The Balanced Budget Amendment is a bad policy response to the 2011 debt issue.

Pro 1: No way to stop near-term downgrading.Pro concedes that a BBA would not cause near-term downgrading, because Congress would retain all of it's current authority for about seven years.The main protection against bank failure is government insurance, the FDIC, now paid for by collecting fees. Rather than spending the fees, the money could be retained to pay claims. That's the way private insurance works. In a great emergency, a 60% vote in Congress would allow deficit spending.After a BBA is in effect, it allows debt increases with a House super majority of 60%, rather than the present 50%. Pro argued that meeting the requirement was next-to-impossible, requiring the equivalent of another Constitutional Amendment. That's not true. It's much easier. I pointed out that, for example, TARP passed with more than 60% in both houses, so it's clearly possible. Pro rebuts that it was really difficult to get TARP passed. Sure, the whole point of a BBA is to make deficit spending difficult. We have accumulated a $14+ trillion deficit by making it easy for politicians to dole out benefits to get votes, while leaving the bill for future generations to pay. Even though difficult, it is only a 60% vote, and the case can be made, as it was with TARP.Note that 2010 census was declared an "emergency" for spending purposes, even though it was known it was going to happen 200 years ago. http://www.washingtonpost.com... Congress retains substantial flexibility under a balanced budget amendment.Pro 2: BBA UnenforceableI believe I made the mechanism for enforcement clear in R1. I said, "... we have similar restrictions on powers other than the power to spend, and those restrictions are enforced by Court order. The First Amendment starts "Congress shall make no law ..." If Congress makes a law against free speech, the Judiciary strikes it down. Similarly, the Courts can invalidate excessive spending." Pro asks, "Will we give the court the power to invalidate appropriation bills that don't balance? " Yes, the Court will have that power. There is precedent on the state level.The BBA anticipates Court enforcement. The Court could either invalidate spending authorization or they could raise taxes to achieve balance. S8 forbids the Court from requiring increased revenues, so the remedy is to invalidate spending. Like the rest of the Constitution the Court decides whether a violation of the BBA has occurred after someone brings suit claiming it has.An article in National Journal summarized: "Who would be eligible to sue? Courts would have to decide, but Phillips said any member of Congress involved in the budget process would certainly be eligible. Individual citizens, political organizations, and class-action groups would probably line up to file such suits, and courts would have to decide whether they had "standing," in legal terms, to press their claims. If the constitutional amendment had been violated, a federal court would issue an injunction ordering Congress and the president to stop breaching it. The legislative and executive branches would then have to decide what to do about that." http://mobile.nationaljournal.com... The President currently has the power to veto legislation, so he can veto laws and demand that Congress trim them down. We have unacceptable deficits because presidents haven't done that often enough.Pro 3: Unrealistic near term cutsPro concedes that unrealistic near term cuts are not required by the BBA, because no near-term cuts are required. Pro makes a new argument that Congress can refuse to reduce spending even with seven years' notice, so a crisis occurs in seven years when it takes effect. That presumes a Congress and a President even less responsible than what we now have, which is unlikely. If that is the case, then clearly a BBA is necessary to avert bankruptcy from chronic overspending. The temporary crisis would be better than bankruptcy.Pro 4: Vulnerability to recessionReduction of revenues is a consequence of recession; I didn't claim it was the definition.There are no "automatic stabilizers" against recession. There is monetary policy controlled by decisions of the Federal Reserve Board, and fiscal decisions controlled by decisions of Congress. With fiscal policy out of control, stuck in the spending mode, an impossible burden is placed on the Fed to moderate recessions by lowering interest rates and changing reserve requirements. With fiscal discipline restored, there will be much less need for dramatic Fed intervention.The primary mechanism for Fed intervention is to create new money and put it into circulation without borrowing it. "By far the most visible and obvious power of many modern central banks is to influence market interest rates; contrary to popular belief, they rarely "set" rates to a fixed number. Although the mechanism differs from country to country, most use a similar mechanism based on a central bank's ability to create as much fiat money as required." http://en.wikipedia.org...Nothing in the BBA prevents that. The BBA does not forbid creating too much money, but it substantially reduces the need to do that. Whether there should be further restrictions on the Fed is a topic for a different debate, but I can find nothing in the BBA that restricts it.Pro 5: Alternative mechanismsThe alternative suggested by Pro was to give the President line-item veto authority to prevent deficits. I pointed out that Presidents could veto whole bills to demand cuts, but that mechanism has not worked. Line item veto authority removes Congressional authority on how to spend. The mechanism doesn't work and moves power from Congress to the executive, a bad idea. Pro made no counter argument on its being ineffective. What it's called is irrelevant.Con 1: Fixes a flaw in democracyI believe we agree that a flaw exists in the Constitution that allows disastrous overspending to curry favor among voters. Pro says that there was disagreement on how to fix the defect, with Jefferson favoring a BBA and others opposing it. Our debate is about whether some form of a BBA is good policy or not. History has now shown that other alternatives have not worked. A BBA would solve the problem, and Pro has not come up with a viable alternative. The problem has to be solved, so clearly it is appropriate to bring a BBA into the discussion of a debt ceiling. The debt ceiling is not just a short-term problem of increasing debt, it is a chronic and potential disastrous problem that requires a change in the fundamentals. Hence, we need a BBA.Con 2: The BBA discussion is appropriate because it addresses chronic deficitsMy point here is that it's wrong to think that if the debt ceiling is raised the debt problem is solved. The debt ceiling was raised during the time of our debate and the problem is not solved. Since the agreement to raise the ceiling was reached, S&P officials said that a $4 trillion deficit reduction package would likely suffice to prevent a downgrade. By that measure, the legislation does not come close. ... "We are still vulnerable to a downgrade," said Carmen Reinhart, an economist with the Peterson Institute in Washington, calling the deficit plan "still tenuous on all areas." Nick Gartside, chief investment officer for global fixed income at JP Morgan, expects a downgrade because Washington's debt and deficit profile is "a huge anomaly" in the club of AAA countries. "To our mind that means in time the US is likely to lose its triple-A rating," he said. http://www.google.com... We need a balanced budget amendment to solve the long term problem.