Pentagon is largest U.S. employer

Yes, the federal government is too big, and this proves it: the Pentagon has 400,000 civilian employees! 

This is not counting the 700,000 or so civilian contractors who also work for the Defense Department.

Nor does it count, of course, our 1.4 million active-duty members of the armed services, and 850,000 reservists and National Guard troops.

So altogether, about one percent of the U.S. population works for the Pentagon.

That may not sound like a lot, but that makes it America's largest employer with about 3.3 million. By comparison, America's largest private employer Walmart has only 1.3 million workers.

Furthermore, the Pentagon's annual "income" from taxpayers dwarfs Walmart's in the U.S. by 25 times: $682 billion vs. $27 billion!  (2012 figures).

So why aren't my fellow Americans in the Tea Parties complaining and agitating to shrink America's bloated defense budget?  

P.S. -- To head off some predictable retorts, first check out this fact sheet from the Center for International Policy, "Myths vs. Realities of Pentagon Spending."

Zakaria: It's about democracy, not Obamacare

Some of my Republicans friends ask me, "Why can't Obama compromise just a little?"  His consistent refusal to negotiate on repealing, delaying or denuding Obamacare is the real problem, some of them honestly -- and mistakenly -- believe. 

Zakaria sums up best why President Obama and Senate Majority Leader Reid must not negotiate:

But what cannot be allowed to stand is the notion that if a group of legislators cannot convince a majority in both houses and the president to agree with them, they will shut down the government or threaten to default until they can get their way. That is extortion, not democracy.

I would be happy to see President Obama compromise on the budget, taxes, spending – even healthcare. But he cannot compromise on the principal that the rules of democracy must be respected, whatever the outcome. If Democrats had threatened to shut down the government to force the repeal of the Bush tax cuts or defund the Iraq War, I would have hoped President Bush would have also been uncompromising.

In our political system, negotiating is what you do when you don't have the votes to get everything you want. Obama has the votes to keep Obamacare. Republicans don't have the votes to repeal it. So why should Obama negotiate to defund or diminish a law he believes in, and has the votes to keep?  

For the sake of our republican democracy, Obama and Reid cannot establish a precedent by giving in to extortion. The Founding Fathers did not envisage Congress repealing laws through the budgeting process. If they get their way now, Republicans will do it again. You know it, I know it. If Obama caves and the Tea Party Republicans get their way, even Democrats might try this tactic one day, who knows?  

And it's not just about us -- it's about how others see us, warns Zakaria:

If American politicians start playing fast and loose with the rules, doing whatever it takes to get the results that they want, what does that say to people in Russia, Egypt, Iran, and Venezuela who get pious lectures on the rules of democracy? It tells them that something is deeply wrong with the American system these days.

We don't negotiate with hostage-takers, period. That's the lesson. There can be no waffling on this point. It will only encourage more unacceptable behavior.

How to solve the crisis in Washington

By Fareed Zakaria

October 3, 2013 | CNN

It is the defining moment of a democracy – an outgoing leader celebrates the election of a new one, from the opposing party. Think of George H.W. Bush welcoming Bill Clinton, or Jimmy Carter doing the same for Ronald Reagan. Across the world, this is the acid test of a real democracy. Mexicans will tell you that they knew that they had gotten there when President Ernesto Zedillo, after seventy years of one-party rule, allowed free elections and stood with his newly-elected successor and affirmed his legitimacy.

The basic and powerful idea behind this ritual is that in a democracy, the process is more important than the outcome. If a genuine democratic process has been followed, we have to accept the results, regardless of how much we dislike the outcome. The ultimate example of this in recent American history might be Al Gore’s elegant acceptance of the process – complicated, politicized, but utterly constitutional – that put George W. Bush in the White House.

It must also have been difficult for Richard Nixon to grin and accept the results of the 1960 election – a poll marred by voter fraud that John F. Kennedy won by a narrow margin – but he did. And as vice president, he reported the results to the Senate, saying:

“This is the first time in 100 years that a candidate for the presidency announced the result of an election in which he was defeated and announced the victory of his opponent. I do not think we could have a more striking example of the stability of our constitutional system and of the proud tradition of the American people of developing, respecting and honoring institutions of self-government. In our campaigns, no matter how hard fought they may be, no matter how close the election may turn out to be, those who lose accept the verdict and support those who win.”

That is what is at stake in Washington this week. The debate going on there is not trivial, not transitory – and not about Obamacare. Whatever you think about the Affordable Care Act, it is a law that was passed by the House of Representatives and the Senate, then signed by the president, and then validated by the Supreme Court as constitutional. This does not mean it cannot be repealed. Of course it can be repealed, as can most laws. But to do so, it would need another piece of legislation – one that says quite simply “The Affordable Care Act is hereby repealed in its entirely” – that passes the House and Senate and is then signed into law by the president.

But what cannot be allowed to stand is the notion that if a group of legislators cannot convince a majority in both houses and the president to agree with them, they will shut down the government or threaten to default until they can get their way.That is extortion, not democracy.

I would be happy to see President Obama compromise on the budget, taxes, spending – even healthcare. But he cannot compromise on the principal that the rules of democracy must be respected, whatever the outcome. If Democrats had threatened to shut down the government to force the repeal of the Bush tax cuts or defund the Iraq War, I would have hoped President Bush would have also been uncompromising.

So, how to solve the crisis? Many have wondered when the grown-ups in the Republican Party will force the House minority to call off this campaign. But that misunderstands the changed nature of American government. There are no more “grown-ups” in Washington, in the sense of a powerful political establishment that can get younger members of Congress in line. There are, instead, 535 political entrepreneurs, each seeking reelection and worried only about his or her fate.

Consider what happened with immigration reform, when almost the entire Republican establishment wanted to make a deal with the Democrats and yet a minority of House members once again were able to derail things. John Boehner is not leading his party, he is being led by its most passionate and radical wing. This crisis can only end when members of that wing understand that what they are doing is anti-democratic and harmful to the country.

Meanwhile, there is a way to turn this crisis into an opportunity. The debt ceiling is an absurd anachronism that should not anyway exist. Only a handful of countries around the world have anything like it. And the president cannot actually make sense of it.

Brookings Institution scholar Henry Aaron points out that were Congress to refuse to raise the debt ceiling, the president would have to choose between two Congressional mandates on him. First, Congress passed spending and taxation levels for the year, which the president must faithfully execute. But then it does not raise the debt ceiling. So either the president must ignore the Congressional action requiring him to spend and tax at the levels they have set, or he has to ignore the fact that they did not raise the debt ceiling. Were this to happen, the president should declare that he is going to obey the more substantive law – actually asking him to spend money and levy taxes – and ignore the procedural one. He would then borrow the money he needed to, to enforce Congress’ will.

Were President Obama to do this, it would solve the current crisis, and also end the prospect that the crux of America’s financial power – its sovereign debt and the dollar’s role of the world’s reserve currency – could ever again be held hostage through thoroughly undemocratic parliamentary games.

Finance aside, America’s global influence derives in large measure from the strength of its democracy. If American politicians start playing fast and loose with the rules, doing whatever it takes to get the results that they want, what does that say to people in Russia, Egypt, Iran, and Venezuela who get pious lectures on the rules of democracy? It tells them that something is deeply wrong with the American system these days.

We don't negotiate with terrorists

"We don't want to detonate a bomb in Washington. We really don't!  So why are you threatening to make us detonate a bomb? Just give us what we want and everything will be fine."

If a member of al Qaeda said this to President Obama trying to get his demands met, we would call it what it was: terrorism.

It's a sad attempt at nifty rhetoric (see article below) and nobody's going to fall for it. 

So think: that's just what the GOP Congress is threatening -- to shut down the federal government unless Obama agrees to de-fund a law that was passed by Congress and upheld by the Supreme Court.  

That's not "checks and balances" stuff, folks. Such tactics were not written into the Constitution or ever anticipated by the Founding Fathers. That's political terrorism.  And the hostages are you and I.

Like I said before, for Democrats' political fortunes, I hope the GOP tries to hold us hostage to nullify a law passed by Congress because it will backfire on Republicans. But for America's sake, for our economy's sake, I hope the GOP wises up and steps back from the brink. 

Cruz: Ignore Media, GOP ‘Can Win’ Defunding Obamacare Argument

By Katrina Trinko

August 21, 2013 | National Review

URL: http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/356332/cruz-ignore-media-gop-can-win-defunding-obamacare-argument-katrina-trinko

Rosenberg: Political 'moderation' is killing us

Rosenberg succinctly explains the destructive and yet politically successful behavior of today's Congressional Republicans:

If unreasonable positions ensure that the other side gets equal blame in the centrist's scorekeeping and resulting media coverage, then they are inherently "can't lose" positions. This provides a basic floor which biases the entire process against being reasonable.

If some sort of action is eventually necessary (as it is with budget issues, and most other governmental questions as well), then the unreasonable side - which by definition cares less (perhaps not at all) about real-world consequences - has an increasing advantage the longer that the issue remains unresolved, thus further motivating them to remain unreasonable. If they start at 50 percent (equal blame), things only get better for them over time, as the blame burden remains constant, but the cost pressure to do something rises much more accurately on the reasonable side.

In the process, argues Rosenberg, politically viable but unworkable political proposals get conflated with politically "serious," i.e. reasonable, ideas -- first among the MSM and with Washington elite, then among the wider public:

So why is the discussion dominated by a non-solution while a real solution can't even be discussed? It's because the "politically viable" sense of serious totally dominates over the "pragmatically effective" sense of the word, and because what is politically viable is circularly defined: extremist Republican non-solutions are politically viable because Republicans adamantly insist that they are, no matter how laughable they may be - and centrist bipartisan ideologues routinely and reliably endorse their false claims as matters of fact when they do so. The fact that they aren't even remotely serious, in the problem-solving sense, never even enters the picture.

And here Rosenberg sounds almost like Rush Limbaugh, who rejects bi-partisanship as an inherent political virtue:

Problem-solving and argument-winning have become two entirely antagonistic activities, and "moderate" "centrist" "bipartisanship" has become the creation of such profound confusion that the voting public won't catch on until it's far, far too late.

Today's Republicans are wrong and unreasonable. Any "middle ground" between their ideas -- the Paul Ryan budget, for example -- and reasonable progressive ideas is still wrong.  We cannot afford to call "less wrong" a job well done. We have big problems and we must be right!

The US on suicide watch: Death by 'moderation'

By Paul Rosenberg

March 22, 2013 | Aljazeera

URL: http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2013/03/2013320184843513125.html

Ryan's budget either dumb or disingenuous

BOO-ya! Miller can't miss with this shot at the demographically challenged Congressional GOP:

Did I mention that Ronald Reagan ran the federal government at 22 percent of GDP when the country’s population was much younger, and health care consumed about 11 percent of GDP?

Now Paul Ryan says we can run the federal government at 19 percent of GDP as the massive baby-boom generation retires and when health costs (largely for seniors) have already soared to 18 percent of GDP.

Sorry, but Ryan is either deeply confused or doing his best to snooker us.

Miller puts in other words, same upshot:

In 1989, when President Reagan left office, there were 34 million people on Medicare and 39 million on Social Security. In 2025, according to these programs’ trustees, there will be 73 million on Medicare and 78 million on Social Security.

This is not happening because we’re stringing up the “hammock of dependency” that Ryan often invokes. It’s happening because our famously big postwar birth cohort is getting older.

Ryan obviously knows these facts. This means he’s disingenuously trying to use the aging of America to force a severe cutback in the non-elderly, non-defense portion of government, which is already headed toward historic lows as a share of GDP.

And here's what would happen if Ryan got his way:

At 19 percent, Ryan’s vision is an America with 50 million uninsured ... forever. Of infrastructure and R&D investment that trails other advanced nations ... in perpetuity. Of a nation that assigns its least effective teachers to poor children . . . permanently. (Amazingly, Senate Democrats have fallen prey to Ryan’s gravitational pull, with the budget they put out Wednesday coming in at 21.7 percent of GDP in the years ahead, a tad below Reagan-era spending.)

Ryan thinks we’re too dumb to see what he’s up to.

Well I'm not that dumb. Are you? 

Paul Ryan is no Ronald Reagan

By Matt Miller

March 14, 2013 | Washington Post

URL: http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/matt-miller-paul-ryan-is-no-ronald-reagan/2013/03/14/bf1bddfc-8ca2-11e2-9f54-f3fdd70acad2_story.html

U.S. taxes & spending: Key facts

Here are somewhat random but indisputable facts on U.S. federal taxes and spending, all of it hyperlinked:

Corporate tax:

·        The U.S. collects less corporate tax relative to the overall economy than almost any other country in the world:  about 1.3 % of GDP in 2010, compared to 5 % in the 1950s.

·        WSJ citing the CBO: Corporate federal taxes paid fell to 12.1 % of profits earned from activities within the U.S. in fiscal 2011, the lowest % since 1972.

·        26 Fortune 500 companies paid no net federal income tax from 2008-2011.

·        WSJ:  More than 60 % of U.S. businesses with profits over $1 million pay zero corporate tax, since they are structured as pass-throughs.

·        Citizens for Tax Justice: From 2008-2010, 280 profitable Fortune 500 companies collectively paid an income tax rate of 18.5 % vs. the statutory 35 % rate, while receiving $223 billion in tax subsidies.  And at least 22 companies used offshore tax havens like the Cayman Islands (like Mitt Romney does).

Individual taxes:

·        CBO:  In 2009, the same year the Tea (Taxed Enough Already) Party was born, Americans paid the lowest average federal tax rate (17.4 %) in 30 years.

·        Bush tax cuts will cost $5.4 trillion if extended in full from 2013-2022. Romney-Ryan claim they will close tax loopholes and broaden the tax base, but repeatedly refuse to give specifics, most recently on FoxNews.

·        DC Johnston/Reuters: Per capita federal tax revenue was 31.5 % less in real terms in 2011 than in 2001, because of the recession but also Bush’s tax cuts.

·        On the “47 % who pay no income tax:”

o   Only about 17 % of households did not pay any federal income tax or payroll tax in 2009, despite the high unemployment and temporary tax cuts; in 2007, it was 14 %.

o   CBO: the poorest fifth of households paid an average of 4 % of income in federal taxes in 2007, the latest year for which these data are available.

·        Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy:  The bottom 20 % of U.S. households pay more of their income in state and local taxes than does the top 1 %.

·        Tax Policy Center: Romney’s tax plan would result in "large tax cuts to high-income households, and increase the tax burdens on middle- and/or lower-income taxpayers."

·        The Estate (“Death”) Tax affects only 0.6 % of Americans whose death would lead to the payment of any estate taxes.  Only 2.7 % of Americans receive an inheritance over $50,000.  However, elimination of the Estate Tax would cost $253 billion from 2012-2022. 

·        David Stockman, Reagan’s director of the OMB, told CNBC: "We couldn't afford those tax cuts back when they were implemented by Bush. We can't afford them now."

  

Spending and deficits:

·        NYT:  Before President Obama even took office, the CBO projected a $1.2 trillion deficit for 2009 and deficits in subsequent years, based on continuing Bush’s spending and tax policies. (The actual deficit in FY 2009 was $1.4 trillion.)

·        NYT: Only 17 percent of the increase in government debt in 2009 and 2010 was because of discretionary spending of any kind, including the stimulus bill.

·        More than 1/3 of the Recovery Act’s (stimulus bill) cost to-date has been for tax credits: $298 billion.

·        PolitiFact:  Growth in government spending under Obama is lower than at any time since President Eisenhower (adjusted for inflation).  Deficits have increased, nevertheless, because of a down economy and resulting lower tax receipts – and the Bush tax cuts.

·        OMB: Contrary to Romney’s claims, defense spending increased under President Obama, from $661 billion in 2009 to $693 billion in 2010 to $705 billion in 2011.

·        GAO:  Interest paid on the federal debt as a percentage of annual federal spending is lower under Obama – 6.4 % in 2011 – that at any time since the 1970s.  And the interest paid on federal debt as a percentage of GDP is at its lowest since WWII.

·        OMB:  As a result of recessionary unemployment, "income security" payments built into our system before Obama took office, such as unemployment insurance, disability pay, food stamps and housing assistance, increased from $431 billion in 2008 to $533 billion in 2009 to $622 billion in 2010 and slightly decreased to $597 billion in 2011. 

·        OMB federal debt figures (p. 140):  2009: $ 11.88 trillion; 2010:  $ 13.53 trillion; 2011: $14.76 trillion. That was a $2.88 trillion increase, or 24 %, over 3 years for President Obama.  Meanwhile, from 2002 to 2009, the federal debt increased from $6.2 trillion to $11.88 trillion.  That was a $5.88 trillion increase, or 91 %, over 8 years for President Bush.

·        Taken together, tax credits in the Recovery Act (stimulus bill) , and the payroll tax reduction for 160 million Americans in 2011 and 2012, both passed by President Obama, gave Americans $298 + $240 billion = $538 billion in tax relief.    

·        The non-partisan Committee For a Responsible Federal Budget projects that, without offsets that Romney’s campaign refuses to explain, his tax plan would increase the federal debt by $2.6 trillion.
·        Non-defense discretionary spending totaled 18 % of the federal budget in 2012. It includes: border control, education, environment, food safety, infrastructure, housing, veterans' healthcare, disaster relief, public safety, scientific research, etc.  

The social compact, and the morality of gov't. budgets

Most conservatives don't believe anymore in the idea of the commonwealth.  They believe "freedom" means the freedom to do whatever they want, free from responsibility to help their fellow citizens.

Recently I was discussing the economic crisis in the EU with a Frenchman.  He said it's basically OK there, because people still believe in The Social Contract of Jean Jacques Rousseau, who was an inspiration to America's Founding Fathers.  Here's what old Jack wrote in 1762:

Finally, each man, in giving himself to all, gives himself to nobody; and as there is no associate over whom he does not acquire the same right as he yields others over himself, he gains an equivalent for everything he loses, and an increase of force for the preservation of what he has.

If then we discard from the social compact what is not of its essence, we shall find that it reduces itself to the following terms:

"Each of us puts his person and all his power in common under the supreme direction of the general will, and, in our corporate capacity, we receive each member as an indivisible part of the whole."

I agree completely with Lakoff that a budget is, among other things, a moral document.  It is not just revenues and outlays.  Conservatives are very concerned with personal morality and behavior; but they overlook or downplay the moral role of the State -- not in its directing individuals' personal behavior, but in upholding the common good, preventing abject poverty, defending the weak and infirm, and applying the law equally.  

Romney, Ryan and the Devil's Budget: Will America Keep Its Soul?

By George Lakoff and Glenn W. Smith

August 22, 2012 | Huffington Post

URL:  http://huff.to/QpUCOe 

Catholic Church on the record against Paul Ryan

Has there ever been a similar situation when the U.S. Catholic Bishops went on the record against a Vice-Presidential candidate and questioned his Catholic values?

This is in addition to the letter sent this April to Rep. Paul Ryan by 90 faculty, including 12 Jesuit priests, from Catholic Georgetown University: "Your budget appears to reflect the values of your favorite philosopher, Ayn Rand, rather than the Gospel of Jesus Christ.  Her call to selfishness and her antagonism toward religion are antithetical to the Gospel values of compassion and love."

It's called tough love, you papist pinkos!  And Jesus Christ would be all for it if he were here today!  U.S. Catholics, you'll just have to take Rush Limbaugh's word for it.  

The Paul Ryan Catholic Dilemma

By Paul Brandeis Raushenbush

August 11, 2012 | Huffington Post

URL: http://huff.to/PMqFaG

Dale Earnhardt, Jr. needs $27 M from taxpayers

Dale Earnhardt, Jr. salutes our troops... but won't give 'em any freebies. Wouldn't be American.

Yo, Tea Parties, where you at?  You down with this?

Anyway, if Earnhardt is such a southern patriot, why can't he give Uncle Sam a discount, or better yet, free ad space on his Chevy for our troops?

Going further, if NASCAR is such an effective channel for communications to the key redneck demographic, then maybe Big Government should pay for Surgeon General's warnings about tobacco use on the Skoal Bandit car, too?  Maybe we should pay $ millions to paint on reminders from the CDC to get kids vaccinated?  The possibilities for useful public communications via cars driving in circles in front of captive audiences are practically endless.  

Drunk redneck idiot today; potential military hero tomorrow.

NC members fight to preserve military spending on NASCAR

By by Franco Ordonez

July 19, 2012 | McClatchy 

URL:  http://blogs.mcclatchydc.com/washington/2012/07/nc-members-fight-to-preserve-military-spending-on-nascar.html

CBO: Budget cuts + tax hikes = recession in 2013

Let's not repeat the mistakes of history!

'Fiscal Cliff' Could Cause Recession In 2013 Without Government Action, CBO Says

By Lucia Mutikani and Kim Dixon

May 22, 2012 | Reuters

A stalemate over how to tackle a series of fiscal deadlines at year's end would likely push the United States economy into recession in the first half of next year, the Congressional Budget Office warned on Tuesday.

A wave of U.S. tax hikes and automatic spending cuts - dubbed the "fiscal cliff" - are set to take effect in January unless Congress and the White House agree on ways to delay or revise at least some of them.

The CBO, the official budget and economic analyst for lawmakers, said the U.S. economy would contract at an annual rate of 1.3 percent for the first half of 2013 if lawmakers take no action to prevent the looming tax hikes and spending cuts.

"Given the pattern of past recessions ... such a contraction in output in the first half of 2013 would probably be judged to be a recession," the CBO said.

At the same time, CBO said growth would snap back in the second half of the year to 2.3 percent, though it did not offer an explanation.

Historically low tax rates enacted under former President George W. Bush in 2001 and 2003, and jobless benefits for the long-term unemployed are both set to expire on Dec. 31, as is a temporary payroll tax cut.

In addition, $1.2 trillion in across-the-board reductions in spending on federal programs would begin to phase in as a result of Congress' failure late last year to find a comprehensive deal to cut the budget deficit.

House of Representatives Speaker John Boehner rekindled the debate last week over how to handle the pending deadlines when he declared that Republicans would not consider a boost to federal borrowing authority without a greater increase in spending cuts.

While the CBO did not explicitly address the debt-limit issue, it is among the potential decisions lawmakers face at the end of the year.

The CBO said that although taking action to prevent some of the tax hikes and spending cuts could boost growth in the short term, having no long term plan for "fiscal restraint" is not sustainable.

The conventional wisdom has been that lawmakers will take no action on any of these major issues until after the Nov. 6 elections.

Earlier on Tuesday, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development warned of a sharp fiscal contraction next year that could derail the U.S. economic recovery if lawmakers stalled. It also urged the government to move only gradually to tighten its budget.

"The programmed expiration of tax cuts and emergency unemployment benefits, together with automatic federal spending cuts, would result in a sharp fiscal retrenchment in 2013 that might derail the recovery," the OECD said in its latest economic outlook.

Wall Street economists forecast that fiscal policy could tighten by about $600 billion next year, or about 4 percent of GDP, if lawmakers fail to reach an agreement. Goldman Sachs estimates the "fiscal cliff" could shave nearly 4 percentage points from GDP in the first half of 2013.

Most economists, however, expect lawmakers to find a way to soften the blow.

In its forecasts, the OECD said the U.S. economy should grow 2.4 percent this year and 2.6 percent in 2013. Those projections assume the budget deficit is cut by 1 percent and 1-1/2 percent of GDP, respectively, this year and next.

The United States has run budget deficits topping $1 trillion for three straight years, and it is on course to do so for a fourth.

Will GOP make hard cuts to troops' pay & benefits?

I wonder if those same folks on the right who want to gut "bloated" union-employee benefits want to employ the same dull scalpel to the Pentagon's pension & benefits budget?

Consider this: the average enlisted soldier retires at 43; the average officer at 47 -- and then they collect pension & health benefits for the rest of their lives, regardless of income or ability to work. That is a "Cadillac" benefits plan if I've ever heard of one.

Cutting Retiree Benefits A Sore Subject For Military

December 4, 2011 | All Things Considered on NPR

Bean counters at the Pentagon are working long hours to figure out how to cut close to a trillion dollars from the Department of Defense budget over the next 10 years.

Those were the Pentagon's marching orders after the congressional supercommittee failed to come up with a plan to slash the country's deficit. Pentagon officials are looking at cutting weapons programs, troop levels and possibly even some base closures.

Part of the defense budget usually protected from budget cuts is personnel costs: mainly health care and retirement benefits. While Defense Secretary Leon Panetta has said everything's on the table, cutting benefits for troops is not an easy sell.

Bryan McGrath served in the U.S. Navy for 21 years, part of that time commanding the USS Bulkeley, a naval destroyer. Like many officers, he had enlisted in ROTC in college and figured he'd serve four years, get school paid for and be done.

"The problem was within those first four years, I came to absolutely love what I was doing," McGrath tells weekends on All Things Considered guest host Rachel Martin. "There was no reason to leave."

The Cost Of Benefits

It's easy to listen to someone like McGrath and think the military should be doing everything possible to recruit people like him, and then take care of them after they retire. But McGrath is the first to tell you that his military benefits — his $3,000 pension, and his health care — are costing his country too much money.

"My health care costs me the equivalent of approximately one triple latte a week, about $20 a month," he says. "My view — and this is my view only – is that my 21 years of service [is] rolled up into a great big love of country, and I think my country is in trouble."

Military retiree benefits cost the Pentagon $50 billion a year. That's more than next year's entire budget for the Department of Homeland Security. There are 1.9 million military retirees drawing pay and benefits, compared to 1.5 million in the active duty force. In 2010, then-Defense Secretary Robert Gates said those costs are "eating the Defense Department alive."

(To be clear, veterans are those who have served in the military; they receive benefits from the Department of Veterans Affairs. Military retirees are those who serve 20 years or more — it is their benefits that are often seen as unsustainable.)

"Military retirees who are working age ... for a family plan you pay $460 a year, [and] that covers you and all of your dependents," says Todd Harrison, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments in Washington, D.C. "And if you're single, it's $230 a year."

When military retirees reach age 65 and are eligible to go on Medicare, they gets something called TRICARE, a Medicare supplemental insurance plan, Harrison says. It covers everything Medicare doesn't cover. The cost: It's free. In addition to that, retirees also receive pensions. Depending on the rank of the retiree, the pension can be a couple thousand dollars a month or more.

To understand why these benefits are so expensive, you have to think about when military retirees start collecting them. Unlike private sector employees, who don't receive entitlements like Social Security and Medicare until they are 65 years old, military retirees generally begin collecting benefits in their 40s. The average age of officers when they retire is 47, Harrison says. The average age of enlisted soldiers when they retire is 43.

"They're paying retirement benefits to people who are 90 [or] even 100 years old right now, who served a couple of generations ago," he says.

A Sensitive Issue

The cost of military retiree benefits, and the possibility of cutting them, is something no one in Washington wants to talk much about. Arnold Punaro is an exception.

Punaro served as a major general in the Marine Corps and is part of an agency that advises the Pentagon on budget issues. He says the line he often uses to talk about the issue is that, "General Motors didn't start out as a health care company that occasionally builds an automobile."

"We can't let these trends continue so that the [Department of Defense] turns into a benefits company that occasionally kills a terrorist," Punaro tells NPR's Martin.

People at the Pentagon know that the issue is a huge problem, Punaro says, but the problem is finding someone willing to take up the fight. Though he is eligible for military health benefits, Punaro says he chooses not to use a system he criticizes and currently pays "a small fortune" for his health care. What concerns Punaro is that the cost of retiree benefits weakening the current and future military.

"I am very concerned that as current trends continue, this country will not have the strong military it needs 20 years from now, because all of the money is going to go to pay people that are no longer serving," he says.

Punaro says it's not a new problem.

Harrison of the CSBA says military benefits have been growing, unchecked, since the end of the draft in 1973. At the time, there was a sense troops needed to be compensated better, Harrison says. The problem is the way it was done.

"They didn't try to understand how they could get the best value for every dollar of compensation they added," he says. "They basically just spread the benefits all across the board."

Harrison's fear in the current budget environment is that the opposite will occur and that cuts will be made haphazardly.

"If you're smart about it, you can mitigate, even in some cases completely eliminate, any adverse effects on your force in terms of recruiting and retention," he says.

Potential Changes

The Obama administration has suggested retirees pay about $200 a year more for their health care, which the administration says could save $6.7 billion.

Some also suggest that, instead of a pension plan, soldiers should pay into a retirement plan, like a 401(k). But Panetta recently told a group of U.S. service members that he wouldn't support a change like that.

"You're asked to put your lives on the line. You're asked to go into battle. You're asked to be able to fight for America. You're asked to deploy time and time again. Nobody ought to compare what the military is doing to the civilian sector," Panetta said.

Retired Navy Cmdr. Bryan McGrath says that's true, but protecting military benefits shouldn't undercut the military's ability to do what it was created to do: fight and win wars.

"I would submit that support for the troops starts with the notion that our position of world leadership costs something," McGrath says. "Right now, personnel costs [and] personnel entitlements — including those that come to me — are impacting our ability to put the best force on the field and I think that's something that we as a nation need to think very deeply about as we go forward."

The faux moderation of 'shared sacrifice'

I was trying to suspend judgment as I read Yale professor Stephen L. Carter's call for "shared sacrifice" from all Americans, because he was trying to sound all reasonable and non-partisan. Then I hit the following paragraph, and I was certain he was either ignorant or a fraud:

But progressivity is merely one factor in working out tax rates. It isn't the reason taxes exist. They exist to raise revenue, a point easily forgotten in the rhetoric of the day. And there isn't nearly enough income in the upper bracket to make a serious dent in the nation's debt.

First part -- true. Second part -- dead wrong. And he either knew it, so he didn't even attempt to back up this bald assertion, or else he was too lazy to look up actual statistics on U.S. personal income, taxation, and government spending. A correct understanding of all three is required to determine things like Americans' tax-paying ability and tax fairness.

So let's look at the truth, starting on the personal income side.

Between 1947 and 1973, the typical American family's income roughly doubled in real terms. Not so after. Excluding the top percentile, from 1976 to 2007, average real incomes in the U.S. grew by only 17.9 percent, compared to, say, 26.4 percent income growth among the bottom 99 percent in France over the same period.

Meanwhile, the top 1 percent of U.S. income earners captured 58 percent of total income growth. And between 1979 and 2007, after-tax income for the wealthiest 1 percent of Americans rose by 281 percent!

Correspondingly, real average U.S. wages have been flat since 1973, with a slight uptick from 1995-2001, but over the past two years actually falling, although U.S. workers' productivity (output per hour) has increased steadily over the entire period. (See income-output charts here.) Economics tells us that rising productivity translates to rising income; refer to the figures above to see where most of that income went.

Today the average per capita income of Americans is $25,000; and real median household income is below $50,000. 46,000,000 Americans must rely on food stamps. Two-thirds of Americans could not scrape together $1,000 for an emergency expense right now if they had to. And one-third of Americans has no savings.

By contrast, today the top 20 percent of income earners owns 75 percent of all U.S. net wealth, with the top 1 percent alone owning about 35 percent of all net wealth and 43 percent of all financial wealth. Furthermore, the top 10 percent controls 98 percent of all financial securities, and 81 percent of all stocks and mutual funds. The top 1 percent alone controls 61 percent of all financial securities! (To put this much financial wealth into historical context, consider that, even with its recent falls, the Dow Jones Industrial Average today is higher than it was in the bubble period of early 2006, as is today's NASDAQ, so the rich are still doing very well for themselves.)

Perhaps most tellingly, today the 400 wealthiest Americans own more wealth than the bottom 50 percent of all American households. You have to reach back to the Great Depression to find income inequality this great.

Next, the taxation side.

Faced with a national debt approaching $15 trillion, and a recent report that Americans are paying the smallest share of their income in taxes since 1958, it seems logical -- nay, unavoidable, to consider tax increases. But taxes on whose income? Again, let's briefly look at the history that got us here.

From 1965 to 1978, the top marginal tax rate was steady at 70 percent for individuals making at least $100,000, heads of households making at least $180,000, and married couples making over $200,000.

Then under Ronald Reagan, as income inequality inexplicably increased, the tax burden on Americans shifted from the very rich to everybody else: in 1982 he cut off the top three income brackets, thereby reducing the top rate to 50 percent, and set the top income threshold at $85,600 for couples, $41,500 for singles, and $60,600 for heads of households. Later Reagan further reduced the top rate to 38.5 percent, then 28 percent.

More significantly, over two terms Reagan reduced the number of tax brackets from 16 to five to only two. This last change, with the 1987 tax reform act, was nominally a tax decrease of $8.9 billion, but what it did was flatten the overall tax burden, making it less progressive, i.e. "shared sacrifice" in Prof. Carter's terms. (See Reagan's budget director Bruce Bartlett's instructive op-ed on the flattening of federal income tax rates from Reagan to the present.)

In 1992, G.H.W. Bush inched the top rate up to 31 percent by adding a third (top) bracket, caught hell for it from Republicans, and lost the next election to a mega-rich right-leaning third-party candidate. Then during the economic boom of the Clinton years, the top rate was increased slightly to 40 percent; meanwhile, Clinton added two top tax brackets for individuals making over $115,000 or heads of households making over $127,000, i.e. taxes on the middle class hardly increased. Clinton's nudge back toward the historical norm was labelled by Republicans as "the largest peacetime tax increase in American history." Incidentally, Clinton ended his second term with the first U.S. budget surplus since -- there's that fateful year again -- 1973.

And during the G.W. Bush years the top rate was lowered to 35 percent, where it remains today for single or head of household tax filers earning over $379,000 per year. Bush also added a new bottom rate of 10 percent.

Overall, we can see that, starting in the 1980s, the rich sloughed the tax burden off their shoulders and onto those of the middle class, whose income was never sufficient to cover rising federal expenditures.

Although it is true, as many Republicans remind us, that the richest 20 percent of Americans pays nearly 70 percent of federal taxes, and the top 1 percent alone pays nearly 30 percent, it is also true that the richest 20 percent earns more than 60 percent of all U.S. income, and the top 1 percent alone earns more than 20 percent. From that perspective, our tax system appears only mildly progressive.

If we look at all taxes (federal, state, and local) -- although Prof. Carter instructs us not to -- and compare them to relative incomes, then we clearly see how the system skews toward the very rich's favor. The top 20 percent (top quintile) of U.S. income earners pays about 30 percent of its annual income in taxes, whereas the bottom 20 percent (bottom quintile) pays about 17 percent of its income, the second quintile pays about 20 percent, the third (middle) quintile pays 25 percent of its income, and the fourth quintile pays nearly 29 percent. That is, overall effective U.S. tax rates are highly regressive. Which Prof. Carter says he is against.

As a final note on taxes, I must respond to Carter's misleading statement that, "When almost half of households pay no federal income taxes, the concept of shared sacrifice vanishes, and America becomes not that to which we contribute but that from which we receive." Indeed, about 46 percent of U.S. households will have no tax liability in 2011, but 17 percent of them because they are elderly with little or no income. Given their lifetime of working and paying taxes, we should be fine with that. So actually less than 30 percent of households pays no income tax, and of those, 28.3 percent does pay payroll tax (plus state and local taxes). Lastly, not to get too wonky but, due to popular tax credits, much of that 28.3 percent does pay federal income tax, too, they just get it refunded once a year, hence they do "share the pain" of having income tax deducted from every paycheck as they try to make ends meet, although I realize that doesn't lower the deficit.

That leads us, finally, to the federal spending side.

The income disbalances and flattening of tax rates described above started at about the same time the U.S. started to rack up massive annual budget deficits, first under Jimmy Carter (-$288 billion), then ballooning under Ronald Reagan by $1.8 trillion, G.H.W. Bush by $1.4 trillion, Bill Clinton by $1.4 trillion, then G.W. Bush by $6.1 trillion (!). Much to everyone's dismay, since Barack Obama took office the federal debt has increased by about $4 trillion -- but this was mostly due to plummeting tax receipts, both from G.W. Bush's tax cuts (which Obama kept in place) and the worst economy since the Great Depression. (Note: only Bill Clinton decreased America's debt-to-GDP ratio, meaning the national economy grew faster than the national debt.)

One might suppose that all this spending went to shore up the incomes of poorer Americans, yet a comparative analysis of social spending shows the U.S. spends about as much as Canada and Australia as a percent of GDP, which both have a much smaller debt-to-GDP ratio than the U.S. (Note: we should not include SS and Medicare in this discussion because they are not funded from income tax, the subject at hand). No, the biggest increase since the 1970s has been in defense spending, especially the $2 trillion already spent in Iraq and Afghanistan.

So we see that the same presidents who preached lower taxes on the rich were the same ones who blew up the national debt. Coincidence? I think not.

This is all related to the neo-liberal consensus over the past 30 years that: 1) the very rich, especially those who earn income from capital as opposed to wages, power our (consumption-driven) economy, while workers are but inputs who have no choice but to lower themselves to the cheapest standards of global labor supply; and 2) low taxation on the rich is the only economic instrument in government's toolbox, both in good times to reward them for their investments, and in bad times to encourage them to continue investing. The unspoken last word in this consensus is that 3) government spending is "out of control"... except for the things we can't live without. Too bad we can't agree what those are.

But back to Prof. Carter, who argues, basically, that it would not be fair to increase taxes on those Americans making more than $379,000 per year, nor would it be useful, because their income isn't great enough "to make a serious dent in the nation's debt."

Yet what is unfair about letting the Bush tax cuts expire for the top 2 percent, saving $700 billion over 10 years? Or better yet, going back to the 1986 top rate of 50 percent, and levying it on individuals making over $379,000 per year? And why not do as America's richest man Warren Buffet suggested, and create new top tax brackets for those making over $1 million (about 315,000 households or 375,000 individual taxpayers) and $10 million (over 8,000 households) per year? Indeed, if the super rich don't have any money to pay off our nation's debt, as Carter claims, then my goodness, who in America does?

Beyond a real progressive income tax, there are other ways to share our sacrifice, like a 0.5 percent financial transaction tax as in the UK and EU, which could raise over $175 billion per year in the U.S. yet hardly be felt by individual investors. And various luxury or excise taxes. Not to mention closing corporate tax loopholes and shutting down offshore tax havens, which, according to the NYT, have helped to reduce the corporate share of U.S. tax receipts from 30 percent in the 1950s to 6.6 percent in 2009.

Carter purports to show why Democrats and Republicans are both wrong on taxes, but he spends most of his op-ed urging cuts in federal employees' salaries and tax increases on the bottom half of income earners, both of which Democrats oppose. Well this Democrat smells a red herring. Morally, historically and arithmetically Carter's arguments don't add up.

Happy Labor Day!

Both Parties Misunderstand Taxes, Sacrifice

By Stephen L. Carter

September 1, 2011 | Bloomberg

Taxes are in bad political odor these days. True, there has been no era in which taxation was popular, but we seem to have reached a moment of particular confusion. We have one major party dedicated to the bizarre principle that nothing that is not taxed now should ever be taxed again, and another dedicated to the equally bizarre principle that taxes are a magical elixir that will eliminate the nation's indebtedness while touching only those who happen to own private jets.

In this strange and wondrous atmosphere, I would like to say a word or two in defense of taxation, and then to suggest that each party is on the track of an important truth, even if, in the rush for partisan advantage, each also misunderstands the virtues of its own position.

Taxes will inevitably go up. The Democrats are right about that much. Alas, they get the reason wrong every time they try to explain. The reason taxes must rise is not that millionaires and billionaires have too much money, or that corporations aren't paying their fair share. It's that the federal government, under the joint leadership of the two parties, has fallen so deeply into debt that its need has grown desperate. Under no plausible scenario are we going to grow ourselves out of the remarkable hole we have dug. In what ought to be a national embarrassment, our government needs more revenue to pay not for a more glorious future but for a tragically wasted past.

Narrow Tax Base

The Republicans, too, are wrong, in their opposition to any increase in any taxes for any reason. But they are right that the Democrats have made an absurd fetish of progressivity, and that the constant chatter about asking the rich to sacrifice makes it sound as if taxes are the punishment one suffers for success. And they are right in admitting, in their unguarded moments, what the Simpson-Bowles Commission pointed out: that the tax base is too narrow.

[ Progressivity isn't a "fetish," it's both a moral fairness question -- those who earn more, pay more -- and a question of math -- the bottom income earners in America have nothing to contribute to federal coffers: they have zero or negative net worth, and will for the next decade at least, since the housing bubble was their only source of wealth. - J ]

The middle of a fragile recovery may not be the proper time to increase taxes. This is particularly true given that Americans are, at the moment, highly leveraged, and many might have to take on additional debt in order to pay additional taxes. Perhaps we would be wise to wait until what Harvard University economist Kenneth Rogoff calls "the Great Contraction" -- getting rid of debt -- has run its course.

But rise taxes eventually will, and, if we are smart, they will cover a broader base. Indeed, it is at once amusing and depressing to hear all the talk of shared sacrifice when we are discussing tax increases mainly on those earning more than $250,000 a year. Part of the magic of this figure may be that few federal employees get paid as much. But one in five earns upward of $100,000 a year.

This is worth mentioning because there isn't much in the way of shared sacrifice when a taxpayer who makes, say, $275,000 a year has to pay an extra 3 percent on the amount over $250,000 ($750) while a civil servant earning, say, $175,000 a year retains all of her income. Bear in mind that a tax increase is, in effect, a reduction in income. If sacrifice is to be truly shared, why not ask federal employees to accept an across-the- board salary reduction of, say, 2 percent?

Shared Sacrifice

True, this wouldn't yield much revenue. The most recent publicly available figures, for 2009, put federal nondefense salary spending at a bit more than $15 billion a month, or $180 billion a year. Even if (as seems likely) the figure has now reached $200 billion, a 2 percent cut would save a mere $4 billion annually. Yet, as a symbolic gesture, it would do far more than any presidential address to convince voters that the government is serious about shared sacrifice.

I don't suggest this plan because I think federal employees are overpaid. I don't. But neither are the vast majority of those who happen to earn more than $250,000 in the private sector. Still, if cutting federal salaries in return for cutting the income of other taxpayers seems too much to ask, perhaps we should consider another way of sharing the sacrifice: We should broaden the tax base. Simpson-Bowles suggests reducing rates as part of the broadening, while also removing most deductions. Many liberals object that the plan would reduce the progressivity of the tax code. But this response is a non sequitur.

The progressive tax structure rests upon the eminently sensible notion that those who earn more should be taxed at a higher rate. Those of us who have benefited more -- whether because of hard work or good luck or, probably most often, some combination of the two -- ought to pay a larger part of the revenue burden. We can afford it, and, as my late father often reminded me (borrowing without attribution from Oliver Wendell Holmes), to pay taxes to the government of the U.S. is a privilege.

But progressivity is merely one factor in working out tax rates. It isn't the reason taxes exist. They exist to raise revenue, a point easily forgotten in the rhetoric of the day. And there isn't nearly enough income in the upper bracket to make a serious dent in the nation's debt.

Liberals are fond of quoting from a 1936 speech in which President Franklin Roosevelt decried "a small but powerful group which has fought the extension of those benefits, because it did not want to pay a fair share of their cost." Nice line. But it's easy to forget that F.D.R., in the very same paragraph, reminded his listeners of the "vast majority of citizens who believe the benefits of democracy should be extended and who are willing to pay their fair share to extend them."

Paying More

Precisely right. A vast majority of Americans should be willing to pay taxes. All but the very poorest should contribute financially to the great American experiment. The shared sacrifice should certainly be progressive, but it should also be shared. When almost half of households pay no federal income taxes, the concept of shared sacrifice vanishes, and America becomes not that to which we contribute but that from which we receive.

(It is frequently said, in response to this argument, that almost all employed Americans are taxed by the federal government, because they pay Social Security and Medicare taxes. But these, at least in theory, are special-purpose levies, flowing into accounts that will someday benefit the payer personally. If in fact these fees simply constitute a part of the tax burden for general purposes of governance, Washington is free to confess at any time to decades of misleading the public.)

Taxes are in themselves neither good nor evil, and both parties should stop talking as though they are. They are simply one among many ways of raising revenue. There was a time when the federal government relied almost entirely on import duties for its income. Lately its addiction has been to borrowed money. Perhaps a future generation will discover some other magical means for supporting the state. In the meanwhile, if indeed we need to sacrifice, let's at least sacrifice together.

[ This is a lame attempt by Carter to set up an "equal wrong" on both sides so he can knock down Democrats. But Democrats have never blessed or glorified taxation as a virtue in itself. Certainly no politician is dumb enough to call taxes "good," but only necessary. On the other hand, Republicans do call taxation "stealing" and IRS agents "thieves" and "thugs." - J ]

Tea Parties want 'death by 1,000 cuts' for Constitution?

The truth is that nobody is perfectly happy with the U.S. Constitution, especially those conservatives who claim to love and cherish it.

It's always been that way: the Constitution was a compromise document from the start. Just look at the Bill of Rights, and the Federalists and Anti-Federalists' debates. From its birth the document was always a bit ugly, a bit misshapen. I would argue that over time it has become more beautiful. To really love the U.S. Constitution is to love the principle of rational compromise required to preserve the union and ensure the general welfare.

Off Balance

The Balanced Budget Amendment would make the Framers weep.

By Doug Kendall and Dahlia Lithwick

July 15, 2011 | Slate

For a group that claims to revere the Constitution, the Tea Party appears pretty determined to deal it a death by a thousand cuts. Its latest attack involves a nasty little piece of constitutional revisionism, complete with a "How can you be against that?" title: the "Balanced Budget Amendment." Putting aside the political questions about whether such a law is wise or practical, it also crashes headlong into the very constitutional principles the Tea Party purports to cherish. Not only that: Now there comes word that Republicans will hold a vote on this amendment next week before even considering raising the debt ceiling. So as part of their misguided effort to undermine the Constitution, they also plan to hold hostage the full faith and credit of the United States of America.

First, a little context. Shortly after the November 2010 election, Public Opinion Strategies, a Republican polling firm, released a poll showing that 80 percent of Republican voters wanted America to "return to the Constitution." That was funny, since so many Tea Party candidates also demanded changes to important parts of the Constitution, supporting either outright repeal or odd mutations of the 14^th, 16^th, and 17^th Amendments. Respectively, these amendments, among other things, guarantee citizenship to everyone born in this country; allow the progressive taxation of incomes to fund the government; and allow "the people" of each state, as opposed to its legislature, to select senators.

[I've also heard some Tea Partiers who are against the principle of universal suffrage; they pine to return to the 18th century when only those who owned property could vote. The obvious goal of this tactic is to prevent poor people from voting, ostensibly to allow the rich landowning class a free hand to abolish the welfare state and tear up the social safety net. -- This is "paleoconservatism" at its most ancient! - J]

The question is the same today as it was last fall. Which is it, Tea Partiers: Do you want to "return to the Constitution" or to some pulpy version of it you have clubbed in your own image?

Noteworthy as the earlier amend-and-repeal efforts have been, none is being pursued with the vigor devoted today to the Balanced Budget Amendment. Introduced in the Senate by Tea Party favorite Sen. Mike Lee of Utah, it requires that revenues equal expenditures each year, and that they not exceed 18 percent of the gross domestic product in any given year. Only if two-thirds of Congress agreed could these limits be exceeded, and any bill that would "levy a new tax or increase the rate of any tax" would also need approval of two-thirds of both Houses.

A balanced budget amendment sounds like a great idea—until you read a little U.S. history and count all the times America spent more in a fiscal year than it raised in taxes and why that was necessary for our very survival. Debt helped fund the War for Independence, complete the Louisiana Purchase, and preserve the Union during the Civil War. Debt not only helped us weather the Great Depression; it also gave us the tools we needed to emerge victorious from two world wars.

This new version of the Balanced Budget Amendment also includes provisions—requiring a supermajority to override its rules or to raise taxes—not included in the version of the Balanced Budget Amendment passed by the House (but rejected by the Senate) in early 1995, during the height of the Contract with America craze. These new "Crazier than Gingrich" provisions would remove huge swaths of lawmaking power from majority rule and arbitrarily limit the size of government to a level not seen since the 1960s. Under the guise of promoting fiscal responsibility, we would be creating a government that could not govern.

But beyond all these questions lies one that should give pause to every member of the Tea Party with a pocket Constitution: What would the Framers have thought of this amendment?

It's fairly certain that George Washington and the other Founders gathered in Philadelphia in 1787 would be appalled by the Lee amendment. It is not an accident that the first two enumerated powers the Constitution vests in Congress are the power "to lay and collect Taxes … to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defense and general Welfare of the United States" and "to borrow money on the credit of the United States." The Constitution's broad textual grant of power was a direct response to the Articles of Confederation, which had imposed crippling restrictions on Congress's power to borrow and tax. These restrictions plagued the Revolutionary War effort and made a deep and lasting impression on Washington and other war veterans. Lee and the other proponents of shrinking the federal government to restore freedom misapprehend that the Constitution recognized there would be no freedom without a strong federal government to promote it.

Moreover, in creating a supermajority requirement, the sponsors of the Balanced Budget Amendment do violence to another central tenet of the framer's project: The need for majority rule. The Founders made majority rule the default rule for our democratic Constitution. As Thomas Jefferson wrote, majority rule "is the natural law of every assembly of men, whose numbers are not fixed by any other law." The Constitution specifies a handful of departures from this default rule, but each exception warrants a particular justification that is consistent with the Constitution's democratic structure. Nowhere does our Constitution burden a substantive enumerated congressional power with the leaden weight of a supermajority.

Finally, in a Constitution filled with broad principles of governance, the amendment's arbitrary spending limit of 18 percent of GDP—an awkward and unworkable figure—would stick out like a sore thumb. Contrary to Chief Justice John Marshall's warning in the landmark decision of McCulloch v. Maryland (1819), Lee's arbitrary spending limit "partake[s] of the prolixity of a legal code," and would be out of place in a document that is designed to "to endure for ages to come … to be adapted to the various crises of human affairs."

We face a high duty when amending the Constitution: to match the Framers' maturity and foresight. By every measure that would have mattered to the Founders, Lee's proposed amendment easily flunks this test. Sen. Lee fancies himself a friend to the Constitution and an originalist. So why is he pushing for the ratification of an amendment that would take us back to the days before the Constitution was even ratified? The framers trusted in the wisdom of future legislators. The Balanced Budget Amendment represents a betrayal not only of our future but of our past as well.