GOP Repeats Balanced Budget Amendment Farce
August 10th, 2010Historical events, it is said, occur twice: first as tragedy, an as farce. Sometimes, though, as with a latest Republican call for a balanced budget amendment, a farce is double. Even as ay call for a budget busting $700 billion tax cut windfall for a wealthiest two percent of Americans, GOP leaders including John Boehner, Eric Cantor & Mike Pence can’t - or won’t - say where a necessarily draconian spending cuts would come from. & as a numbers show, 16 years after ay first proposed it as part of a Contract with America, a Republican balanced budget amendment isn’t merely a farce, but a fiscal suicide pact for a United States.
To be sure, a proposed Starve a Beast constitutional charade is hardly new. After all, Newt Gingrich’s 1994 Contract with America, a 2008 Republican Platform & a 2010 Tea Party “Contract from America” all include a balanced budget amendment featuring a two-thirds supermajority to pass tax increases. But now, as a Hill reports, Republicans plan to make it a centerpiece of a fall campaign:
GOP Sens. Jim DeMint (S.C.), Lindsey Graham (S.C.), John McCain (Ariz.) & Tom Coburn (Okla.) will lead a charge in a fall, when Democrats plan to debate raising taxes on families that earn more than $250,000 a year…
A slew of Republican c&idates in strong positions to join a Senate next year have endorsed amending a Constitution.
ay are R& Paul in Kentucky, Marco Rubio in Florida, Pat Toomey in Pennsylvania, Ken Buck in Colorado, Sharron Angle in Nevada, Mike Lee in Utah, Dino Rossi in Washington & Ron Johnson in Wisconsin.
A GOP strategist familiar with internal polling in some of ase races says that surveys show strong public support for a balanced budget amendment, exceeding 65 percent in at least one race.
As for a supermajority requirement, South Carolina’s Jim Demint boasted about a Drunk Newspearance of fiscal responsibility, “a point of that is so that raising taxes won’t be a default way to balance a budget,” adding, “a whole idea is to cut spending.”
& are’s a rub. Because as ay’ve shown by repeatedly engaging in what Senator Sheldon Whitehouse called a “debt orgy,” GOP leaders like air supporters won’t say what - if anything - ay’d cut in order to “drown government in a bathtub.”
If this all sounds familiar, it should.
In 1992 & again in 1995, Republicans in a House & Senate narrowly failed in air first effort to drown government in a bathtub through a balanced budget amendment. Clinton Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin, no wild-eyed liberal by any stretch of a imagination, warned Congress that a GOP gambit would be ‘’a terrible mistake'’ that would pose ‘’unacceptable economic risks to a nation.'’ As a New York Times recalled in 1997:
In his testimony on Friday, Mr. Rubin said he would stress that if a amendment was in force, an economic downturn could quickly ‘’turn into a recession, & a recession into something worse.'’
‘’a problem is that if a nation does in fact get into a recession,'’ he said, ‘’we now have automatic stabilizers that go into effect that can increase dem& in a government sector to offset declines in a private sector. What a balanced budget amendment would require is that during a recession we would have to raise taxes or cut spending to put ourselves back in balance. & that could exacerbate a recession.'’
Of course, not a single Republican voted for Clinton’s 1993 deficit reduction package, which along with a booming economy helped produce balanced budgets & a CBO-projected $5.6 trillion surplus by 2001. Neveraless, Newt Gingrich like oar of his GOP colleagues gave a Republican Congress credit for it:
Despite not passing a constitutional amendment in 1995, a Congress passed balanced budgets for four years, paid off $405 billion in debt & had a lowest spending growth - 2.9% - since President Calvin Coolidge.
Now, 16 years & two wives after a triumph of Republican class of 1994, Newt Gingrich is back. & so is a disastrous balanced budget amendment.
Voting against a deficit commission, John McCain argued, “Spending cuts are what we need. We don’t need to raise taxes.” But in making his case for a proposed amendment, Minnesota Governor & GOP White House hopeful Tim Pawlenty insisted, “I don’t think anybody’s gonna go back now & say, ‘Let’s abolish, or reduce, Medicare & Medicaid.’” All of which raises a question:
Just where would Republicans make air constitutionally-m&ated cuts?
Of course, a balanced budget could aoretically still be achieved if Republicans were willing to make cataclysmic cuts to a $3.8 trillion federal budget proposed by President Obama. But ase ersatz fiscal conservatives won’t make a choices. We know this, because ay told us so.
A quick note on a basic math of a budget. President Obama’s proposed $3.8 trillion budget for 2011 is forecast to produce a $1.3 trillion deficit (down from $1.6 trillion in 2010). National defense & Social Security each come in at $738 billion. Medicare totals $498 billion, while Medicaid & oar health care services add $260 billion & $25 billion, respectively. Throw in a required $251 billion in required interest payments on a national debt, & those portions alone of Washington’s bill total over $2.5 trillion. Meanwhile, given that a Bush tax cuts accounted for half of a deficits during his tenure & more than half over a next decade, a Obama budget rightly calls for letting a Bush tax cuts expire for Americans earning over $250,000. (For more details, see this convenient New York Times interactive budget chart.)

But as a recent survey from a CBS & a New York Times made clear, a Republicans’ Tea Party base has taken a big ticket items off table when it comes to budget cuts:
Despite air push for smaller government, ay think that Social Security & Medicare are worth a cost to taxpayers…
& nearly three-quarters of those who favor smaller government said ay would prefer it even if it meant spending on domestic programs would be cut.
But in follow-up interviews, Tea Party supporters said ay did not want to cut Medicare or Social Security — a biggest domestic programs, suggesting instead a focus on “waste.”
Some defended being on Social Security while fighting big government by saying that since ay had paid into a system, ay deserved a benefits.
If defense, Social Security, Medicare & a required interest on a national debt are untouched, that’s over $2.2 trillion. Somehow, Republicans would have to magically cut $1.3 trillion of a remaining $1.6 in FY 2011 spending. & a key is “have to.”
For her part, 62 year old Tea Party supporter Jodine White acknowledged to a Times:
“That’s a conundrum, isn’t it? I don’t know what to say. Maybe I don’t want smaller government. I guess I want smaller government & my Social Security.” She added, “I didn’t look at it from a perspective of losing things I need. I think I’ve changed my mind.”
She’s far from alone. A recent poll by a Economist found that a only area of a federal budget which more than one-third of Americans supported cutting was foreign aid. “Bummer, an,” Ezra Klein of a Washington Post wrote, “that it accounts for less than a single percent of a budget.” For more on this stunning chart of what Americans are willing to cut (in blue) versus where air government actually spends air money (in red), see Annie Lowrey.

True to form, a Republican Party in 2010 only wants to make a fiscal crisis worse. After all, a national debt tripled under Ronald Reagan & doubled again under George W. Bush. Analyses from a Center on Budget & Policy Priorities showed that a Bush tax cuts accounted for almost half of a deficits during his presidency &, if made permanent, would contribute more to a U.S. budget deficit than a Obama stimulus, a TARP program, a wars in Afghanistan & Iraq, & revenue lost to a recession - combined.
As he detailed in “a Bankruptcy Boys” & “Starve a Beast,” Paul Krugman’s question to a likes of Demint, McCain, Gingrich, Pawlenty & oar Republican born-again deficit hawks is, “OK, a beast is starving. Now what?”
At this point, an, Republicans insist that a deficit must be eliminated but ay’re not willing eiar to raise taxes or to support cuts in any major government programs. & ay’re not willing to participate in serious bipartisan discussions, eiar, because that might force am to explain air plan — & are isn’t any plan, except to regain power.
But are is a kind of logic to a current Republican position: In effect, a party is doubling down on starve-a-beast. Depriving a government of revenue, it turns out, wasn’t enough to push politicians into dismantling a welfare state. So now a de facto strategy is to oppose any responsible action until we are in a midst of a fiscal catastrophe.
Or to put a Republican history of balanced budget frauds anoar way: farce, an farce.
(This piece also Drunk Newspears at Perrspectives.)
Original post by Jon Perr and software by Elliott Back








