Proposing an amendment to the Constitution of the United States to provide for balanced budgets for the Government.

HJRES6 proposes a constitutional amendment requiring that total federal outlays not exceed total receipts in any fiscal year unless a two-thirds roll call vote in each chamber authorizes a specific excess. The amendment includes waivers for declarations of war, national emergency, or natural disaster. It was introduced in the 119th Congress on January 3, 2025, and referred to the House Judiciary Committee. The bill has had zero legislative actions beyond introduction — no hearings, no markup, no companion bill in the Senate. Constitutional amendments require two-thirds of both chambers plus ratification by three-fourths of state legislatures, a process that has not succeeded for a balanced budget amendment since the modern era. The probability of passage in this Congress is negligible, but the bill's introduction reopens the structural debate around defense discretionary spending caps.

The money trail is zero: this bill authorizes no funding, establishes no procurement account, and provides no contracts. Its mechanism is a binding constraint on all future appropriations. If enacted, it would cap total outlays (including defense procurement) unless Congress achieves a two-thirds supermajority in both chambers to run a deficit — a threshold virtually impossible for routine appropriations given current partisan division. The mechanism does not distinguish between mandatory and discretionary spending, but defense discretionary (approximately $850B annually) would be directly capped by any outlay limit.

Structural winners are non-existent among defense primes. The bill is structurally bearish for $LMT, $NOC, and $GD because their revenue streams depend on annual discretionary appropriations for major acquisition programs (F-35, B-21, GBSD, Virginia-class submarines). A constitutional cap creates permanent uncertainty around the size and timing of future procurement budgets. The defense sector has historically traded at a premium due to the reliability of DoD funding; a structural cap erodes that premium.

Market data confirms the pressure. $LMT has declined from $592.19 on April 17 to $510.83 on April 30 — a 30-day drawdown of 15.48%. $NOC fell from $665.26 to $577.35, a 30-day decline of 15.37%. $GD declined from $336.29 to $344.02, showing a 30-day change of +0.23%, with a sharp recovery in the last two trading sessions from $312.53 to $344.02. The divergence suggests $GD's recent earnings or segment-specific news may have offset the bearish macro sentiment, though the structural exposure to a balanced budget constraint remains similar.

The legislative timeline: the bill is stuck at the House Judiciary Committee with no hearings scheduled. In the 118th Congress, a similar resolution (HJRES11) never advanced past referral. The 2025 legislative calendar is crowded with debt ceiling negotiations, appropriations fights, and tax extenders — a constitutional amendment has zero realistic path to floor consideration. Near-term market impact is negligible. Long-term, the bill serves as a legislative marker that keeps the balanced budget debate alive, which creates a low-level overhang for defense contractors every time the debt ceiling or budget caps are negotiated.