State Rep. Richard Raymond (D-San Antonio) demonstrates that you don’t have to be Republican or in the tea party to be a federal deficit hawk.

Raymond, vice-chair of the Texas House Appropriations Committee, has filed two resolutions urging the federal government to eliminate deficit spending and balance the budget from year to year. He has authored similar legislation regularly since at least 1995, none of which has passed the committee stage.

For the 2011 session, Raymond’s House Concurrent Resolution 23 asks Congress to “propose and submit to the states for ratification an amendment to the United States Constitution to provide for a federal balanced budget.” His House Joint Resolution 34 would put Texas legislators on record as supporting a proposed Constitutional amendment for a balanced federal budget.

State Rep. Patrick Creighton (R-Conroe) (also a member of Appropriations) has filed his own HCR 18 urging Congress to approve a balanced budget amendment. In the other chamber, Senate Finance member Florence Shapiro (R-Plano) introduced Senate Joint Resolution 10, calling for a constitutional convention of the states to consider a balanced budget amendment.

There are two ways to propose an amendment to the U.S. Constitution: a two-thirds majority vote in the U.S. House and U.S. Senate; or by a constitutional convention called by two-thirds of state legislatures, according to the National Archives. Shapiro’s resolution calls for the latter procedure, which has never been used to propose any of the 27 amendments.

After the amendment is proposed, it requires ratification by three-fourths of state legislatures (38 of 50) to become part of the Constitution.

In 1995, state Rep. Warren Chisum, who was then a Democrat from Pampa, filed HJR 121 to rescind a previous call by Texas legislators in 1977 for a constitutional convention to consider a balanced budget amendment — saying a convention could unintentionally lead to a total rewrite of the Constitution. According to Chisum’s resolution: “the best legal minds in the nation today are in general agreement that a convention, notwithstanding whatever limitation might be placed upon it by the call of said convention, would have within the scope of its authority the complete redrafting of the Constitution of the United States of America.”

Chisum’s resolution warned that rewriting the Constitution “would create a great danger to the well-established rights of our people and to the constitutional principles under which we are presently governed.”

Also in 1995, then-state Rep. (and current U.S. Rep.) Kevin Brady (R-The Woodlands) filed HJR 112 reconfirming Texas’ application to hold a constitutional convention to consider a balanced budget amendment. Both Chisum’s and Brady’s bill died in committee.

In 2009, Raymond’s HCR 73 and HJR 71 attracted two co-authors, state Reps. Diana Maldonado, D-Austin, and Aaron Pena, D-Edinburg. State Sen. Jeff Wentworth (R-San Antonio) filed a resolution supporting a balanced budget amendment in 1997.