Democratic Leader Pelosi's statement in opposition to Balanced Budget Amendment
This afternoon the House will vote on another pointless, partisan, finger-pointing bill, but at least this one doesn't directly attack women, so there's that. Today it's the Balanced Budget Amendment, just about the worst idea for the economy as a whole they could come up with.
Really.
A Balanced Budget Amendment would devastate the economy and make responses to future crises effectively impossible. Bruce Bartlett, a veteran of the Reagan and Bush administrations, explained this week that this is a "dreadful" idea and the Republican proposal that will get a vote today "is, frankly, nuts." We're talking about a proposal with no redeeming qualities. [...]
Instead of drafting a plan to balance the budget, BBA proponents want a constitutional gimmick that will mandate a policy goal they can’t figure out how to accomplish on their own. That’s not responsible policymaking; that’s the opposite.
And in case this isn’t already obvious, even the point of this endeavor is misguided. Sometimes, running deficits is the smart, responsible thing to do, and to assume that the budget should always be balanced is fundamentally misguided. It’s not even about left vs. right, since conservative priorities would be crushed, too. The entire Reagan agenda would have been unconstitutional in the 1980s, and Paul Ryan’s budget plan couldn’t even be considered if a BBA were ratified.
It's a bad enough idea that even one Republican, House Rules committee chair David Dreier, is opposed to it, saying "I've always been troubled by some who argue that the level of your commitment to a public policy issue is based only on your willingness to amend the Constitution to implement it," Dreier said. "Well, I think that's silly. I think that's ridiculous."
But it's a lot easier to tell less-than-well-informed constituents that you voted for it than to attempt to educate them about the realities of what a disaster this would be. So of course, the Blue Dogs are all for it, since gimmicks are easier than governing.