House rejects Balanced Budget Amendment, 261-165
No surprise here. BBA just got voted down in the House, falling short of two-thirds’ majority needed.
GOP Rep. Paul Ryan and three other Republicans voted no because the gesture BBA wasn’t tough enough : “I’m concerned that this version will lead to a much bigger government fueled by more taxes.”
A refresher course on the proposal’s flaws from Mario Loyola (h/t Whitney Pitcher):
Basically, all the House resolution would do is require a bare supermajority (three fifths) of Congress to override the prohibition on deficit spending. There is no limitation on taxation or total spending, so the amendment could be enforced by a catastrophic across-the-board tax increase. Instead of spending at 25 percent of GDP, taxing at 15 percent of GDP, and borrowing the rest (as the Obama budgets have done), we could find ourselves both taxing and spending at 25 percent of GDP. Without a strict limitation on taxation and spending, a balanced-budget amendment by itself could do more harm than good. As Sen. John Cornyn (R., Tex.) noted yesterday, “Let’s all remember that the disease in Washington is out-of-control spending, and budget deficits and the debt are really symptoms of that disease.”
…In today’s political climate, a balanced-budget amendment with strict spending limits may have dim prospects of getting the required two-thirds vote in each chamber of Congress and the required 38 states. But at some point, Americans are going to get really tired of high unemployment, anemic growth, and general malaise, and they’re going to stop believing the empty promises of those who say we need even more government to solve a problem that is clearly the fault of too much government. What made America great over two centuries was a combination of economic freedom, limited government, and self-reliance. We can only hope that those ideals will once again command the adherence of a great majority of us. At that point, ratification of a strong constitutional limit on taxing, spending, and borrowing will have a much greater chance of ratification than it does today.
Rebuilding that consensus will take time — all the more reason to start now.
It will also take more Tea Party-backed candidates winning office to make this rhetoric a reality.
More on the vote here.
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Now bite your lower lip and say: I feel your pain”.
Not a surprise to me. Those in dc want to spend and spend as much as their little nasty hearts wants without being told they can’t! Oh well another nail in the US coffin!
L
Who wrote this piece of crap bill, Princess Pelosi??? “TAX, TAX, And TAX”
That’s the ONLY song the Jackass Party knows.
A BBA with no spending limits is nothing more than a license to steal.
I’m glad this one went down. I hear the Senate version is much better (but I don’t think good enough).
Why can’t they just take a look at the many State Balanced Budget Amendments and copy them?
Maybe if they pulled their heads out of their arses, they could write a decent balanced budget bill! Where did we get these morons anyway? I have an idea. Until they can BALANCE a budget, DON’T GIVE THEM ANY MONEY!! Starve the beast.
I am still looking for the phrase in the Constitution – “Congress shall make no law that it hasn’t found at least 10 loopholes to circumvent each law.”
Could it be they don’t want a balanced budget?
I actually like Perry’s new stance on term limits and cutting their salaries. Politicians should not be able to become zillionaires when they go to Washington.
Too bad you won’t hear that on the front page of a newspaper or at the top of the news hour.
True, but the people keep electing them content with table scraps to what they get in the form of farm subsidies, welfare checks and government grants.
They know it and that’s they think they can be dumb with finanical matters and get away with it.
A lot of times, they do.
even if it passed, the bastards would just come to a stalemate every session and vote for a continuing resolution.
We just need a set of GOP leaders that are not invertebrates.
Heh. Ya think? Bringing it up now is nothing but show. Even if it got through the House – probability of getting 2/3 in the Senate? Flying pigs and snowballs in h*LL. This is pretense w/o substance.
Same nonsense. The idea of Congress voting to limit their own terms and salary? Loony tunes.
I think any congressional raises or benefits should be on the ballot every general election for us to vote yay/nay. These cretin are accountable to no one and get re-elected based on how much pork they can bring home.
Pol-i-tics: Noun
From the word “poly” meaning many, and “ticks” – blood sucking parasites.
A balanced budget amendment for THIS Congress that is negotiating a deal to reduce the rate of acceleration of government spending and debt while labeling it “cost and debt reduction” would amount to a free pass to raise taxes. The current government as well as all of the presidential candidates will do nothing to shrink government.
TigerLady,
In the 90′s, if you worked for Microsoft, Gates made no secret “he only wanted the best 10 years out of your life”.
For those electing to stay on past that, it was more like “cliff vesting”. Pretty steep double or nothing bet! Your stock options were structured entirely different than your first ten years. Most left. Millionaires, but they left.
Perhaps that’s what is needed here? The longer pols stick around, the fewer the bennies until the horizon tapers off to nothing.
You can’t spend more than what your revenue is. Politicians have a difficult time defining what “is” means.
And this piece of crap not passing will allow Dem’s to go out and say that there is no support for a BBA. They will point out that even Paul Ryan didn’t support it (of course not the reasons he did not support it) and the MSM will gleefully report it. Thanks RINO’s for crafting such a crappy piece of legislation and giving the Dem’s their latest talking point. The first step to stopping Obama is to ensure that RINO’s are primaried by real Conservatives.
Our first revolution was about taxes…..
actually i am not for a balanced budget amendment, unless!! it is tied to a maximum size of government, tied to the gdp. because we could still have deficits with a 100% tax rate. but if we cap government to say 3%, which is where it was for the time it started til 1920, then require a balanced budget on the limited size. i am not a ron paul fan, but he is right on this issue, not many others.
Truesoldier,
+1
The encouraging news, Dims now realize their chokehold on the MSM and by extension, unenlightened masses is slipping away.
They’re staring down the barrel of the law of diminishing returns. If they can hold out to 2012, there’s a chance the facade can continue. It’s a dangerous game they’re playing.
It won’t be a simple matter of just being defeated. Having to leave office. There’ll be repercussions. Ones they don’t even want to think about.
How will it possible for a Chuckie, Dodd, Frank, Sheriff Joe to somehow peacefully co-exist in a score settling America w/ major pickups in congress and their loss of the WH? I ain’t seeing it.
Here’s what I don’t understand: even if you have a “good” BBA, how do you define debt? For example, every time government contracts with a supplier for goods, a debt is created to that supplier. You cut off their ability to borrow money through one means, they’ll use another.
As noted above, it’s actually good that this one failed. No mandated spending cuts, no spending limit, no restriction on tax increases. Now lets get started on creating a GOOD balanced budget amendment.
Levin is ripping the Rs a new one over this BBA. Except for the 4 that voted NO.
If there was no limitation of taxes and spending, I’m glad it didn’t pass. Such an amendment would only be used to raise spending AND taxes.
Could the BBA allow courts to order the increase of taxes?
The problem with the BBA type amendments is they don’t take into account the law of unintended consequences.
For example, back in the 70s, CA voters passed a tax reform package that included the rule that budgets require 2/3 majority to pass. In theory, this was intended to make it harder to pass larger and larger budgets and taxes. The result in CA over the last couple decades has been the exact opposite. Huge spending problems and high taxes has been the result because Democrats have figured out how to leverage voters to vote against fiscal conservatism and that stingy Republicans are the source of all the world’s problems…
If the GOP were serious about getting a handle on the Budget and many other aspects of our runaway Federal Government, they should just pass a law that restates the Preamble’s premier role in the Constitution.
Most of our current woes are directly related to ignoring the Preamble’s basic principles of “promoting the general welfare” in favor of promoting special interests and providing the general welfare, enslaving future generations to pay for today’s expenditures instead of “preserving liberty for our posterity”, regulating everything under the sun rather than “preserving liberty to ourselves”. In other words, there already is wording in the Constitution about not dumping future generations with debt, amongst other important flaws in Federal activity.
FDR pretty much led the way to promote the notion that the Preamble was irrelevant fluff because the Dems knew the New Deal was in direct conflict with many of the basic principles of the Preamble. So best to just promote the idea of “Nothing to see in the Preamble, just move along…”
Debt enslaves the individual.
Government debt enslaves the nation.
What’s a 13th amendment?
I honestly don’t see how. If all it says is that expenditures shall not exceed revenues, then expenditures shall not exceed revenues. It’s a limit on expenditures, not a command for revenue.
So in other words, even your most fiscally conservative politicians voted exactly like Democrats, with the fake reason of “it wasn’t conservative enough”, but you all will blame Democrats, but not Republicans, even though they voted exactly the same. Nice.
You might want to read the bill. Any GOP member who voted for it is either a RINO or brain dead.
You didn’t address the issue. For you, it’s ok for a Republican to vote EXACTLY like a Democrat on a bill, as long as they can give you a form speech about how it wasn’t conservative enough, which you swallow without question, even though the bill is more conservative than anything Democrats would offer, and is at least a start.
thought the House was a R majority-
don’t tell me there is NO DIFFERENCE between the two ‘Parties’…
GEEEEEEEEZ -who would have thought SARC-
Carol-CS
Correct once again, Flyoverman. The “leadership” thinks we’re brain dead and will go for any boob bait they thow our way. None of them are serious about really cutting spending, including my Congressman, Eric Can’tor/won’t.
Romney/Obama 2012!!
Smoke and mirrors. Politicians are all full of crap. This country is so FUBAR, it isn’t funny.
Since we have never sat in a room, skyped, or taled on the, the only basis for your statement is a blind assumption.
I do not care what any non-conservative, Democrat or GOP, might offer. It did not meet the conservative standard in my opinion. I do not take positions relative to other positions.
Mark Levin discussed the flaws in this legislation from a condervative view point well over six weeks ago. I agree with Levin’s position.
As a I wrote in an earlier post in this thread the GOP leaders are invertebrates. They are unprincipled and thus spineless.
Yeah, Baby !!!
No, I’d bet it was “$30.00 in cuts is approximately the same as $300 billion… and it is the best we can do…” Speaker Boner.
★———————————————★
Sorry, this is why Conservatism and the Constitution of The United States is finished ― or if we’re saved, it will be inspite of ourselves… we’ll have been drug kicking and screaming back from the abiss.
It really isn’t the Jackass party. It is the leadership of both parties, and a large part of the upper echelons, which are Progressives.
They have the bit in their teeth and are running over the cliff ― they won’t be reined in!
I keep hearing “take back the party from the elites, like Reagan did, third party won’t work!” or some variation of that.
Last time, they were takes unawares. Both parties have taken steps to see that it can’t happen again… from packing state apparatus with Progie-bootlicks to campaign “reform” to operatives who’s job is “heading off” the self-sufficiency that comes from choosing the right instead of the party to “win”… they’re gaming the system. Controlling who has access to the Rulebook. They control all the mechanisms that determine who will advance to control party policy!
Do you think, after all the stink made by the rank & file, that open primaries are an accident?
Do you really believe that moving the primaries up so Palin wouldn’t have time to raise money to run, or get on some of the important ballots was coincidence?
This is how it is done, how you herd people ― you manipulate rules and circumstances to close off threats!
You create faux “campaign finance reform” to starve a new Reagan… if current campaign laws were in place then, he wouldn’t have had the cash to go around the party machine until it became impossible to ignore him!
And the worst part is they’ve convinced you that you need them!
So, go ahead, vote L.O.T.E. ― using that strategy, combined with the Almighty Electability, you’ve put us in the position where to even slow us going over the cliff by 1% we have no choice!
You know, they (Ds & Rs) kept saying Reagan was unelectable…
yeah. Something, perhaps while in the unemployment line, go through the votes cast by our “Great Electable Hope”s, and don’t just count how often they voted party. Or “stood firm” as tapioca pudding against the withering frowns of Donkeys. No, assign a relative value based on expansion of size or power or diminuation of personal liberty. What you’ll find then, when you graph that info is there was no discernible difference between their pattern and the other Progressives!
In otherwords, you seemed via smoke & mirrors, to gain something ― but in concrete value, you made no gains. Actually, you’ve lost ground – you’ve habituated the voters into equating Conservatism with watery Progressivism. Congrats!
“A third party vote is the same as electing a Progressive!” ― actually, excluding the few time we were able to override the Leadership’s will, and cram an outsider down their throats, it looks like voting for either D’s OR R’s is voting for a Progressive Big Government Statist. Can you say Romney, Newt, (and somewhat) Perry, and the rest? Of the group, you can tell those who aren’t closet statists: just look at who the leadership, the Demon-craps, and the LSM call “unelectable” or incompetent, or any other term of derision… that’s the person to vote for! That’s the person who is the least of many evils!
Just so you understand when I wrote:
We just need a set of GOP leaders that are not invertebrates.
What I was trying to imply was the GOP needs principled conservatives as their leaders. I have said in the past Marco Rubio should be the Senate leader and Michelle Bachman Speaker of the House if she is not our Presidential nominee.
There would be no need for a BBA if congress lived up to it’s oath of office. There are no provisions in the Constitution for all this spending. Why worry about a BBA when these guys cannot even pass an annual budget.The reason they will not pass a annual budget is that it would hamper their unconstitutional spending. The career politicians are destroying the country and the useful idiots keep right on re-electing them. That is the major problem we face.
The BBA is a rotten idea to start with. This version was even worse.
Just elect a Congress that isn’t self-serving scum. Problem solved.
Does anyone here seriously believe there would be any problem with overspending if the Senate was made up of 100 Jim DeMints, Marco Rubios and Rand Pauls?
Or even if we just had 51 of them in the Senate?
Elect responsible people who actually care about the country. If we keep electing crooks, no amount of rearranging the furniture will fix the problem.
Those jackass Democrats have already stolen all the money they can use so now they’re taking ours for their parasitic constituents.
***
The vote makes clear that our “representatives!” aren’t very interested in fiscal sanity–only in doing their (hit) jobs.
***
To paraphrase the bandido in The Treasure of the Sierra Madre” movie, “We don’t need no steeenking balanced budgets!”
***
Thanks, corruptocrats, corruptocans, and RINO’s. You’re on my Nov. 2012 Bogart style cleanout list. We’ll be taking the trash out soon. Less than a year to go–the range is green–and the countdown to your leaving office has started. What’s that ticking noise?
***
John Bibb
***
I’m sure that was a rhetorically question coming from one as intelligent as yourself. Of course the reason is it’s the socialist way. On that note what does that say about our Repukian Leadership in the House, Boehner, Cantor and McCarthy.
Looks like we need to replace the biggest part of the new crop of Tea Party elected Rep.s already…didn’t make it a year without caving to the fumes of the D.C. cesspool.
Conservatives have realized too late that the GOP is every bit as corrupt as the Demonrats. The TEA party will become a real party after the fiasco of another nomination of another candidate that require them to hold their noses while voting, with the same results as 2008. The GOP will go the way of the Whigs, but sadly, Obama will have “Fundamentally Transformed” the country by then.
GOP-RIP
Romney/Obama 2012!!
Because they don’t want the constraint of balancing the budget. Too rigid for their chronic overspending habits.
Not even remotely close. It’s not so much that you overestimate the corruption of the GOP as that you grossly underestimate the corruption of the Democrats. They are not just wrong. They don’t just have a ‘different opinion.’
They are evil. They openly embrace evil dogma (moral relativism), and that poisons everything they do.
They really are “Demonrats.”
If Obama has successfully transformed the country, why would the GOP go away?
Seriously. If Obama succeeds in his attempt to transform America into a eurosclerotic nanny state, the Tea Party will have no place at the table.
That is the whole point of it.
Romney/Obama 2012, maybe that should be Obama/Romney 2012, rumors have it Biden is out of his VP position in 2012, Romney’s a good fit.
There will be a genuine opposition party instead of the illusion we have today.
The history of the nationalization of medical care tells us just the opposite.
Once nationalization gets its tentacles wrapped around inside the guts of a society (as it will have done to us by 2017, if Obama wins reelection), political campaigns become all about which side can manage the nanny state better.
Talk about small government dies out completely. The debate is over. The collectivists won.