| In addition to demanding spending cuts in exchange for raising the debt ceiling, Republicans now say they want a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution. " But it is posturing with a dangerous purpose: to further distort the terms of the budget fight, and in the process, to entrench the Republicans' no-new-taxes-ever stance." "The government would be forbidden from borrowing to finance any spending, unless a supermajority agreed to the borrowing. In addition to mandating a yearly balance, both the House and Senate versions would cap the level of federal spending at 18 percent of gross domestic product. That would amount to a permanent limit on the size of government -- at a level last seen in the 1960s, before Medicare and Medicaid, before major environmental legislation like the Clean Water Act, and long before the baby-boom generation was facing retirement." |
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