Yes I recall Chimpy saying how the surplus belonged to us. Apparently deficits don’t belong to anybody.
If the Republicans represented a genuine majority, they wouldn’t be putting so much work into voter suppression and bypassing elections.
By your own definition, the Republican agenda is illegitimate and should not be enacted.
Now let’s not get carried away. A large enough majority in a democracy can do literally anything possible. There are no moral or constitutional limits to power with a large enough majority. With a constitutional republic things are muddier. Majorities are not always sufficient nor necessary.
What he’s clearly saying is that if the Democrats want to change the system, they just need to get a large enough majority to overcome the various means, legal and illegal, by which the Republicans are rigging the system to prevent the Democrats from getting a large enough majority to do that.
It’s not illegitimate if they get away with it!
Yeah, Lindsay’s amazing.
The problem is that this type of deficit spending is unsustainable. Trillions here and there soon add up to real money. But nobody will vote for Dems if they say that we have to jack taxes up to insane levels to control deficits and likewise nobody will vote for Republicans if they propose slashing social programs.
A balanced budget amendment that would require a balanced budget would at least force everyone to come to a compromise on the issue so we don’t end up defaulting in the near future.
Further, in all of these debates there are worries about a runaway constitutional convention. Anything that is proposed must be ratified by 3/4 of the states, so nothing insane would be enacted into the Constitution.
The problem really is that the people don’t want a balanced budget. At least not enough to vote for someone who would raise taxes and/or cut programs. They think that there is a free lunch and they’re going to eat it. We had a balanced budget in the Clinton years, but then along came W telling us that the surplus was ours and we’re going to spend it. An unfunded generation of war and here we are with multi-trillion dollar deficits, and Republicans still want more tax cuts.
But what if the “new constitution” said it only had to be ratified by 1/2 of the states, by number. Now you have 2 competing countries intermingled.
It doesn’t matter what the “new constitution” says, in order for it to be adopted via Constitutional means it needs to be ratified by 3/4 of states.
Of course a number of states could simply get together and declare their own “constitution” outside of Constitutional processes. There’s a precedent for how that gets settled.
There’s a precednet for that too: the current Constitution was adopted via an unconstitutional means, under the Articles of Confederation, which required unanimity. It can be done.
Sure. And if these states can enforce their new constitution through either force of arms or lack of opposition from the remaining states then they won’t have to worry about the requirements of the current Constitution. That’s how revolutions work.
Would you say that the current Constitution was the result of a revolution in 1788? (not being a smartass; curious how you interpret it)