Balanced Budget Amendment

Okay. Politics.

I'm a good, solid liberal. I've found I tend to disagree with conservatives on both issues and process.

I also consider myself to be a fiscal conservative. Not in the sense that you often hear that phrase - synonymous with an anti-tax, pro-business, small-government position. I believe that it's unwise to spend more money than you have. Personally, I have no debt except for my house - it would simply have taken too long to save the money to buy a house outright. That mortgage debt makes me uncomfortable, but I've accepted it.

When I read about a hypothetical Balanced Budget Amendment, there's an assumption that the "pro" position belongs to conservatives and that the "con" position belongs to liberals. I don't really understand this, but I can write it off to the difference between talk and action - just looking at the federal budgets across the span of Reagan/Bush/Clinton/Bush tells you who was actually fiscal conservative.

What I don't grasp is the liberal argument *against* a Balanced Budget Amendment. I see a mass of lawmakers (and a few executives) who have demonstrated over the course of *decades* that they're incapable of fiscal responsibility. That is to say, they've shown that they can not be trusted to spend less than they have. With such a clear pattern, why would we permit them the leeway to continue?

An honest argument about a Balanced Budget Amendment is not along party lines as far as I can see. And it's not equivalent to an argument over small government/big government. I pay taxes to support the communal infrastructure and services we all depend on, and I'm fine with that. But let the national discussion be about how to allocate the resources available. For as long as I've been alive, U.S. politicians have been publicly fighting over their fiscal positions, but as citizens we've gotten the worst of both sides - excessive spending with insufficient taxation.

Why on earth wouldn't we tie their (and OUR OWN) hands at this point?