In order to get agreement on budget caps to allow a spending bill to pass and avoid a government shutdown, Speaker Paul Ryan promised the Freedom Caucus they could have a meaningless vote to show the folks back home that the deficit mattered to them. That's after they passed a nearly $2 trillion tax cut for corporations and the wealthy. That meaningless vote will happen Thursday, when they will bring the amendment up under a suspension of the rules.
Wait, you say—don't they use suspension votes for things that aren't policy, like naming post offices and declaring National Donut Day? Yes. They also have a habit of doing it for this and in fact did it in 2011, when the late and very great Rep. Louise Slaughter of New York blasted them for it: "To give a constitutional amendment the same consideration as renaming a post office is embarrassing for us and a disgrace to the dignity and tradition of the House," she said.
The Democratic Whip's office lambastes Republicans this time around for a "political stunt that is meant for Republicans to appear to care about fiscal responsibility."
Instead, it is an extreme and dangerous proposal that would potentially force cuts to Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid by requiring a three-fifths vote to run a deficit, regardless of recessions or major disasters. […]
H.J.Res. 2 is purely ideological. The United States of America has never written specific fiscal policy preferences into the Constitution, which is what this resolution seeks to do.
It's entirely a stunt, and a cynical one at that. It's so ridiculous that even blue dog Democrats (what's left of them) are dismissing it as "all for show," and so transparently so that they don't even need to worry about Republicans weaponizing it. When even the blue dogs aren't afraid of opposing a balanced budget amendment, you know it's bullshit.