The Worst Idea In Washington (Californication) - Ezra Klein/WaPo

[WillyT]

The worst idea in Washington
By Ezra Klein
Posted at 03:28 PM ET, 04/01/2011

<snip>

Bruce Bartlett takes a look at the Balanced Budget Amendment all 47 Republicans signed their names to and pronounces it “quite possibly the stupidest constitutional amendment I think I have ever seen. It looks like it was drafted by a couple of interns on the back of a napkin.”

I think “stupid” is the wrong word. “Dangerous” is more like it. And maybe “radical.” This isn’t just a Balanced Budget Amendment. It also includes a provision saying that tax increases would require a two-thirds majority in both houses of Congress — so, it includes a provision making it harder to balance the budget — and another saying that total spending couldn’t exceed 18 percent of GDP. No allowances are made for recessions, though allowances are made for wars. Not a single year of the Bush administration would qualify as constitutional under this amendment. Nor would a single year of the Reagan administration. The Clinton administration would’ve had exactly two years in which it wasn’t in violation.

Read that again: Every single Senate Republican has endorsed a constitutional amendment that would’ve made Ronald Reagan’s fiscal policy unconstitutional. That’s how far to the right the modern GOP has swung.

But the problem isn’t simply that the proposed amendment is extreme. It’s also unworkable. The baby boomers are retiring and health costs are rising. Unless you have a way to stop one or the other from happening — and no one does — spending as a percentage of GDP is going to have to rise. This proposal doesn’t interrupt those trends. It simply refuses to acknowledge them — or, to be more generous, it rules them unconstitutional. This is the equivalent of trying to keep your kid cute by passing a law saying he’s not allowed to grow up.

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More: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/ezra-klein/post/the_worst_idea_in_washington/2011/03/10/AFzQaOIC_blog.html?wprss=ezra-klein

A world in which this amendment is added to the Constitution is a world in which America effectively becomes California. It’s a world where the procedural impediments to passing budgets and raising revenues are so immense that effective fiscal management is essentially impossible...

:kick:

[tridim]

1. It almost seems like they know they're never going to win again.

So, screw the Dems by any means possible while they still have the chance.

[polichick]

2. What makes you think they won't win again? People said that after Bush...

...and they won plenty in 2010.

[tridim]

3. The teabaggers won in 2010

And 4 months later they are more unpopular than ever.

[polichick]

5. Many on the right have a desperate need to belong to that "club" -

Republicans (with or without teabaggers) will win again.

[msongs]

6. that's how u do it with people who refuse to fight back nt

[Siouxmealso]

4. It's four pages long

It won't pass for that reason alone. If they really wanted to pass a balanced budget amendment and not simply make a political statement, it could have been one sentence long.