Comment & Debate
Eric Horn. “Change the subject.” Chicago Tribune. August 4th, 2011: “many serious economists find it dangerously simplistic, a blunt instrument that stands to clobber the economy when it’s least able to withstand the blow.”
Kathy White. “Guest Commentary: A federal balanced budget amendment would hurt the economy.” Denver Post. July 24th, 2011: “Requiring a balanced federal budget every year, no matter how the economy is doing, would force big cuts in services, increases in taxes – or both. That’s because when the economy slows, federal revenues go down and spending on unemployment insurance and other programs needed to spur recovery go up. If the government can’t run a deficit, even temporarily, many Americans have nothing to cushion their fall. If a balanced federal budget were compulsory, we’d suffer a vicious spiral of bad policy that would push weak economies into recession and make recessions last longer, potentially costing millions of jobs. The last time a balanced budget amendment was proposed, in 1997, more than 1,000 economists, including 11 Nobel laureates, condemned the idea as “unsound and unnecessary.” They called it “a proposal that mandates perverse actions in the face of recessions.”