Today's 'Balanced Budget Amendment' Is a Month Late and $1 Trillion Short

[EasyAce]

Thursday’s vote is an empty gesture. Worse, it’s a hypocritical one.
By Eric Boehm
http://reason.com/blog/2018/04/12/todays-balanced-budget-amendment-is-a-mo

Thursday's planned vote in the House of Representatives on a so-called balanced budget amendment perfectly sums up the current era of Congress under Republican control. Coming the day after Speaker of the House Paul Ryan (R-Wisc.) announced his decision to retire, the metaphor is even more apt.

Republicans reclaimed the House in 2010 with promises to oppose the runaway spending of the Obama and Bush eras, with their stimulus and bailouts and expansion of government control over health care. Conservatives elected by the newly founded Tea Party movement railed against trillion-dollar deficits that threatened to bankrupt the country and the GOP got in line, at least rhetorically. The Republican Party platform in 2012 promised "immediate reductions in federal spending" and "long-range fiscal control." Ryan became the dashing young leader of the fiscal hawks, with his charts and graphs predicting economic catastrophe unless drastic action was taken. He had a plan to balance the budget, and he parlayed his commitment to fiscal austerity into the chairmanship of the powerful House Budget Committee, and then a turn as House speaker.

If you knew nothing about what this Republican-run Congress has done for the past 15 months, Thursday's vote on a Balanced Budget Amendment would make perfect sense. It would be the crowning achievement of a conservative government that—having rid themselves of a spendthrift Democratic president—pledged to set the nation on a course toward fiscal sanity; the next step perhaps being a constitutional amendment to spare future lawmakers the temptation of straying from Ryan's carefully calculated path.

Instead, Thursday's vote is an empty gesture. Worse, it's a hypocritical one. Ryan's final term in Congress will be remembered for the passage of a major tax cut, yes; but also a massive $1.3 trillion spending binge that will guarantee trillion-dollar deficits for at least the next 10 years, and probably much longer.

Passing a balanced budget amendment won't change that . . .