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Politics : American Presidential Politics and foreign affairs
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To: Peter Dierks who wrote (20363)6/12/2007 8:19:49 PM
From: TimF  Read Replies (1) of 71588
 
It we adopt a Constitutional Amendment that calls for Congress and the PResident's salaries and retirement benefits to be only paid from budget surpluses and to disallow arrearages it might create a desire to balance the budget

You would probably get more "creative accounting" to offically have surpluses when we really are in deficit. Some of it would be straight out deceptive accounting. Other parts would be things like loan gaurantees replacing direct spending.

You'd also create more pressure for tax increases.

And you would get regulation replacing spending. "Can't spend X for cause Y, (because it would put the budget in deficit and mean that congress and the president can't get paid), well we'll just pass a regulation that says corporations, or states, have to spend X for cause Y.

To the extent that you have times when the politicians don't get paid, you push the leadership of our country even more to being limited to the very wealthy. That's not nearly as much of a concern for me as it is for some others, but its not an issue of absolutely zero concern.

Also you might get some increase in corruption as politicians try to make up the money in other ways.

The negatives might not be as bad, and some positive incentive would still remain, if you pay politicians a bonus when the budget is balanced (or give them a penalty when its not, but not down to zero). But still if the incentive is large enough to really have a major effect on the politicians, its large enough to get some of the perverse effects as well.

Also deficit spending isn't always a bad idea (although it can be argued that our nearly perpetual deficits are)
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