Good News: Balanced Budget Amendment Fails To Pass Congress

The only good news coming from the House of Representative today is that the constitutional amendment for a balanced budget will not succeed.  The head counters have the dreadful idea falling at least 40 votes short of the two-thirds majority required.  The House is taking up the amendment this week because Congress agreed to consider it as part of the deal reached earlier this year to raise the debt ceiling.

OK, done that.

I have long rejected this political notion, regardless of who supports it, as it has far more negative potential than a useful purpose.

House Democratic Whip Steny Hoyer has come out forcefully against it — even though he voted for the balanced budget amendment in 1995. 

Hoyer said Tuesday that he could no longer support the amendment because, “Unfortunately, I did not contemplate the irresponsibility that I’ve seen fiscally over the last nine years or eight years of the Bush Administration and the Republican leadership of the House or the Senate. And this last few months of where Republicans took America to the brink of default.” 

The GOP’s behavior in recent years, Hoyer said in a statement today, suggests Congress may not be able to get the three-fifths vote needed to approve funds to respond to a crisis — a risk too big for Hoyer to take.