It was entirely predictable. Calls for a balanced budget amendment by the GOP this week are right in line with modern republican ideology. When in control, ignore deficit levels, spend like mad and cut taxes. When you lose control demand a balanced budget amendment. They did this during the Clinton years and they are doing it now. I'm really only surprised that the call for a balanced budget came before a flag burning amendment was put to a vote. I think they may have finally seen the flag burning amendments as the lost causes they always were. I only hope that soon both parties realize a balanced budget amendment is asking the impossible.
Why is it impossible? Some might say. Thats quite a hyperbolic statement isnt it. Anyone CAN balance a budget. Simply spend equal to what you take in!! Well, unlike most households the government has very little control of what it takes in.
Our govt must come up with a spending plan BEFORE it knows the taxes it will take in during the time that spending will occur. The budget is passed in the early part of the year to start in September of that year. So in January when decisions are being made about how spending will be done the following September, there is no exact way to know how much tax will be collected.
Imagine if you had to budget your household yet you had no idea exactly how much income you were going to earn. What if your boss simply said no salary but a fixed percentage of X% of sales is what you get paid? Then imagine that sales go down or your boss decides to cut prices making his nominal sales fall. You would then suffer income loss.
The republicans know this too. They love to throw out the Laffer curve that "shows" that at tax rates of 100% and 0% the govt collects no revenues. Of course they use this to argue only for perpetually lower and lower taxes. But the only truth that Laffer represented on his napkin was that govts dont really have control over the amount of taxes they take in, the private sector does by generating sales and incomes. So since the govt cant control its "income" there is no way it can match its expenditures to income.
Time to put this idiocy to rest.