When it retires, the current working generation can eat Treasury paper instead of cake. The real reason we need a Balanced Budget Amendment can be found in the bi-partisan mendacity and smoke blowing about the Consumer Price Index, our official measure of inflation. It overstates the actual rate of inflation, the economists say. Democrats and Republicans nod there heads. We change our shopping habits, the economists argue.
Products improve, they assert.
The net result is that the CPI has been overstating the rate of inflation for decades, perhaps as much as one percent a year. They were ignored. Only an economist or a politician could make such an omission. No one who lives in the real world would think that any measure of inflation would be complete without considering taxes. Except our collected friends in Washington.