A Four Year Balanced Budget Amendment!

Our political leaders are forever talking about balancing the budget but the idea is inevitably to balance the budget sometime in the future, not during their term in office. With a future balanced budget in mind these politicians see no problem with running a current deficit even though the unending stream of such deficits has resulted in an ever growing National Debt that puts our country at risk for a financial collapse unlike any the world has ever seen. Weve had a !reat Depression" so # suppose the one they are leading us to will have to be called the !reater Depression" or the $ltimate Depression" or perhaps the %other of all Depressions." Whatever the name it will surely be e&tremely bad, and most likely reduce the $.'. to (hird World status. 'o, is there anything we can do as citi)ens to end this foolish tendency by our political leaders* + ,alanced ,udget +mendment" to the -onstitution has long been suggested but since our budgets are for one year periods this is probably unworkable and no politician is likely to support it. (hey would rightly claim this does not give them enough fle&ibility to overcome short term economic problems. .owever, the idea of a /our 0ear ,alanced ,udget +mendment" has not been considered yet it is something # believe would be far more workable.

%y idea is that a four year balanced budget would coincide with the four year terms for which our 1residents are elected. (his means any newly elected 1resident would have the option of running deficits in the first year or two, or even three, if such deficits were believed to stimulate the economy and increase growth and employment. .owever, any deficits incurred during the first three years would have to be completely reversed by a matching surplus in the fourth year. Not a problem if the deficits result in the increased employment and growth promised since the ta& base would be much larger. ,ut if the promises turn out to be false, as is so often 2always*3 the case, then running a surplus in the fourth year would probably cause economic hardship in that year and most likely cost the 1resident his 4ob, and rightfully so. No 1resident, Democrat or 5epublican, would be reelected during a year when there was a huge cutback in government spending. 'o this most likely means that new 1residents would monitor the budget and government spending very closely during the first three years in office to insure surpluses that could be used to run a deficit during the fourth year to help his or her reelection campaign. We could live with that since it would keep the National Debt from growing. 0eah, theres a lot more to this idea and a lot of details to be ironed out but it would certainly be a heck of a lot better than what we have now6