S&P director: Balanced Budget Amendment would 'diminish the flexibility of the government'

Standard & Poor's, or in this case, its managing director, John Chambers, continues to make news:

House and Senate Republicans have rallied around the notion of a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution as a solution to the country’s dire fiscal straits. But over the weekend, the head of Standard & Poor’s sovereign ratings division dismissed the idea, arguing that it would be more harmful than helpful to the country’s creditworthiness.

“In general, we think that fiscal rules like these just diminish the flexibility of the government to respond” to crises, S&P managing director John Chambers told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer on Saturday when asked whether it’s important that Congress send a balanced budget amendment to the states in order to restore the country’s AAA credit rating.

Chambers made the remarks one day after S&P downgraded the U.S. credit rating from AAA to AA+ for the first time in the country’s history.

Eventually, you would think the hard-right Republicans would get the message that what they're proposing for the economy is not at all what the economy needs, or what the markets actually want. There once was a time when the GOP was reliably beholden to corporate America, but even that bond has been breaking of late, as the "Tea Party" branch obsesses over slashing government to the exclusion of all else (including common sense.)