Is it time for a balanced budget amendment, where Revenues=Expenditures?

Not a politically correct issue lately.

Thus, if you want to spend more, you increase taxes. If you want to cut taxes, you spend less. Or if you are one of the Laffer freaks, you cut taxes and use the imaginary revenues it generates spent. If you want to run a war, you have new taxes like an import tax or a war tax.

Maybe allow congress to spend an extra 1% of the national debt. Thus if the national debt is $11 trillion, they could spend $110 billion in addition to revenues. This would be considered a savings tax.

Good luck with the colossal group of tards in office passing an amendment that would actually limit their spending.

Even better, how bout every time they want to do something, they just mail us all a bill beforehand...or more of a request for donation....and based on how much they recieve back from it....they know exactly how we all voted...and how much support they got and how much they can spend.

Kinda eliminate taxation, deficit spending, lobbysits, special interests, etc all at once.

Impractical, ya I know...

makes sense

Better idea imo is to cut revenue stream itself. Eliminate the income tax and similar taxes. Go to a more use-based taxation system -- land use fees, resource use fees, etc., which fund reduced govt services (legal system, collective defense, "safety net" health care and welfare, environmental protection, regulatory agencies). Not practical, I know, but as long as we're espousing completely pie-in-the-sky ideas...

yeah this is a great start too. A+

The government could make a ton of money by just charging oil companies for taking oil out of our government lands. For example if we open drilling in ANWR to everyone and charge a 75% tax on the oil coming out of the ground, we probably would not even need income taxes for those making less than 100K a year.

The right wing wants to give the oil to their contributors via sealed bids. That is the way they steal.

The government could make a fortune on all the trees, gas, water, minerals that come off our public lands. Instead they give them away to the lowest of the low.

It is o.k. to cut revenues, but if you cut revenues you will have to cut spending. Do you canonies to cut NASA, pentagon, defense, student loans, and medicare. I do. I would eliminate all spending on student loans and health care and leave it to the states.

So when you cut taxes, also give where you are going to cut spending.

Also "Use" base taxes, are taxes on the poor.

You should read the following: http://www.energybulletin.net/51102

Anything supported by Lindsey Graham, Jim DeMint and Chuck Norris might just be bat-guano crazy. Just saying...

I've heard that the balanced budget over the business cycle is better: Spending has to be equal to or less than revenue from the 3rd previous fiscal year. This makes budgeting more predictable and prevents pro-cyclical spending policy (e.g. overspending during booms, cutting back during busts).

Besides being impossible to pass...it is terrible idea. When there is a recession or downturn the Government needs to spend more but is taking in less which is good and necessary. The problem arises when the government continues to spend the same when the economy is good because "everything is fine." Having a credit line is good, abusing it like most of America does is bad.

This kind of gets at the crux of tax and spend politics - during booms, people tend to want the government to spend more. During downturns, they want it to tighten up. This is the least effective way to go about things.

During the 90's economic growth was high, spending was not cut, and the deficit was eliminated.

Not really.

Doesn't the post above yours lay out a solution to this? If not, why not?

Frankly, I don't want something like this written in stone. There are just too many hypotheticals where we may need a deficit.

However, I don't mean to excuse today's behavior.

You could write contingencies into the amendment though. Like its suspended during a declared war or if 2/3 of both houses vote to suspend or something like that. If it's a real emergency you shouldn't have trouble getting super-majorities.

The amendment essentially becomes meaningless then. Both the stimulus and TARP would still pass. Not to mention Iraq/Afghanistan would hit the declared war clause.

Which of these was not true?

I don't think we are in a declared war right now. Haven't been since 1941.

Further, TARP and stimulus don't exist in a vacuum. It is unpredictable how the vote goes if the amendment is in place because that has implications for what compromises can be made, how legislators perceive their vote, how the public and media interprets the issue, etc. Also the spending background is changed. Baseline federal spending for 2008 would equal 2005 revenue. And who knows where we are economically or fiscally after years of forced surpluses e.g. in the 90s? If we aren't talking out of our ass all we can say is that TARP or stimulus might have still passed had the amendment been in place, if the amendment was passed in 2008.

Anyway, just forcing legislators to go against the spirit of the amendment in order to do their spending has beneficial effects politically, iyam.

Pretty sure it's the deficit being eliminated part.

thanks to welfare reform and cuts in capital gains taxes

Look up your history. Bill Clinton, et. al, balanced the budget. Maybe you don't remember this, but one of the big issues of the 2000 election campaign was what to do with the budget surplus--which would eventually provide part of the justification for Bush's tax cuts.

I'm sure you have evidence for these assertions.