Balanced Budget Amendment- Thursday

Virginia Foxx wants to "balance" the budget. Is Sherrod Brown still with her?

Tomorrow the House plans to vote on the so-called Balanced Budget Amendment. This is, after all, what the 1% pays their conservative political operatives all that money to push. And it's the apex of the Republican policy agenda. Simply put, if you have to keep the budget balanced and the Republicans are pledged to keeping taxes low to nonexistent for the wealthy, the opportunities for economic and social equality the 1% opposes so fanatically will cease to be any kind of a "threat." That America will fade into oblivion as a great power is neither here nor there... let the future worry about the future. It's designed to double the unemployment rate and put 15 million Americans out of work

So... can they pass it? Another way to ask that-- are there enough conservative Democrats willing to sell out working families so that Boehner and Cantor can deliver of their promises to the Koch brothers, China and other GOP financiers who are eager to destroy America as a vibrant, functioning democracy? Maybe. The Blue Dog caucus officially endorsed it yesterday and far right-wing "Democrat" Jim Matheson (UT), metaphorically curled up at John Boehner's feet said (not metaphorically), “If any Blue Dog does not vote for it, I’d have to question how much they’re a Blue Dog."

The Blue Dogs, of course, are as eager as the Republicans to wreck the country with this hideous legislation. Most of them were defeated in 2010 but most of the dreck that's left will join Boehner and Cantor to vote yes. Yesterday one of the amendment's biggest boosters, Bob Goodlatte (R-VA), said Republicans almost have enough votes to pass it, but are not quite at the 290-vote mark needed for passage. (A constitutional amendment takes two-thirds of the House.) If it passes the House, it goes to the Senate, where there are also probably enough conservative servants of the 1%-- slime like Mary Landrieu, Ben Nelson, Mark Pryor (whose father voted against it in 1995), Joe Manchin-- to pass it. Or are there? Basically the same amendment passed the House in 1995-- and the country was then saved by one vote in the Senate-- a Republican vote!

In 1995, shortly after he became chairman of Senate Appropriations Committee once more, [Oregon's Mark] Hatfield found himself at odds with his colleagues. The House had just passed the balanced budget amendment and had sent it to the Senate. Two weeks before the vote went down, Hatfield announced he wouldn’t vote for the amendment. Then-Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole (R-Kan.) wasn’t worried, said Keith Kennedy, a former Hatfield staffer who worked for the Senator for 24 years. Dole figured he had enough votes on the Democratic side for it.

But as the vote drew closer, it soon became clear there wouldn’t be enough support from the Democrats. Hatfield was pressured to change his mind.

In the end, he was the only Republican and the deciding vote against the amendment. Had he voted for it, the amendment would have then gone to the states for passage.

“It was one of the most courageous votes I’ve ever seen,” Senate Historian Don Ritchie said. “He knew he was sacrificing his chairmanship [of the Senate Appropriations Committee] and his position as Senator. He couldn’t bring himself to vote for it.”

Don't expect Olympia Snowe to save the day; she voted for it in 1995. Democrats voting YES in the '95 Senate included Tom Harkin, Herb Kohl and... Joe Biden. Max Baucus voted NO.

Democratic House Members who voted YES in 1995 included Blue Dogs like Blanche Lincoln (AR), Collin Peterson (MN) and Jane Harman (CA) and ConservaDems like Jerry Costello (IL), now Senator Tim Johnson (SD), Rob Andrews (NJ), Harold Ford, Jr. (TN), and... Steny Hoyer (MD). Sherrod Brown (OH), Jim Clyburn (SC), Jim Moran (VA) and Pete DeFazio (OR) also voted YES. Needless to say... full report tomorrow after the vote.