It's baaacck, Balanced Budget amendment talk
When Republicans had Reagan in the Whitehouse and controlled the senate, any talk of trying for a balanced budget amendment was killed. There also was no such talk when Bush 2 was spending the US from a surplus to a deficit, cutting revenue (taxes on the rich) and starting to hugely expensive wars.
Now that a black Democrat is in the white house it is suddenly time for the amendment.
Between April 29, 1975 and January 29, 1980, 34 petitions from 30 different state legislatures were submitted to Congress on the subject of a Balanced Budget Amendment
The 1980 presidential election gave the presidency to Republican Ronald Reagan and control of the Senate to the Republicans for 3/4 of Reagan's presidency.
It became apparent that Congress had no intention of passing the Balanced Budget Amendment.
http://en.wikipedia.org/...
There are legitimate reasons to argue against a balanced budget amendment, such as increasing taxes to cover whatever increases congress wants.
The balancing can be up, not down. If there is a deficit, the public, as well as libertarians, mean by the amendment that the government must be forced to balance its budget by cutting its expenditures, in short, by balancing its budget down. But, it might be argued, the federal government could with perfect legality, evade and circumvent the spirit of the amendment by balancing its budget up, that is, by raising taxes to meet its swollen expenditures.
The Federal Reserve can inflate, even with a balanced budget. Not all federal deficits (i.e., those financed by selling bonds to the public) are inflationary. So we can have bank-credit inflation even while the budget is balanced. The Federal Reserve can buy government bonds even if the federal budget is balanced, and thereby create inflation. Or, to put it another way, even though federal deficits are an all-important cause of inflation, the process works if and only if they are financed through the Fed and through the government-dominated banking system. Though in practice the linkage is close, there could be federal deficits that are noninflationary, and Fed inflation even with a balanced budget.
http://the-classic-liberal.com/...
Article V of the Constitution provides two methods to amend the Constitution.
The first method is for a bill to pass both houses of the legislature, by a two-thirds majority in each, then to be approved by three fourths of the states.
Can you imagine this current congress even attempting that?
The second method is via a constitutional convention.
Either way the proposed amendment must be ratified by three-fourths of states
To put it mildly, this would be a point of contention.
Balanced-budget amendment could start a war
Imagine a second constitutional convention held in the Tea Party era. Imagine a gathering of hyper-intense people sworn to support a balanced-budget amendment. Then conjure up the image of this combustible assembly tempted by an antiabortion amendment or one dealing with school prayer, same-sex marriage or a flaming chain of ideas for constitutional "renewal."
Far-fetched? Convention fever has struck before. In the 1950s, half the states asked for a convention on an amendment limiting federal tax rates to 25 percent. By 1967, reacting to Supreme Court apportionment decisions, nearly two-thirds of the states applied for a convention. And by the early 1980s, 31 states had applied to call a convention to consider — a balanced-budget amendment.
http://www.trove.com/...
The big question I have is: Why right now?