I support a Balanced Budget Amendment

- as long as it includes a provision to return the United States to the 1962 Marginal Tax Rates (about the last time the economy expanded and the Middle Class made significant gains in income...oh, and employment was strong as well).

- as long as it ends tax subsidies to oil companies, agri-business, lear jet purchasers and interest deductions for 2ND and 3RD homes.

- as long as it taxes at 90% any corporate profit that is not immediately reinvested in the company or used to hire more personnel.

- as long as it eliminates the deduction for CEO, CFO, Chairman or any other of the top paid management at any company.

- as long as it increases the amount of income that is taxed for Social Security and Medicaire.

- as long as we end the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and Lybia.

- as long as we reduce the number of carrier battle groups from 11 to 8, and invest half of that money in expanding diplomatic positions in the State Department.

- as long as we repeal "No Child Left Behind" and take the money spent on standardized test and use it to fund raises, continuing education and supplies for teachers...and require a tax to be levied on every parent who is not a member of the PTA.

- as long as we cut the CIA budget and use that money to invest in a "robust" Securities and Exchange Commission.

So, if you include the above provisions, I'll be the first to invest my shoe-leather to get it passed.

BUT...we know that is not what they are talking about when the "wingnuts" screech about a "balanced budget amendment".

A balanced budget is insane, no matter how many frilly, nice looking ribbons you add to it.

The whole point about having debt is the multiplier effect that such debt has on your own economy. PLus, it ties the debt carrying nations to yours, making it highly unlikely that war breaks out between them.

Lastly, having debt between nations acts as a huge stabilizing force for all currencies, including our own.

No matter how you slice it, proposing a balanced budget is insane and inane. Don't drink the fucking neocon kool-aid, please.

The point I am trying to make is that the whole BBA "bull-puckey", is just that...BULL-PUCKEY

No where in this farcical "tea-bagger" backed screed, is there any provision for RAISING REVENUE, or cutting defense...and there never will be.

So my..."ahem"...support, is a little "tongue in cheek".

Besides, if the Democrats were smart, they would say; "we don't need a balanced budget amendment, we just need to go back to the tax policies of President Clinton".

I can't believe the DNC isn't writing "effing" ads right now...they practically write themselves.

Voiceover: The Republicans and President Bush ran up massive debt and turned a $200 Billion Surplus into a $11 Trillion Debt. (then I would list all the shit they put on the credit card, and highlight that when Bush left office we were losing 800,000 jobs a month).

Then another voiceover: "we don't need a balanced budget amendment that would place all the sacrifice on hard working Middle Class Americans to solve our fiscal problems. The solution to our fiscal problems is simple....STOP fucking ELECTING FUCKING REPUBLICANS!!!

There you go DNC, now run with it....err, but they may have to clean it up some.

They'll just find ways around it while we try to follow it correctly. That's all they did with the wars, they just didn't include them in the budget when it wasn't convenient for them. Now that it is, those are all President Obama's debt.

I'm in on that plan, cause it would balance it in a heartbeat. k&r

Moreover, in effect it prevents investment in the future. When companies borrow to develop themselves for the future, the debt is offset by newly-acquired assets. When governments borrow to develop the future, those assets are not generally counted to offset the debt. The road sits there, is used in productive manners; but its cost is just debt (unless it's a toll road). And when an existential threat arises (think of WWII), but balancing must be forgotten -- for that matter, when the threat is a great depression (or "recession"), that is likewise true.

A balanced budget is a good idea, and the way to get there is much as you have proscribed.

Then, with a balanced budget, were there to be any debt incurred, it would be a single item that a president could veto. And along with that, the item would have to be something that had an explanation of why the debt needed to occur and how and when it would be retired.

As for this idea that debt is so great, we could pacify those ideas with leaving the current debt to our children and let them figure it out, which they will, or die trying.

Comes straight from Grover Fucking Nordquist.

Read Al Hamilton, who makes the argument for national debt extremely clear and convincing.

Why the hell do you think it was included in our constitution?

Did they ever imagine the debt would be so large? Nah.

A little bit of managed debt is ok. But the debt we have run up is out of control. My kids will be paying it off their whole lives. You cool with that?

No wonder the tea baggers are winning.

All discretionary spending except Defense, Social Security,and Medicare,....COMBINED...I'm not..

You's so smart, I'll just ask you first before I ever post again.

Notice you are not up for a discussion, just cussing.

you would go bankrupt. And the OP's main point was in how to reduce it. Through tax hikes to the wealthy and corps and all the other things he mentions. Not that we should not raise the debt ceiling at this time. Of course we should that is not the point. You should read more carefully,

government is an artificial creation which was designed to do the most good for the great majority of its citizens. Alexander Hamilton understood how debt increases the ability of a government to underwrite the costs of highway construction, airports, and far more. Only fucking teabaggers and Nordquist clones believe that a balanced budget does any good whatsoever.

What a balanced budget amendment will do is stifle all scientific research, all infrastructure investment, and make this country a third world memory of what was a promising idea.

Damn, I cannot believe that DUers are swallowing this neocon Grovian bullshit whole.

The greatest deficits were run up under republican administrations.

So YOU are the one who is trying to make republicans look good with this borrow and spend ideology.

YOU are the one who is on the wrong side.

And reagan tea, with this borrow and spend idea.

Are you that blind you can't see the direct connection?

You are the one saying reagan and bush budgets are the way to go.

The only really good economic times in the last 30 years were during the Clinton administration. With near balanced budgets and real deficit reductions.

But here you are wanting republican budgets.

Stop drinking their tea. You're drunk from it.

That now that the GOP has run up this debt they have the hypocrisy to demand this.

And.........the OP's requests for spending would not ever be agreed upon by the GOP.

It is sarcasm as far as I can see.

They will cut off recoveries to stop spending. They will offset your list.

I know some parents that should never, ever, be allowed to set foot in a PTA meeting :-)

Re balanced budget amendment? Naw. Just require congress to repay any incurred debt
within 5 years or consider it theft from the next generation.

Let's see...30-year Treasuries and seven-year Savings Bonds are both government debt that doesn't get repaid in five years.