Tuesday, May 1, 2012
John Carney — Balanced Budget Amendment Hoax
John evokes Murray Rothbard's explanation of why a balanced budget amendment is nothing but a hoax. The reason is simple. Politicians will never adopt wording that actually constrains them to balance the budget on a yearly basis. (Most of these folks are lawyers, right?)
Read it at CNBC NetNet
Balanced Budget Amendment Hoax
by John Carney | Senior Editor
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
6 comments:
Carney is naive. This missed by only one vote back in 1997. It could easily pass now as it has broad support among the citizenry.
This is a smart move by those on the right. They recognize that the public is for a BBA and so enough Democrats are likely to vote for it to pass it.
As Rothbard observes, balanced budget amendments are essentially BS, because Congress can always appropriate spending off budget. The military spending for Iraq under Bush was off-budget, for example.
The right is banking on being able to pass increases "necessary for national security" that appropriate expenditure off-budget, while being reasonably certain that no increase in social expenditure will ever be approved off-budget. Very clever.
You need a section on the blog called "Quote of the Day" and make this one the first.
"balancing the budget by increasing taxes is like curing influenza by shooting the patient; the cure is worse than the disease.
Right, Tom. They'll only go off budget for military and the amount is not likely to be anywhere near the kind of deficits we're running now.
The real deal killer is that states get halt a trillion in federal grants annually. Leaving aside, say, the morons running South Carolina, there's no way 3/4ths of the state legislatures will ratify an amendment that would cut off that revenue stream.
VERY good point Tom....You never hear the US running out of money for wars/military/national defense. Funny we hear it for other stuff but that. Great point in bringing up the off-budget example
Post a Comment