Given the level of surrealism that surrounds so much of the debt limit argument in the U.S., it seems appropriate that Speaker John Boehner only managed to win the support of his most intransigent members by conceding on the most half-baked of their many starry-eyed ideas.
Mr. Boehner’s bill, which never had a chance of life and was strangled by the Senate within hours of birth, only got as far as it did after he agreed to the Tea Party’s demand that he tack on a clause requiring a balanced budget amendment to the U.S. constitution.
And why not? When a bill has no chance of success anyway, you might as well go ahead and add on any number of crazy ideas if it makes you feel better. Zero can’t be made any less by multiplying it a few times, so throw in a requirement that Alaska has to be warm in winter, dogs have to be friendly with cats and Iran has to adopt Unitarianism as its official religion. What the hell, go for broke. It’s not like any of it was ever going to happen.
So Boehner agreed to the balanced budget amendment and managed to scrape together just enough votes to send his doomed legislation off to its death. And the Tea Partiers got to clap one another on the back and assure one another they’d done something useful. That’s how good they are at fooling themselves.
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Related:
Late Attempt at Debt-Limit Deal to Avert Default
McParland spends a whole article ranting about one item; telling us that requiring balanced budgets haven’t worked so therefore they will never work and only “crazy” people and “zealots” like those elected by tea party voters want such a law. McParland is exactly the kind of “establishment” MSM guy who would have ranted at Preston Manning for being a crazy zealot for wanting to balance budgets in the 90’s.
If McParland feels so strongly about budgets why doesn’t he ask himself why the Obamarx gang has not even had a budget for its 800 days in office. Isn’t that the noteworthy crime by zealots in the USA? Shouldn’t it be an impeachable crime?
Preston Manning’s Reform Party was our tea party once upon a time and it took 13 years to kick in and even then we’ve only gotten to the point now where we will hopefully make some headway toward smaller government and fight off the establishment nincompoops like McParland. He’s written some dumb articles before but this one takes the cake.
A balanced budget could mean not balanced this year but balanced in year 3 or 4 or whatever (PMSH/Flaherty tabled just that). The point is that politicians would not be able to authorize any more annual deficits without a plan that balances the budget at some point out there. The “fantasy” that armchair utopians like McParland live in is that deficits and debt can pile up forever. In McParland’s world, growth in government is a permanent feature and you are a zealot if you object to it. That thinking has to stop and we the people need to push the McParlands off the debt cliff they’ve endorsed.
Re: “He’s written some dumb articles before but this one takes the cake.”
Amen to that. I added a couple of articles from the Telegraph in my afternoon update today (#10) that help to flesh this argument out a bit more.
Why are the Tea Party members being held responsible by the media, they are doing exactly what they said they would do when campaigning and what they were elected to do by the electors in their districts. They may be the only members ever to do what they campaigned to do. Maybe that that is the problem, the media has never seen members do what they where elected to do.
Big news today as the world waits “breathless” regarding, finally, a deal.
I wouldn’t hold my breath because (in my view) when the “deal” hits the House it will die on the horns of the Tea Party. These people say what they mean and mean what they say.
No more debt.
Period.
Just saying.
Update:
Reid’s Debt-Ceiling Bill Fails in Test Vote, Negotiators Polish Alternative Package
“Woohoo!!”