The Truth About the Balanced Budget Amendment-- A Guest Post By Carol Shea-Porter (D-NH)

Carol is running a powerful grassroots race against mindless right-wing zombie Frank Guinta. We're trying to help her raise contributions here so after you read the piece beelow, please consider kicking in if you think she touches a chord for you.

There was some good news coming from Washington last month. The totally dysfunctional United States House of Representatives tried to capsize the Constitution and the economy, but they failed. Luckily, there were members, both Democrats and Republicans, who refused to vote for the politically-motivated and deeply flawed balanced budget amendment.
 
If this constitutional amendment were ever ratified, then we would have to drastically cut spending and raise taxes to balance a budget. Since our New Hampshire Congressmen and their Republican tea-party-controlled Congress are currently trying to cut taxes by $200 billion a year for corporations and our richest citizens, you can be sure that you and I would have to bear the burden. 
 
Bruce Bartlett, the Republican deputy assistant secretary for economic policy at the Treasury Department under the George H.W. Bush administration, who previously served on Congressman Ron Paul’s staff and as senior policy analyst under President Reagan, wrote a column called, “The Balanced Budget Amendment Delusion,” and he said the Republican proposal “is, frankly, nuts.” Five Nobel laureates, along with other leading economists, urged President Obama and the Congress to stop the bill, saying it was very unsound policy that would hurt the economy. They said that “a balanced budget amendment would mandate perverse actions in the face of recessions.” They point out that a balanced budget amendment would stop the federal government’s ability to borrow for important investments like infrastructure and research and development.
 
Others have helpfully pointed out that while states may be required to balance their budgets, they do borrow for projects, and states do not have to pay for national defense and other unpredictable and expensive programs. If this balanced budget amendment passed, small businesses and the economy would suffer because people would be laid off and there would be less purchasing power. Programs such as Medicare and health care for children, etc., would be severely cut. If our nation experienced a nuclear accident or financially devastating tornado or hurricane, Congress would have to either slash essential programs further, or raise taxes to pay for the disaster, or just be unable or unwilling to help. This fighting over what to fund would create gridlock-- just remember the debt-ceiling vote-- and it would probably push the debate into the courts. 
 
Here’s the saddest part of the story. Republicans knew all this before the vote, but only a few, such as Paul Ryan, had the intellectual honesty to vote no. Republicans got to pretend that they were controlling spending, while the “bad guys”-- the Democrats-- refused to. One of our New Hampshire Members of Congress wrote to his constituents about Congress refusing to stop “spending beyond its means,” ignoring the fact that the majority of the spending and debt was created by a Republican President and Congress handing out $2 trillion in unpaid tax cuts while borrowing for two wars and a prescription drug program that they chose to borrow for rather than pay for at the time.  

According to the AP, the budget has only been balanced six times in the past fifty years. It’s important to point out that four of those times were under President Clinton, a Democratic president. As Republican Congressman David Dreier said when he voted no on this amendment, “I was wrong. Two short years later, we balanced the federal budget. We balanced the federal budget and that went on for several years. What I found… is that we were able to balance the federal budget without touching that inspired document, the U.S. Constitution."

Democratic Congressman Jerry Nadler voted no, because as he said on the floor of Congress, “The fault, dear colleagues, is not in our Constitution. It’s in an irresponsible Republican president and an irresponsible Republican Congress. Many of those same Republican members, who saw nothing wrong with busting the budget, who sat quietly when Vice President Cheney said that deficits don’t matter, now demand this assault on our founding document instead of delivering the votes for sound fiscal policy.” Congress needs to create jobs and work on real policy, and take the politically tough votes to find savings and increase revenue. They shouldn’t be hiding behind a bill that they neither believed in nor thought would pass. 

Balanced Budget Amendment-- A Whole Lotta Nothing

Today, unexpectedly, the House failed to pass the Boehner's and Cantor's gimmicky and highly destructive Balanced Budget Amendment to the Constitution, 261-165. As we saw Wednesday, last time they tried this trick (1995), one Republican with a spine, Senator Mark Hatfield (R-OR), shot it down in the Senate. There are no longer any Republicans like that-- and the Democrats are far worse today than they were in 1995. But 4 Republican extremists, for their own crazy reasons-- Ryan, Amash, Dreier and Gohmert--voted against it. After a menacing warning from Utah reactionary Jim Matheson that “If any Blue Dog does not vote for it, I’d have to question how much they’re a Blue Dog," every Blue Dog did vote for it-- except 7, Joe Baca (CA), Kurt Schrader (OR), Adam Schiff (CA) Mike Michaud (ME), David Scott (GA), Mike Thompson (CA), Loretta Sanchez (CA)-- as did 5 right-wing Democrats who run with that mangy, treacherous crowd.

Blue Dogs and other scummy, cowardly excuses for Democrats who barked along with Boehner today:

Jason Altmire (Blue Dog-PA)
John Barrow (Blue Dog-GA)
Sanford Bishop (Blue Dog-GA)
Dan Boren (Blue Dog-OK)
Leonard Boswell (Blue Dog-IA)
Dennis Cardoza (Blue Dog-CA)
Ben Chandler (Blue Dog-KY)
Jim Cooper (Blue Dog-TN)
Jim Costa (Blue Dog-CA)
Jerry Costello (quasi Blue Dog-IL)
Henry Cuellar (Blue Dog-TX)
Pete DeFazio (D-OR)
Joe Donnelly (Blue Dog-IN)
Kathy Hochul (D-NY)
Tim Holden (Blue Dog-PA)
Jay Inslee (D-WA)
Ron Kind (D-WI)
Larry Kissell (quasi Blue Dog-NC)
Lipinski Junior (quasi Blue Dog-IL)
Dave Loebsack (D-IA)
Jim Matheson (Blue Dog-UT)
Mike McIntyre (Blue Dog-NC)
Collin Peterson (Blue Dog-MN)
Mike Ross (Blue Dog-AR)
Heath Shuler (Blue Dog-NC)

One of the main collaborators with the Republicans was ultra-conservative North Carolina Blue Dog Heath Shuler, a co-chair of a caucus dedicated fully to the agenda of the 1%. Shuler is in for a tough primary battle this cycle at the hands of populist Asheville City Councilman Cecil Bothwell. Earlier today Bothwell had an interesting read on the whole Balanced Budget nonsense. He told us that "One of the principal reasons the 13 colonies quickly organized themselves into a confederacy and then a nation was to borrow money from Europe to fight a war with the English King. Borrowing in the name of and for the benefit of the people is an essential function of national governance. The Balanced Budget Amendment would do irreparable harm to the ability of the United States government to address the needs of the people, particularly in periods of crisis, in a timely and effective manner."

With a Republican Party wedded inexorably to a Grover Norquist pledge to never, under any circumstances, raise taxes on the wealthy-- and a conflicted and disabled Democratic Party unable to muster the courage or conviction to do anything about it-- a Balanced Budget Amendment would have meant the end to all progress, forever, for the United States... and a locking in of a caste system the 1% is so eager to enforce. Bye-bye New Deal, the Republican Party wet dream for the past 75 years.

Suppose, for example, society decides a better goal than the rich getting richer and the rapidly growing poor becoming serfs, would be to reverse the environmental damage that is threatening humanity and, oh, say, eliminating poverty. Sounds like perfectly respectable-- and achievable-- goals, right? Not if a Balanced Budget Amendment ever passes. Locked in would be any possibility of redesigning a toxic economic system that has been allowed to run roughshod over society. Remember this sentence from David Korten: "If government doesn't make and enforce the rules necessary to maintain fair and efficient market allocation, the market's most powerful corporate players make their own rules to suit their financial advantage, and society pays the price." And that, after all, is exactly what was just voted on. And even if the two-thirds rule kept it from passing, a big majority of these idiots voted for it.

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.

Sleazy Steny Hoyer Up To No Good Again

Friday the Republicans will bring up their balanced budget amendment. It's the favoritest thing ever-- a Grover Norquist wet dream. But it takes a two-thirds vote in each chamber to be able to send it on to the states for ratification. We'll look at it more closely tomorrow morning. I'm just bringing it up tonight because I wanted to mention that it wasn't only the Blue Dogs who supported it last time it came up-- in 1995-- but all kinds of corporate whores and servants of the 1%. In fact, in 1995 the considerable Democratic support for this stunningly bad idea came from the absolute worst corporate shill in the Democratic caucus, Steny Hoyer. Hoyer is promising to be better behaved Friday. He sure isn't being well-behaved in the race to win the Democratic-leaning seat in the northern Chicago suburbs currently held by Robert Dold. Although Ilya Sheyman is the frontrunner, Hoyer is throwing his considerable weight behind conservative businessman Brad Schneider.

Sheyman, who was one of the first candidates endorsed by Blue America this cycle, is being backed by Keith Ellison, Raul Grijalva, neighbor Danny Davis and Howard Dean. Ilya is a progressive activist with roots firmly in the 99%. Schneider, like Hoyer, is just some transactional politician looking to make a good deal, advance his own career and feather his nest. In the last 4 election cycles before this one he donated considerable money to Republican Congressman Mark Kirk (who represented the district before Dold). He's exactly the kind of politician the Democrats would be better off without. Which explains why he's so appealing to someone like Steny Hoyer, someone who voted with Boehner and Cantor to destroy working families with a toxic balanced budget amendment.

Are Schneider and Hoyer as bad as Boehner and Cantor? Not exactly but... isn't it time we got some real tribunes of working families into Congress instead of more corporate whores willing to constantly bend over for the 1%? This is a time for leaders like Ilya Sheyman, not fric and frac. Please consider giving him a hand here.

Several years ago Steny Hoyer and Rahm Emanuel came into West Palm and told Democrats there not to support union activist and school teacher Dave Lutrin, who was running against Republican incumbent and sex predator Mark Foley. Instead they had another "business-friendly" candidate with a history of donating to Republicans, Tim Mahoney. In fact, Mahoney was a Republican himself and Steny and Rahm got him to switch parties at the last minute. They starved Lutrin's campaign and forced him out of the race. Rahm leaked the story about Foley preying on young male pages and Mahoney won, joined the Blue Dogs and proceeded to vote with Republicans most of the time. He then got into his own sex scandal and lost the seat. That's a Steny Hoyer candidate! I asked Dave-- who's running again next year-- to comment on what Hoyer is trying to do to Ilya's campaign now. He was too much of a gentleman to bring up Hoyer's perfidy. Here's what he told me today though:

"For us to facilitate meaningful change for America, we need to not just replace the obstructionist Republican House members with Democrats, but to replace them with more Democrats like Keith Ellison and Raul Grijalva. When I hear that a candidate has business background, I cringe and think how Republicans have put this country’s economy on the path of disaster by trying to run it like a business. Business experience is not required to serve the people; however, strong moral values and convictions should be.

"I think that Ilya Sheyman’s core progressive beliefs can make a great difference in Congress. I like his beliefs so much, I just contributed to his campaign on ActBlue. I hope that I have the opportunity to work with him in Washington."