Sunday, March 11, 2012

A Balanced Budget Amendment We Can Live With

Second round of the French presidential electi...Image via Wikipedia
We have to get a balanced budget amendment. I'd like to see any budget with a deficit subject to referendum that also approves immediate taxes to pay it down within 10 years.

And if we have a war or other emergency that requires spending, Congress should be free to start spending, as long as a referendum that approves or vetoes the spending is arranged promptly.

And we need a tax to pay off the existing debt, all of it, within 50 years in the same amendment.

There's no reason the richest country in the world should operate the way it does. The result will be our decline and eventual loss of any power in the world. We cannot expect to compete with other powers technologically and militarily if we don't get our economic house in order.

A lot of people like to talk about democracy, but actually giving the people control over how much debt they are getting into is not what they have in mind.  Many want a process that they can game to their own advantage.

In the US, the trappings of democracy is used to keep the people under control, not to give the people control over their government.  And debt is used to keep the people from understanding the real costs.

Its time we took off the backwards sunglasses.