It's the Stupid....it Burns....

I have to say, this is probably one of the more willfully ignorant gambits the Republican Party has engaged in.

• 1) Plays on the public's inability to understand complex subjects.
• 2) Would make our current fiscal problems worse.
• 3) Mind-numbingly stupid.

Specifically this segment of the proposal:

Total outlays for any fiscal year shall not exceed total receipts for that fiscal year, unless two-thirds of the duly chosen and sworn Members of each House of Congress shall provide by law for a specific excess of outlays over receipts by a roll call vote.

This is what California has, pushed through during a republican administration many years ago. Do nothing to actually effect spending, while making it near impossible to raise revenue (taxes!). There is more stupid here that should be talked about, but my head is sore from banging it into my desk, while reading the actual document and then the 'objective' reporting on the subject.

So instead, Ezra Klein, Johnathan Bernstein, and Bruce Bartlett go to town on how this idea is just more of the stupid. From Ezra:

A world in which this amendment is added to the Constitution is a world in which America effectively becomes California. It’s a world where the procedural impediments to passing budgets and raising revenues are so immense that effective fiscal management is essentially impossible; it’s a world where we can’t make public investments or sustain the safety net; it’s a world where recessions are much worse than they currently are and the government has to do more of its work off-budget through regulation and gimmickry. I would like to say something positive about this proposal, say there’s some silver lining here. But there isn’t. This is economic demagoguery, and nothing more. It’s so unrealistic that it would’ve ruled all but two of the last 30 years unconstitutional, which means it’s so unrealistic that there has not yet been a Republican president who has proven it can be done. And that doesn’t just suggest it can’t be done: It suggests that when Republicans are actually in power and have control of the budget, they know perfectly well that it shouldn’t be done. They’re just pretending otherwise for the moment.

-Cheers