The Republicans have proven that a balanced budget amendment is a terrible idea

It would make sense to support a balanced budget amendment to the U.S. Constitution, as long as it had a provision for overriding it in an emergency, except for one thing: the Republican Party of today has proven that its congressmen can't be trusted to recognize an emergency that would require overriding it.

Or they might, but then they'd use the emergency as a hostage to forcing the majority to enact other legislation that a majority of Americans would oppose.

So a balanced-budget amendment is really a minority-rule amendment--especially since Republicans are considerably less inclined to compromise on legislation than Democrats are (as polls show is true of GOP rank and file as well).

Minority rule represents the death of democracy--the overthrow of its most central principle.

But it's easy to understand why Republicans might give up their belief in democracy, because a minority of Americans are Republicans--even when you add in the 45% of Independents who consistently vote Republilcan. A recent Gallup poll has the difference at 74 million people who usually vote GOP vs. 87 million who usually vote Demo. When they vote. More about that later.

So the only way Republicans can win is through the various minority-rule tricks you see them pulling all the time in the U.S. Senate, through whipping its own voters into a frenzy that guarantees turnout...and, less talked about, from doing every single thing in their power to prevent Democrats from voting.

That's why current the GOP is in a vote suppression campaign across all the states it controls, comprising laws ostensibly designed to prevent voter fraud--based on no evidence whatsoever of actual voting fraud going on by more than a single-digit number of people in any given state. They're setting voter ID requirements aimed at preventing college students and poor blacks from voting, along with things like reducing advance voting provisions so people who work long hours won't be able to come in to vote, and even reducing polling places in Democratic areas. But since this campaign isn't going on at a national level, and is being done on the down low, it hasn't captured the attention of the national media, who are busy trying to find out where that lady who got away with murdering her daughter is.

And in general every law and rule that makes it impossible to pass a law unless a supermajority votes for it is a piece of minority rule. California state legislature Republicans have used our 2/3 majority requirement to pass budget bills for decades to get their way.

I'm not arguing that Democrats' idea of spending is good. I'm arguing that majority rule is good, as long as the minority's rights are recognized. The irony is that whenever Republicans get the slightest majority they treat it as a 100% majority with a mandate to ram through everything they want without taking the minority into any consideration at all.

So the Republicans are minoritarian when they're in the minority, majoritarian when they're in the majority. Again, this shows a profound lack of respect for Democratic principles in favor of reverting to raw tribalism.

And for us true independents, the worst thing about Republican obstructionism when they're in the minority is that it enables the Democratic majority to avoid taking responsibility for their actions--they can always blame what goes wrong on Republican obstructionism, thus getting cover for much of what they do wrong.

Parliamentary government is truly majoritarian, able to enact whatever rules/legislation the majority wishes, but with the minority able to force elections whenever the majority goes afoul of the electorate. I'm not advocating abandoning our two party system necessarily--just pointing out that Paliamentary forms tend to place credit and blame more squarely than we can.

The downside of that form is that you often get two major parties that are nearly evenly divided, thus giving small radical parties disproportionate influence--as seen in Israel for example.

So we're probably better off trying to tweak our system.

Meanwhile, though, don't forget to oppose a balanced budget amendment, despite its emotional appeal. It's really a poison pill with a sugar coating.

If we'd had a balanced budget amendment in the 1860s...

...the South would have won the Civil War. Lincoln went deep into the red to win the war. He also instituted the federal income tax to help pay for the war BTW. So the federal income tax is a Republican idea.

The nation's finances are exactly like your personal finances. Really?

Let's say for the sake of argument that Republicans are right to equate the finances of the United States of America with those of a private citzen's household.

And that's the rationale for trying to amend the Constitution of the United States to force government to balance its budget--because households have to balance their budgets.

If conservatives raise this issue with you, ask them if they're homeowners--and if so, how long it took them to raise enough cash to buy their home for cash.

Because if they bought the home on time, using a mortgage or two, that makes them hypocrites.

Yes, we should generally live within our means. But we also need the leeway to make exceptions--to buy a house, to meet an emergency, to take a second mortgage to finance starting a small business--things like that. To deny the federal government the leeway nearly all of us expect for our own personal finances simply expresses hatred of the government.

That hatred is felt by many white Southerners, still angry over the racial integration forced on them in the 1970s. It's felt by the 5,000 or so American citizens who own the bulk of America's wealth, because as a group they feel entitled to every cent of their income and no obligation to help the poor (this has been shown in polls of the very rich)--and they hate the federal government for trying (mostly unsuccessfully) to regulate their business activities in any way (particularly their penchant for corporate welfare, which is much more lucrative than actually producing and selling goods and services).

And this hatred for the federal government is also felt by many millions of voters who have been successfully propagandized by the Republican Ministry of Propaganda, such that they believe those who prey on them are actually their benefactors, and vice versa. This is easy to do because humans are easy to manipulate about such things. We want to identify with rich people. We don't want to identify with anyone who anyone might think of as a Loser.

So a balanced budget amendment has nothing--zero--to do with forcing government to observe the same rules that your own family or a business has to observe.

It has to do with hating goverment--a hatred the Republican Party leadership has been promoting ever since FDR's New Deal, which gave us Social Security among other things.

Let's call a spade a spade.