The Spendthrift GOP’s Very Unfunny Balanced Budget Amendment Joke

The following is my newest piece on The Hill:

The House of Representatives just passed a $1.3 trillion spending bill which none of them read. In it, the majority party violated virtually every campaign promise they made to get elected. The things they promised to cut were fully funded, and the things they promised to fund did not get done. The level of corruption and derogation of duty is staggering. This is the reality. And apparently, this is the setup for a really good joke too.

Soon, the very same House of Representatives is set to take up a proposal to call for a Balanced Budget Amendment to the Constitution, allegedly to impose some fiscal sanity upon themselves. Because they can’t stop spending, apparently we should trust them to impose spending restraint upon themselves by passing a Balanced Budget Amendment.

Witness, in full color, the irony that is lost on Washington, D.C. The same people who just mortgaged our future with a budget bill that looks more like it was proposed by a big government, Democratic Congress than a government with all branches controlled by Republicans, are now going to debate, and possibly pass, a recommendation that the states impose a balanced budget upon themselves. How about they just stop spending the money instead?

We all know the Senate will not pass this amendment, even if the House actually completes the joke and does so. So it’s an exercise grounded in an attempt to make voters forget that these are the same irresponsible congressmen who had no compunction about mortgaging our future. And, to make matters worse, even if they could pass such a thing out of the Congress, a Balanced Budget Amendment alone is very, very dangerous. It can have no possible effect but to crush the states even further under the burden of federal irresponsibility.

Please enjoy the rest of this piece on The Hill:

Image Credit: DonkeyHotey on Flickr