Yes, ironically the balanced budget amendment would have most strongly hit Dubya's plans more than any other president. It would definitely harm the supply-spiders as well.
(It should be passed, but with a waiver in recessionary times. It should also automatically ban large surpluses as well.)
I'm confused as to what liberal orthodoxy on balanced budgets is these days. People still praise Clinton for doing so, but dismiss Republican proposals as ridiculous.
All I'll say is that if the Germans could have a balanced budget amendment-- which does leave room for stimulus-- we probably can too.
obviously a balanced budget and a balanced budget amendment are two enormously different things.
a big problem with balanced budget amendments is that the large faction of norquistite fanatics in the u.s. generally make it impossible to balance the budget in a reasonable way.
I don't disagree with either of these posts. Surpluses would also ideally be tied to GDP growth in some way, to manage debt levels. But overall I don't see why a reasonable balanced-budget amendment would be a bad idea.
