Oh my. He didn’t really, did he? Yes, he did. Our junior senator voted for the insane Cut, Cap, and Balance Act (which mercifully failed to get a vote in the Senate), and then used his vote to raise money.
How crazy is this thing? Well, let Ezra describe:
As policy, Cut, Cap and Balance is an effort to take the lessons of the past 10 years and then pass a constitutional amendment preventing us from learning them. For instance: if you’re worried about deficits today, you’re partly worried about them because we passed about $2 trillion in unpaid-for tax cuts over the past decade or so, and then we had a financial crisis that jammed revenues further. CC&B’s answer? Editing the Constitution so it includes a brand-new, two-thirds supermajority in both houses of congress to raise taxes. It takes our problem and makes it worse. More specifically, it takes the United States Constitution and rewrites it to ape California’s budget process. I’m a Californian. The state’s got great weather, waves and food. But you don’t want their budget process. Trust me.
In other words:
- It requires a balanced budget.
- It makes balancing the budget basically impossible.
There’s more here on what a colossally dumb idea it is. It would shed jobs, slow down the economy, and force cuts to Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security and defense. (Why? Because that’s where the money is.)
Scott Brown voted for it, is proud of it, and is raising money from it. I suppose that’s leadership … off a cliff, maybe.