Do you favor a balanced budget amendment and how will an amendment moderate out-of-control government spending?

The Balanced Budget Amendment, is just window dressing and even if it were passed, Congress would find ways to overspend.

The Unamended US Constitution by the design of election of the Senators (by State Legislatures) and the proportional spending requirement, keep the budget in line. Lincoln and the Congress, came up with the silly notion of the Income tax "to pay for the civil war". Lincoln knew it was illegal as did the members of Congress, but they knew how slowly the Court worked and once money is collected by tax agents it is never returned.

The XVI and XVII amendment destroy the stalling aspects of the Senate and the Income Tax has been used to destroy privacy, spending discipline and both encourage wealth envy.

I don't think a constitutional amendment is the way to go. Balancing the budget requires hard decisions, actual conscious decisions to make cuts. It's these cuts we disagree about, not whether or not we should have a balanced budget.

Passing a constitutional amendment is like making a New Years resolution to lose 30 pounds, but not doing any more exercising or eating any less. The resolution won't do it, it really doesn't do much more than to show you want to do it, but not enough to discipline yourself.

Plus passing and ratifying a constitutional amendment is not very likely in the foreseeable future. So it's just another case of politicians advocating a solution they know won't be implemented or wouldn't work if it -was- implemented. Which is a cop-out on their part.

We did pass a law requiring a balanced budget back in Reagan's time. Gramm-Ruddman-Hollings. The law was to last for 10 years, and it allowed for Congress to pass a temporary 'emergency' rule to allow deficits in an 'emergency'. Guess what happened every single year for the next 10 years?

Since there are practical limits to high taxes can potentially go if one is seeking to actually maximize government revenues, I think that if one is going to balance the budget that factor is in and of itself an incentive to maintain at least a modicum of spending discipline. While I am not opposed to the concept of a balanced budget amendment, the process of passing a Constitutional amendment was designed by America's Founding Fathers to have high hurdles to clear, so any attempt at passing such an amendment is sure to require patience on the part of those who back the amendment.

That said, I believe that the number one imperative here is to actually cut spending - and I don't mean misleading Washington-style "cuts" measured against a constantly rising budget baseline. If the amount in the budget doesn't actually go down in actual dollar amounts at least a little bit every year, from my vantage point not enough has been cut. Moreover, even President Obama himself has said that it isn't necessarily wise to raise taxes during a recession. Republican unwillingness to consider tax hikes thus needs to be seen as their way of holding the President to his word on this score, instead of permitting him to seize the narrative by portraying them as "intransigent" or what-have-you for resisting the idea of raising taxes.