Reply #3: Exactly...

[RoyGBiv]

When the idea of a balanced budget was introduced with such fanfare in the 80's, it was intended as a wedge against so-called tax-and-spend Democrats. (This is how it was advanced, IOW.) It's real purpose was as an element of the overall extreme RW Republican scheme to bankrupt the government and force it to abandon anything but debt payment and defense.

Kerry took a longer view on the subject. If we had a BBA that really functioned as it would be perceived to function, for example, Bush's war in Iraq could not have been funded. More likely any such amendment would have some sort of emergency clause, but even then, the case for funding a war would have to have been made much more concretely and would have had to pass through more hurdles than it did. One function of a BBA is that it takes back congressional powers that have been deferred to the executive in the last 30 years or so.

I'm personally conflicted on a blanket BBA like one many states have. I think we could work there in steps, but it would require some actual future planning on the part of government for it to work properly. We likely never would have emerged from the Great Depression as we did without deficit spending. (We would have come out of it as the economic cycle naturally shifted, but with some very tragic results, possibly including large-scale famine and an organized criminal element more entrenched than it was in reality.) IOW, there are times when spending on credit can be necessary, if not necessarily desireable as a general practice. Any BBA that controls a country as complex and diverse as the US would have to be carefully considered.