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Tuesday, June 12, 2007
Blue Dogs Seek to Seize Fiscal Responsibility Mantle
The Washington Post reports today that the Democratis Blue Dog Coalition plans to introduce legislation shortly to
impose caps on some spending, enshrine pay-as-you-go rules in federal law and authorize automatic spending cuts to enforce them ... amend the U.S. Constitution to require a balanced budget and to create an array of budget provisions that would focus more attention on what it sees as pork-barrel spending.
While setting a goal of producing a balanced budget is meritorious, the approach advocated here is problemmatic. It may, for example, gratuitously restrict policy flexibility, particularly where circumstances such as war, natural disaster, etc., arise.
These issues will be discussed at a panel discussion sponsored today by the quarterly journal Democracy, entitled "Balanced Budgets: Holy Grail or Overrated?" featuring former Treasury secretary Lawrence Summers; Clinton economic adviser Gene Sperling; former Virginia governor Mark R. Warner; and Jeff Faux, founder of the Economic Policy Institute, a District think tank.
Posted by Dana Chasin
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