The Balanced Budget Amendment Should Not be a Deal Breaker

The insistence of the Democrats in Washington to turn this budgetary crisis into an electioneering coup is never more obvious than when they consider a proposed Balanced Budget Amendment to be a deal breaker.  Why?  Even if the proposal is placed before both House and Senate and garners the required 2/3 vote in each (no easy task), it still would have to then be ratified by ¾ of the states.  The time needed for that vote is not prescribed in the Constitution, but the Supreme Court has said that it must be a, “reasonable” amount of time.  Lately, that has been designated as 7 years, but it could be more or less.  Of the 33 proposed amendments to the Constitution, only 27 have been successfully ratified.  So even if Congress proposed the amendment, that doesn’t mean it would be ratified.  Why make that a non-starter? 

            Well, there are a couple of reasons.  First, for all the theater going on, the Democrats know they are in the wrong on this budget problem and that it is going to take some real pain from their core constituency to make it right.  The only way they have to avoid exposing the man behind the curtain is to put quite a show on stage.  To do that in the midst of a stagnant economy and relentless unemployment is to introduce a real note of hysteria into your dialog.  Witness Nancy Pelosi (now there is a woman who stares at a chess board wondering why all the pieces don’t have the same shape) making the frantic statement:  “What we are trying to do is save the world from the Republican budget.  We are trying to save life on this planet as we know it today.”  Ah, come on, Ms. Pelosi, what you are really trying to save is votes for a President who so far has only Bin Laden in his plus column. 

            Second, just as any parent knows, if you are a kid caught in trouble, the first thing that you do is try to shift the blame to someone else.  At best, the folks will forget you and chase down the other culprit; at worst you will only get half the punishment, with the other half going to someone else.  So, the Democrats are desperately trying to make sure the next election is against the Republicans, not for the Democrats. 

            If you know there is a significant portion of the Republican Party that wants a Balanced Budget Amendment, then making it a cause can draw attention away from the real issue of cutting spending and raising revenue.  On the other hand, if you wanted to get to the serious issues, and knew that throwing the Balanced Budget Amendment bone to the rabid Tea Partiers would keep them quiet while you tackled the tough stuff, why not do it?  The answer is just so darn obvious.  Distract, dissemble, demagogue: that has been the political stock in trade since the Revolution.  It works so well.

            But what do I think about the Balanced Budget Amendment itself?  Well, I am a trained economist and I know that in classical Keynesian economics a national balanced budget is countercyclical.  It doesn’t solve problems, it exacerbates them.  But I also believe in the power of the people to make both large and small course corrections in their government.  And I know that the economics of the last century is seldom the economics of the present century.  I think a Balanced Budget Amendment should have its shot.  I might even support it. 

            Let’s keep solvent and keep the faith. 

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