Last Updated: 6/6/96
Fiscal irresponsibility, enshrined in our Constitution.
To hear the Dole/Gingrich revolutionaries describe the Balanced Budget Amendment is to hear a bold and obvious lie proclaimed so glibly and often as to put Orwell and Goebbels to shame.
The claim that passing a Balanced Budget Amendment is an act of fiscal responsibility is obviously untrue, since it puts off any actual tough decisions about the budget until some future crisis is triggered, while allowing politicians to claim they are doing something about the budget deficit. When a budget crisis is triggered, either the law will be skirted somehow, or a series of automatic cuts would go into place, allowing legislators to cut spending without offending their patrons by intentionally cutting their pork. Unfortunately these cuts would be severe, causing further damage to our social infrasturcture, and achieving in a backdoor way the elimination of government services which Republicans have been unable to attain when the voters have a say.
Indeed, much of the noise about the budget emergency is being generated only as a way of slashing government services. It is never mentioned by conservatives when discussing tax cuts, unless they are reviving thier voodoo economics which allowed them to claim that the economic growth from cutting taxes on the wealthy would offset the tax revenue lost. This has been tragically disproved, to the extent that even conservative economists disavow it. The real effects might be seen better by looking at real estate speculation fueled by a sudden slash of taxes on capital gains, and the boom/bust cycles which forced long-time fixed-income homeowners out and fed the newly de-regulated S&Ls more than enough rope to hang us all. But that's another story...
Have you ever heard a Balanced Budget Amendment cheerleader say something like "American families have to live with a balanced budget, why shouldn't the federal government?"
Have you wondered if he ever met a family that had things like a mortgage, car payments, college loans even?
Only the very wealthy and the very poor live without debt in this country.