Republican proposes Balanced Budget Amendment

Post Reply New Topic

http://politics.blogs.foxnews.com/2011/ ... ced-budget

Yup, a Constitutional Amendment to have a balanced budget. Not sure if it will get through congress with the Democrats controlling the senate, but I think the American people would be for it. Downside is who knows what the Dems will try to insert (like an attempt to do away with the 1st and 2nd amendment).

there is no balance when the military and the government gets all it wants but schools have to slash personnel and programs!

EDUCATION FIRST!

This mostly just strikes me as posturing. Congress isn't going to pass such an amendment, and they wouldn't even if the Republicans were completely in charge. For the record, I think a categorical ban on budget deficits would be a bad idea. We need to dismantle the military-industrial complex and reform tax policy as well as entitlement programs, but a Constitutional ban on deficits would be a serious problem, since there are periods where the government legitimately needs to run a temporary deficit (emphasis on "temporary," not the massive structural deficit we have had under Bush and Obama).

+1 to MasterJedi's point about properly funding education. The cuts need to come out of the military before they come out of education.

Incidentally, doing away with the 1st Amendment? Are you completely ignorant of the last fifty years of American history? The Democratic party has, in general, been much more supportive of the 1st Amendment than the GOP has.

Mike Lee is going to be a great senator. Hope Utahans can do it again by ousting incumbent Orin Hatch in 2012. Jason Chaffetz would be a great senator as well, Utah would easily have the 2 best in the nation then.

And yes, the balanced budget amendment needs to happen but it won't. Unfortunately principled politicians like Mike Lee, Rand Paul, Ron Paul, a couple others are few and far between. Most of the GOP besides them still aren't willing to give up the global empire and don't have the guts to touch social programs. The deficit is something like 1.5 trillion, there is so much that needs to be cut. You could put military spending at 0 and we'd still be running a deficit. It's insane to think how much debt we're piling up, we're dooming our children to slavery.

And as I discussed before with Orwell, every proposed balanced budget amendment would have exceptions in it for war(a formal declaration of war with an objective and end date, not an unconstitutional open ended nation building mission) and other times of national emergency.

I wish the GOP had the guts to vote against raising the debt ceiling, that would force the government's hand to completely stop it's insane spending.

Yeah, right. When they aren't in power, the damned Republicans want to balance the budget. But, once they take over, they want to borrow and spend like crazy. What a bunch of idiots.

Is a recession going to count as a "national emergency?" Because the overwhelming majority of mainstream economists believe that is the time when you need to run a deficit.

And I don't see why military is always the sacred cow. "Oh, yes, we have to keep the budget balanced, but if the military needs more money no rules apply, and money is no object." Plenty of developed nations are perfectly safe with little to no real military power. We aren't going to face armed invasion anytime in the foreseeable future (who's invading? Canada? ) and we have no need to fight a real war against anyone else (again, who are we gonna attack, Canada?)

We ran large budget surpluses under Clinton. There is no reason we can't do so again. When Clinton left office, we were on track to have our entire national debt paid off by 2010. Then we got Bush. We need a couple decades of serious, responsible government to be able to dig ourselves out the financial hole we've buried ourselves in, and from what I've seen the GOP isn't actually serious about making the real tough choices. Perhaps a Republican legislature and Democratic executive, like under Clinton, will prove to be a good combination.

Clinton didn't have the dot.com bubble burst and 9/11, though there were other terrorist incidents he didn't respond to.

When a patient is really ill it's not really worth a dose of cyanide to see if that might improve things.

Clinton had a much more effective anti-terrorism policy than Bush ever did. He did an interview with Chris Wallace on Fox News a while back where it was discussed.

But even uncritically granting that Bush faced greater challenges than Clinton, you'd have to be pretty delusional to believe he rose to the challenge. Certainly in regards to finances, it cannot possibly be argued that Bush was responsible. Massive, record-breaking tax cuts coupled with out-of-control spending increases, much of which going straight to people connected to his administration in the defense industry, was foolish.

As long as there's a trade deficit then the choice is between public deficit and private deficit. Thus, if a Balanced Budget Amendment is passed and is implemented, and the trade deficit remains what it is, then the private sector will be forced to absorb the debt that the public sector took on. Can the private sector do this during this time of deleveraging? No, it cannot. So the result will be massive economic contraction, a great depression.

The Right has long made it its goal to tie the hands of government to prevent it from doing things to improve the lives of people. Already in the Neoliberal Age there are measures off-limits that used to be done. Then they'll say that the terrible results are Nature's own work and that trying to solve problems is defying Nature... and they choose to ban solutions. It's like banning the use of water to put out fires.

If more spending was the answer we would of never had a problem in the first place. The market will correct itself. Interference will only prolong the recession and possibly deepen into full on depression.

Agreed on military spending. We could probably defend this country with only nuclear deterrent if need be. We can turn pretty much any country on earth into a parking lot with in hours if there was a legitimate threat. The thing is that most "defense" spending is has absolutely nothing to do with defense. $800 billion on military expenditures is absolutely insane.

Running a surplus now would be a lot bigger challenge. Our deficit is about $1.3 trillion now compared to about $22 billion in 1997($107 billion in 1996) before the surplus was ran. The cuts this time will be much much more difficult.

What's this nonsense about the Market fixing everything? What is this, magic? Again, you'll load the private sector with even more debt if this balanced budget nonsense is implemented and it can't support it. If I was Usama bin Laden, I'd support the balanced budget amendment.

By the liquidation of malinvestments caused from interference in the first place.

Worse than idiots. Hypocrites.

ruveyn

You can hold this view, but you do have to recognize that it is counter to mainstream economics. I am inclined to trust the judgment of people who are obviously better-informed than me, rather than assume all the experts are morons.


Yes, the cuts will be painful. And so will the tax increases. But it can be done, if we are willing to take both measures and demand that budgetary restraint be maintained for an extended period of time.

Of course, as soon as we have a budget surplus, the Repulicans will start screaming about how that money has to be returned to taxpayers, rather than being used to pay off the debt- this is what happened after Clinton gave us a budget surplus. The GOP seems to have an ideological commitment against balancing the budget.

Ho Hum. Where have I heard this before. I won't believe it until gold and silver are remonitized.

ruveyn