Again I would like to remind the people out here many on the right , that they cried and cried when Obama drove the debt up, and now that Trump has taken over both his first two fiscal years he has run the debt up MORE then Obama did in 5 out of the 8 years he was in office, and the three years Obama ran it up more were mostly due to the great Recession.
Trump said he was going to cut the debt and in his first two fiscal years under a Republican Congress he has run it up even more.
it is time for a Balanced Budget amendment with some real teeth in it so we can NOT spend more then we take in ( only in time of war , another great recession / Depression could we spend more then we take in ) and maybe a national sales tax of 1 % to be used to pay off the debt ( with NO deductions for anybody , we all got a benefit from the debt so we all should help pay it off even large Corps )
and when the debt is paid off the sales tax would be suspended and could ONLY be reinstated if we had to run a debt because of a war or recession / depression
Have a nice day
I cannot comment for our friends on the right.
However because of economic conditions at the time of the 2007-2008 collapse it made perfect sense for the government to spend as they are the only part of the GDP math that can spend when there is such fault with aggregate demand. Obama and associated Congresses did not wake up one morning and debt spend for no reason, after that kind of collapse of our financial system and real estate valuations there was no other alternative and it went so far as to see the Fed have to remove toxic assets from the market be it temporary.
Our issue is the same.
I am not going to say that our "recovery" was all roses and sunshine for every participant in the economy, however there was sustained growth year to year post the collapse and some of that credit goes to both fiscal and monetary policy deploying the tools you would think should be used to deal with all those faults. If anything, we can show that deficits started to drop more consistently once Obama started to face a split Congress then 2 terms worth of Republican Congresses. No one really got all of what they wanted and revenues started to get closer to outlays until that pivotal FY2015 to FY2016 mark where conditions changed headed right into the 2016 election cycle.
My concern is still what Trump and Republicans in the 115th Congress did, handed out a gift and we immediately saw what the outlook was headed right to $Trillion dollar deficits and record auctions by the Treasury just as we approach the next recession. If the economy was doing so well that move was the worst of fiscal irresponsibility.
Your point though is monumentally worse.
Any Balanced Budget Amendment (which is a pipe dream anyway - when was the last time Congress limited themselves?) is devoid of basic economics. The discussion above is why, government spending (and to a degree taxation) is the only counterbalance our economy has when dealing with aggregate demand fault of really any kind. The economic cycle is not just two stages of 'things are well' then 'recession / Depression.' In fact to argue that accidentally argues bubble and pop economics because you impede fiscal policy to react to economic indication whereas monetary policy will react anyway. If those are not at least moderately in sync on intention, fiscal policy and monetary policy (and even trade policy,) then we end up waiting for Congress to decide on even more.
And if we have learned anything, Congress has proven themselves to not be very good at handling economics. A Balanced Budget Amendment would amplify our problem and wait for every economic "pop" for them to so something way too late in the game.
As for paying off our national debt, why do we need to do that?
