In 1994, Congress was considering a constitutional amendment to require the federal budget to be balanced. A stubborn habit of running deficits had gotten out of control in the previous decade and a half, quadrupling the national debt. "The balanced-budget amendment is a desperate but necessary device for restoring discipline to the management of the nation's treasury by Congress and the president," the Chicago Tribune editorial board said then.

The amendment, sponsored by Illinois Democratic Sen. Paul Simon, passed the House but fell one vote short of the necessary two-thirds majority in the Senate. Looking back, we think we were on to something. Ensuing developments only highlight how useful the rule could have been.

After a brief spell of budget surpluses during the Clinton administration, deficits came roaring back, topping out at $1.55 trillion in 2009 during the Great Recession. The total government debt has tripled since 2000, and projections say it will expand at an unhealthy pace in the coming decade.

But there is one glimmer of hope: the revival of the balanced budget amendment. With Republicans in control of 33 legislatures after this year's election, the chances of ratification by the states are good. And 28 states have already gone so far as to call for an Article V convention of the states to propose such a measure. The prospect of such a convention to propose amendments to the Constitution may be enough to spur Congress to approve the amendment and send it to the states, with 38 required for ratification.

The last time such a proposal came to a vote, in 2011, it fell well short in the House, partly because supporters of the idea couldn't agree on the particulars — notably whether to include a spending limit of 18 percent of gross domestic product.

The version introduced last year by Rep. Bob Goodlatte, the Republican chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, set the spending ceiling at 20 percent of GDP. But there hasn't been much appetite in Washington, D.C., for tough fiscal decisions, so the details didn't much matter.

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