Tag: balanced budget amendments

Somehow I am not on Bob Goodlatte's (R-VA-06) email list, but a fine letter to the editor in the Northern Virginia Daily alerted me...

Here we go again in the 6th District. My "representative" in the House is on one of his usual tirades. Bob Goodlatte is an avid fan of a "balanced budget amendment." In fact, Goodlatte finds some reason to introduce one during each session of Congress. He even did that while he voted for all of George Bush's budget-busting schemes. Now, even though Goodlatte insists that he is a conservative, perhaps he would do well to check into what some real conservatives have said about the ridiculous idea of amending the Constitution to force a "balanced budget," something logically impossible to do.

Writing in the Wall Street Journal, Peter Schouk, a professor at Yale Law School, stated, "I can think of no other law that would empower judges to exercise more political and policy-making discretion than a balanced budget amendment. It would quickly realize every conservative's fears of an 'imperial judiciary' that 'legislates from the bench' - even if the courts simply did their job and did not grasp for that power."

C. Neul, who writes his own conservative blog, had an even better reason for people who are conservatives being adamantly against a balanced budget amendment.

"The fact that the House GOP members are pushing such an amendment is more non-partisan proof that you don't want to give too much power to Congress, because, in total, they are simply never the brightest guys in the room. Letting them add a BBA to the Constitution would create a nightmare worse, if that's possible, than our current...fiscal situation."