a Congressional Budget Office estimate that projected that, left on a current course, the country’s debt would be 233 percent of the economy by 2040.

But Democratic leaders have countered that cutting the budget at all costs would also clip the country’s ability to invest where it needs to grow.

“The Republicans are taking a meat-ax approach when we need to go with a sharp, precise scalpel,” Sen. Chuck Schumer said Wednesday at a news conference with Reid’s chief Whip, Dick Durbin.

The president, and members of the Republican caucus, are expected to present their budgets for the next fiscal year in mid-February.