Tuesday, February 19, 2013

Why the Balanced Budget Amendment is a bad idea...

The conservative think-tank, the American Enterprise Institute's Ramesh Ponnuru says the popular right wing goal of a balanced budget amendment is a bad idea and a waste of time.

" All the Republicans and 22 of the Democrats in the Senate, plus all the Republicans and 56 of the Democrats in the House, would have to vote for the idea to send it to the states. Then three-quarters of the states, which have grown increasingly dependent on federal deficit spending to keep their own budgets in balance, would have to ratify it. The amendment isn’t going anywhere.
Voters already know that Republicans are concerned about the deficit. Exit polls during the 2012 presidential election showed that voters favored the Republican candidate, Mitt Romney, over President Barack Obama by two percentage points as a deficit-cutter. The 15 percent of voters who said the deficit was their top issue backed Romney 2 to 1.
The Republican Party has a lot of problems. A fight over the Balanced Budget Amendment would, at best, solve one it doesn’t have."
Is he right?

Read the whole thing here...

Source: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-02-18/balanced-budget-amendment-still-a-terrible-idea-ramesh-ponnuru.html

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