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Politics : American Presidential Politics and foreign affairs -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: DuckTapeSunroof who wrote (42055)	3/12/2010 2:34:06 PM
From: TimF	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 71588

All the more reason to buckle down and try EVEN HARDER Probably not if your goal is an amendment with no loopholes. Its just to unrealistic to put a lot of effort in to. (Oh the claim might be that there is no loopholes, but there will be exceptions, and those exceptions will be declared to not be loopholes). At the very least your going to get an exception for declared war. Possibly for undeclared war, or just "national emergency". If you get the former any time there is any conflict (including the "war on terror") it would be used as an excuse. If you get the later, we will probably continually be in a declared national emergency. Or there might be an exception for recessions, or severe recessions or something else. If there was no exceptions at all, I'd probably oppose it since as often as deficit spending is a bad idea, and certainly an idea taken too far, some deficit spending is perhaps important. Perhaps if you could have exceptions, but try to limit them, and than at the same time (except perhaps with the exception for declared war), you put in place other limits (like a limit to how large the deficits can be as a percentage of GDP, making it much lower than our current deficits, and/or a limit to the duration and frequency of deficits. Well I suppose an alternative for the exceptions (except for the declared war case which I really think should be a flat out exception with no constitutional limits, other than the requirements for war to be declared in the first place). You could have a "rainy day fund" to spend during severe recessions, or extreme national emergencies (and by extreme I mean extreme, Katrina wouldn't cut it). But I expect politicians to effectively raid such funds so I'm not sure they will do much good. And where would such funds be placed? If they get invested in US treasuries, than they are like the Social Security "trust fund", no fund at all, they would just get spent. If they get invested in private stocks and bonds, than people will complain about the risks (with some justification, when you need the funds the most they will be down, perhaps severely from their heights), and also you will probably increase government meddling by their choices of how to invest. If you invest in other countries sovereign debt, people will complain that we are subsidizing the other countries (and what if the other countries default). In any case if I wanted to make the effort (or if I was someone with political capital, if I wanted to expend it) on swinging for the fences on such an unlikely result, I'd go for a limit on spending or spending increases rather than a balanced budget amendment. (But such a limit would have many of the difficulties both in terms of achieving it, and in terms of how it would work in practice, that a balanced budget amendment would have).