A balanced-budget amendment is pretty much always a stupid idea. But you know when it’s stupidest?
When you’ve just blown a multitrillion-dollar hole in the deficit, and also, umm, don’t even really plan to pass a budget.
House Republicans voted Thursday to make deficits unconstitutional. There is no universe in which this would be good policy. Were it to ever actually become a part of the Constitution (spoiler alert: It won’t, and not only because the House measure fell short of the two-thirds vote needed to advance), it would be catastrophic for our economy.
Sometimes the government needs to spend more money than it receives in a given year to respond to a crisis, such as war, natural disaster or recession.