The Senate Republicans gathered together yesterday to sign their names to a document professing their desire to amend the constitution to require the federal government to pass balanced budgets. An amendment which translates to outlawing deficit spending. A form of spending which so many of them seemed to have no problem voting for in the past.
(Reuters) - All 47 Senate Republicans, seeking fiscal discipline in big-spending Washington, proposed on Thursday an amendment to the Constitution that would require a balanced federal budget. [...]
"It's long past the time that we stop spending money we don't have," said Senator Lamar Alexander, a member of Republican leadership. "Requiring that we balance our national budget is a logical step in that direction."
Yes. Entirely logical. Except when it isn't.
It would not even be possible for the federal government to pass a balanced budget without rendering society unrecognizable or dramatically raising taxes. And, as Ezra Klein points out, a provision contained in the proposal would make raising taxes virtually impossible.
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.
Again -- all 47 Senate Republicans have signed their name to a document that would essentially declare themselves as unconstitutional since they all advocate the same kind of voodoo economic policy that Bush and Reagan adhered to. Policies that many of them personally voted for in the past. A policy that every single one of them voted for just four months ago when the Bush Tax Cuts were temporarily extended.
Remember? Deficits don't matter if they are generated by tax cuts.
This patently ridiculous proposal will never become law, but, roughly half of the United States Senate is happy to sign their name in support of it.