Balanced Budget Amendment

Con 1: Problems with BBA My opponent creates a false analogy between someone who is overweight and the Balanced Budget Amendment. In a Balanced Budget Amendment, there is nothing wrong with surpluses. In this case, the overweight is a surplus of fat and calories. The BBA prevents you from gaining debt. The BCA (balanced calorie amendment) prevents you from gaining weight. A BCA would prevent you from gaining weight when you want to, and a BBA would prevent you from running a deficit when you want to. There are times when either would be appropriate. It is unwise to be unable to either gain weight or gain debt. To promote the BBA is to say that government should never borrow money. That's just nuts. Next, my opponent makes a false analogy between running a business and running a nation – you don’t run a nation in the same way you run a business. I said that there are times when it is prudent to run a deficit. This is as true in business as in government. A business can’t stay in a deficit or debt for very long – same is true with a nation. Many businesses have permanent debt. Utilities almost always have better things to do with their money than to pay off debt. Nations too almost always carry debt. While you don't want to buy an over-leveraged business, there's nothing wrong with carrying a reasonable amount of debt. Finally, the BBA that I am proposing grants exceptions in times of war or in states of emergency – hence, the criticisms for war is misrepresenting the actual text. That's my point! The exceptions for emergencies and wars will tend to cause emergencies and wars. It's what they call "moral hazard. " It is not good to pass a BBA that will tend to cause emergencies and war. I showed that government spending to bail out of recession/depressions do more harm than good. Moreover, it would have to be constitutionally limited as to the reasons for war. No, he really didn't. He cited a web page that said something vaguely negative about one particular "ill-considered stimulus. " There was no real information there. It blamed the continuation of the great depression on pegging wages and prices too high. That has nothing to do with deficit spending. Pro misrepresents his source here. Consider voting source points to Con. State of Emergencies: My opponent has brought up an excellent point. A simple and obvious solution is to limit what actually constitutes a state of emergency and limit when they can be issued. He can't have it both ways. Either the BBA will allow spending in declared emergencies (in which case it will cause declared emergencies) or it won't. If it won't, then it will either cause the Constitution to be ignored, or it will hurt the economy by preventing deficits when we need them. Constitutional Erosion: This will be enforced through the Supreme Court: If there is a budget deficit, it is thrown out. For good reason, we largely ignore the 2nd amendment. It is impractical and unenforceable. This is true even though we have a Supreme Court. So, even though we have a Supreme Court, a BBA would likely also be ignored, unless we choose to let it cripple the economy by trapping us in a depression. Con 3: Alternatives The BBA is not the only solution needed; it is simply a starting point. None of my opponent’s suggestions are sufficient to solve out debt crisis. The BBA won't cure the problem alone. It won't do any good thing alone. So we don't need it. And it could do great damage. The actual solution, fiscal restraint, will work just fine without the BBA. But with the BBA it could leave us in a permanent depression. Reduced congressmen: As my opponent notes, this would be unenforceable and would be a very bad idea. Moreover, this would be unconstitutional as there are 600,000 people per congressional district and this would cause many people to be unrepresented – consequently, they would be taxed without representation. Pro is all about changing the constitution when it suits him, but he thinks we can't change the number of people per congressional district? Pro says something about a Tu quoque fallacy. I have read and reread this point, but he is not clear enough for me to respond with other than a general demurer I would support a line-item veto, but in complement to a BBA because this simply cannot work alone, because, as Roy notes: “it would require the President to go in and cut the wild spending programs which he disapproves. The problem is that there are not any wild spending programs that the President disapproves! There never has been and never will be. Finally, politicians are re-elected by spending, that is the fundamental problem. ” Pro has faked a quotation here. Not sure what to say about it. It doesn't look accidental, but he doesn't seem to intend misrepresentation. He changed "Obama" to "he," and a few other things like that. If he wanted to paraphrase, he could say it's a paraphrase. Otherwise, if he puts it in quotes, it should be the actual quotation. He needs to know that this isn't right. It could be important later in his life. Let me suggest that some of you give me S&G points, or source points, or just don't award source points if you were going to give them to him. (But be sure to say why. ) Conclusion My thanks also to DoubtingDave, to DDO, and to our readers. The BBA is good because it addresses chronic deficits and fixes a major flaw in democracy – an argument not addressed by con. Pro attributes the quote about voting largess from the public treasury to Edmund Burk. This seems, again, grounds to vote source points to Con. . http://www.goodreads.com... . http://en.wikiquote.org... . http://www.lorencollins.net... Even if Burk had said that, would he have approved of a BBA? Pro doesn't say. Would a BBA prevent people from voting themselves such largess as is permitted by the BBA? No, not at all. To the extent that Pro has identified a problem, he has not identified a solution. Moreover, my opponent has often times misunderstood the context of the BBA – especially in regards to wars and in states of emergency and overlooks some obvious flaws with his alternatives to the BBA. Pro is confused about who is confused. If the BBA has exceptions for wars and states of emergency, then it will have some tendency to cause wars and emergencies as excuses to run deficits when we need to. If it doesn't have such exceptions, then it will either get ignored (bad for the Constitution) or, worse, complied with (terrible for the economy). Keynes proved that economies can stabilize at 100% of productive capacity, or anywhere short of that. He proved that deficit spending is a valuable tool for getting out of depressions. Sometimes deficit spending is necessary and prudent. BBAs have no judgment, no prudence. They can cause permanent depressions, wars and emergencies; and disregard for the Constitution. Pro undertook to prove that the BBA should be adopted. He has failed to show that it would be a good thing at all, plus he has failed to show that it would be the best way to approach the national debt. In other words, he has failed to show that the BBA should be adopted.