At present, there are no sides to cheer for in the budget debate that is being arbitrarily connected with raising the nation's debt ceiling – which, by the way, is to pay for debt already accumulated.
The Democrats have no real plan. One would expect the party that controls the White House to rally around the president's budget proposal at a time like this. But President Obama's budget, unveiled earlier this year, called for a $1.65 trillion deficit this year, and a $1.1 trillion one next year, provided the economy miraculously improved.
That not only was an unrealistic and politically tone-deaf plan, it is now virtually forgotten amid the host of other proposals floating around Washington. Certainly, no Democrat wants to call attention to it.
For their part, Republicans are coming dangerously close to overplaying their hand. The debt ceiling is a convenient edge-of-the-cliff bargaining chip, but everyone knows they have to vote to raise it in the end. If the nation defaults on its debt, Republicans would suffer politically.
And so they are trying to ram through ridiculous measures such as a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution. This was a bad idea in 1997, and it's even worse now. This USA Today editorial sums up why.
Congress already possesses all the tools necessary to balance the budget except one – courage. Meanwhile, there are times when the nation ought to be free to run deficits, such as during times of war or recession.
Think about this, with a balanced budget amendment in place, the most likely way Congress could have dealt with the economic downturn in 2008 would have been through raising taxes. That was exactly what the economy did not need at that time.
In addition, everyone knows such an amendment would never pass the Senate and would certainly be vetoed by the president. So Republicans are putting on a show for their constituents, and that is taking time away from a serious discussion about meaningful cuts in advance of the debt-default deadline.