An old friend returns

The year was 1995. OJ was on trial. America was doing the Macarena. And the Balanced Budget Amendment was introduced onto the house floor (It failed on the Senate in 1997).

Now, I don't lean strongly either way on the Balanced Budget Amendment, but I do find it interesting that it is being reintroduced soon by Republicans.

It's clearly a political move. Anyone who votes for it can say they are fiscally responsible. Anyone against it is for haphazzard spending.

Aparrently Majority Leader Tom DeLay had promised over a year ago to bring this amendment up again now. It has placed some Republicans in an awkward position.

GOP leadership aides say privately that such a vote is politically awkward because it could open their party to Democratic charges of hypocrisy because the federal deficit has soared to a record high under their stewardship.

It also undermines the argument that many Republicans have made since the budget surpluses of the ’90s vanished after the attacks Sept. 11, 2001, that deficits don’t matter.

Of course Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi(D-CA) will have something to say about it, even if it is through a spokesperson:

“It’s interesting that Republicans — now that they’ve created a 521-billion deficit — want to balance the budget,” said Jen Crider, spokeswoman for Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), offering a foretaste of likely Democrat attacks. “It had appeared to Republicans that deficits didn’t matter anymore.”

Republicans, it seems, want to remind the base that they love restrained spending even if they do not show it.

[Brian] Riedl (a federal budget analyst with the Heritage Foundation) noted that since Bush took office in 2001, federal spending has gone up 25 percent. Federal spending now exceeds $20,000 per household for the first time since World War II.

Republicans such as Sean Spicer, spokesman for the House Budget Committee, note that the government had a surplus the day before the Sept. 11 attacks and that the deficit is due largely to efforts to rebuild America and keep it safe from future
attacks.

However, Riedl said a Heritage Foundation study showed that less than half of all new spending under Bush has been related to defense, homeland security or anything else related to the war on terrorism.

“Fifty-six percent of the spending is unrelated to 9-11,” said Riedl.

That means, in terms I understand easier, that even without 9-11, spending still would have risen over the past few years. I'm too lazy to do the math.

Now, there is a clause in the proposed amendment that the rule would be waived during a declared war or a military conflict that poses a serious threat to national security. Now forgive me if I'm wrong, but isn't that what the war on terrorism is all about? So even on the off chance this thing passes, and even DeLay admits it is a longshot, could Bush or Kerry simply state we are at war and spend willy-nilly?
In all honesty, would it really change anything?