Jophiel wrote:
What's your take on the debt deal (assuming it manages to pass the House)?
Honestly haven't looked at the specifics today. The last I'd heard Reid was still struggling to pass anything in the Senate. Did he get something passed since yesterday afternoon? I heard something about some compromise being worked on today, but nothing concrete in terms of details.
Um... So I guess the answer is: no idea. As a broad position, any deal which commits to cutting at least as much money as the debt ceiling is raised and to not raising tax rates would be acceptable. I'd prefer one which committed to cutting more like $4-5T over ten years and included some kind of promise of no tax rate changes for 2-3 years since that is what I think would be needed to regain confidence in our economy and recover our job market. Not sure that'll happen though. I'm willing to accept half a loaf as long as the cost of that half isn't having to give another half of a loaf in the form of tax increases. That's not a deal at all IMO.
As far as the whole "balanced budget amendment" thing goes, I think it's a bad idea. I'm assuming it's really just used as a bargaining chip at this point because it's completely unrealistic to expect such a thing to happen in the medium term, much less quickly enough to be part of this process going on right now. I've posted in the past that I think such an amendment would be a bad idea anyway given the current economic situation. It's dangerous simply because you have no idea how the amendment would be applied down the road. Quite often the easiest way to balance a budget is to raise taxes. IMO you should never load a gun if you're not sure where it's going to be pointed in the future, and a balanced budget amendment is a huge loaded gun.
Balancing the budget isn't the important issue from a fiscal conservative point of view anyway. I've always argued that this is pure strawman and/or red herring. The real issue is limiting spending as a percentage of GDP. Simply requiring a balanced budget just means that revenue must equal spending. It tells us nothing about how large those things are, nor does it limit either in any way. I'd be much more interested in a "small government amendment" which would restrict spending. That's the actual problem.