Wampum

Via the Carpetbagger Report, I learned that the House Republican Study Committee has released a written ten point agenda:

1. Make the Tax Cuts Permanent, including the repeal of the marriage-tax penalty and the death tax and pass fundamental tax reform.

2. Pass Budget Process Reform, which includes budgeting for emergencies with a rainy day fund, instituting a sunset commission for federal programs, instituting a constitutional line-item veto, and making the budget resolution carry the force of law.

3. Pass another Deficit Reduction Bill in the form of budget reconciliation, to reign in autopilot spending, which has risen from 25% of all federal spending in 1963 to 54% today, and is expected to reach nearly 60% in 2014.

4. Pass Ethics Reform that requires transparency and earmark reform that permits Members of Congress to strike earmarks on the House floor.

5. Pass the Marriage Protection Amendment, to ensure that marriage, the union of a woman and a man as husband and wife, is not redefined by activist judges.

6. Pass a Balanced Budget Amendment to put our fiscal house in order.

7. Offset all emergency supplemental spending with spending reductions and offset all new programs with simultaneous, equivalent reductions in, or eliminations of, existing programs.

8. Defend the Sanctity of Human Life, which includes banning all human cloning, passing the Unborn Child Pain Awareness Act, promoting ethical adult stem cell research, and preventing federal funding for destructive embryonic stem cell research.

9. Pass Protections for Religious Freedom, such as the Pledge of Allegiance, the Ten Commandments, and religious expression in the public square.

10. Pass legislation that stops the raid on the Social Security Trust Fund and allows Americans to own a Personal Social Security Account.

The Study Committee plan combines increasing the deficit by making the tax cuts permanent while hoping for fiscal restraint by implementing a number of procedural reforms.

For instance, the Study Committee wants a Constitutional Balanced Budget Amendment. It wants a law to prevent the raiding of the Social Security trust fund. It wants to slow entitlement spending. It wants cuts in existing programs to offset any new spending. Or at least it says that it wants those things.

One may legitimately wonder who is stopping them fromactually balancing the budget. The Republicans control the White House, the Senate and the House of Representatives. If Republicans want a balanced budget, they need no constitutional amendment. They just need to pass a balanced budget.

If they want to protect the Social Security trust fund from being raided, they just need to pass a budget that balances without resort to the trust fund.

If they want to pay for emergency expenditures with offsets from existing programs, they do not need a law requiring it, they just need to pass the cuts.

It appears that neither the study committee nor the Republican Party really want a balanced budget. They just want the votes of people who like tax cuts as well as the votes of people who want a balanced budget. The way to get both is to make the tax cuts permanent while talking loudly about how much they want to balance the budget (but never actually passing laws to accomplish it). Lather, rinse, and repeat.

As the deficit grows as a result of the tax cuts and the failure to cut spending, they can shout even louder about how much they favor fiscal restraint. As proof they will cite their support of a balanced budget amendment. Why they don't just pass the spending cuts they claim to favor, they never say.

Favoring a balanced budget amendment instead of just passing a balanced budget is not a serious position.

If they were serious, they would take advice from Nike. Just do it.