Balanced Budget Amendment

Thank you for your swift response. Con 1: Who Increased the Debt? None of my opponent’s charts showed up in the debate; however, I was able to take a quick look at the chart. The first chart has no sources and I would like to know what the basis is for the chart’s claim. I would like to respond to the website’s claim that lower tax payments is the biggest cause of the deficit: Rather overspending on entitlement programs is the biggest cause for deficits as can be seen by this chart here: Secondly, lower tax rates bring in higher revenue and bring in a robust economy: “Cutting taxes is the key to doubling the rate of economic growth, and would do more for America than just help balance the Federal budget. None of the myriad challenges confronting our nation -- poverty, crime, racial tension and welfare dependence -- can be solved without economic expansion.”[1] We can see this graph that outlines revenue to tax rates[2]: The reason for this is simple: People adjust their activities to adjust to the tax burden. For example, if capital gains tax was 50%, people would be weary of investments and investment rates would go down. Even worse, higher taxes give rich people and politicians pay the wealthy right back by giving them loopholes.[3] My opponent now claims that Democrats are better and more fiscal responsible than Republicans. However, even if this was true, it does not negate the need for a Balanced Budget Amendment.[4] “Obama is the undisputed debt king of the last five presidents” According to CBS News:[5] This is unfortunately bit out of date as our debt now stands at over $16. But as we can see, the debt under Obama is staggering considering that the debt was 10t the day Obama took office. The debt held by the public has gone up now by 81% as of November 2012 [6] Conclusion The federal debt and deficit is unbearable no matter which party gets the blame – both parties should be blamed equally. The Balanced Budget Amendment ought to be passed in order to rein in the crazy spending held by both parties. Con 2: Keynesian Economics My opponent argues that during recessions, government ought to stimulate the economy and help the overall economy to grow. However, FDR’s New Deal prolonged the Great Depression[7]. "The fact that the Depression dragged on for years convinced generations of economists and policy-makers that capitalism could not be trusted to recover from depressions and that significant government intervention was required to achieve good outcomes," Cole said. "Ironically, our work shows that the recovery would have been very rapid had the government not intervened." The Wall Street Journal writes[8]: “The main lesson we have learned from the New Deal is that wholesale government intervention can -- and does -- deliver the most unintended of consequences. This was true in the 1930s, when artificially high wages and prices kept us depressed for more than a decade, it was true in the 1970s when price controls were used to combat inflation but just produced shortages. It is true today, when poorly designed regulation produced a banking system that took on too much risk.” We can also use Japan as a way of measuring failed economic stimulus and government interventions. Japan responded to a 1990 recession by passing 10 stimulus spending bills over 8 years, thus building up the largest national debt in the industrialized world, yet its economy remained stagnant.[9] I’m out of room. I will continue responding in the next round. [1] http://www.nytimes.com... [2] Data source and picture credit is found at http://www.americanthinker.com... [3] Stossel, J. “No They Can’t: Why Government Fails but Individuals Succeed.” A solution to this problem would be closing loopholes and enacting a New Flat Tax or a Fair Tax system. [4] http://www.politifact.com... [5] http://www.cbsnews.com... [6] http://factcheck.org... [7] http://newsroom.ucla.edu... [8] http://online.wsj.com... [9] http://www.heritage.org...