Senator
Rand Paul was on Larry Kudlow’s radio show today and he pointed out that
neither the Boehner plan nor the Reid plan cuts Federal expenditures. Rand Paul is a proponent of cutting actual
spending by 1% per year for a number of years until we can balance the
budget. They call this plan the 1-penny
plan since it cuts 1-penny from every dollar.
I was surprised to learn that the current debt “negotiations” are about
reducing the amount of GROWTH in spending not cutting actual spending!
That
is the reason that there is little serious discussion about a Balanced Budget
Amendment to the Constitution. It
appears that only the radical right (at least that’s the way the media portrays
them) wants a balanced budget. Democrats
don’t support it because it might hurt the poor (and the Demos chances for re-election);
the Republicans (for the most part) don’t want it because it might hurt the
military industrial complex and business in general (and the Repubs chances for re-election).
If
we are not talking about real cuts in spending, and not really balancing the
budget, our country may be truly finished.
Can we afford to keep talking about the short term with no consideration
for the long term?
The
Commonwealth of Virginia works very well with a balanced budget requirement in
our Constitution. We need a balanced budget
amendment in the Federal Constitution to force the politicians to do their jobs.
