Yesterday I heard one politician (and this person was far from alone) complaining that Congress should pass the balanced budget amendment because government should work more like the private sector and live within it's means.
What a bizarre statement.
No company I know of has a provision in its articles of incorporation limiting the amount it can borrow to a proportion of its revenues. Indeed, were business to be forced into making such a provision there would be howls of "government interference". Business has the flexibility to borrow as much as the market see fit to lend it. When markets think a company is over extended, its paper is downgraded and its cost of borrowing rises. Currently the same is true for states and nations. A balanced budget amendment to the Constitutions makes government less like the private sector, not more.
What this really says about Washington, is that there is a realization that politicians can't trust themselves (let alone each other). This is not unpredictable, since they seldom have 'skin in the game' in the long term, and those that do are adept at avoiding and diverting accountability.
If nations were to be treated like business they would be left to go bankrupt were there to come a point at which they could no longer service their debt. Market discipline would then prevent those profligate spenders from raising any additional debt and they would be forced to live within their means. (Some economists have suggested that Greece should do exactly this rather than suffer through more IMF imposed bailout conditions).
The reason, which Washington seems to understand, that this won't work is that those who rack up the spending often aren't around to answer for the consequences (any more that those who pushed for the deregulation of the finance industry were required to answer for the 2008 meltdown).
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