Has anyone else noticed that they only trot out their ridiculous “Balanced Budget Amendment” when a Democratic President is sitting in the Oval Office? We first heard about the idea when Bill Clinton was the President, and it went nowhere. (Oddly enough, you may recall that Bill Clinton balanced the budget, closed the deficit and put the country on track to pay off the national debt, and he did it without a Balanced Budget Amendment.)

In the history of bad ideas, you will find some doozies — lawn darts, New Coke, the AMC Pacer, crystal meth — but few rival the Balanced Budget Amendment in either weight or depth of pure, unadulterated, ideology-driven dumbassery. Indeed, the BBA deserves it’s own wing in the Bad Idea Hall of Shame.

But it isn’t just a bad idea. It’s a dishonest one, too boot.

That is because the only thing it does is make it nearly impossible to raise revenue, while doing diddly-squat to rein in Bush-like profligate deficit spending. Bruce Bartlett called  it a “pathetic joke” because it not only lacks any enforcement mechanism, it lacks an enactment mechanism. There is nothing in the thing to prompt Congress to do anything about deficit spending. Not. One. Thing.

It’s simply a Grover Norquist wetdream, an addendum to our owner’s manual that would make it next to impossible to ever, in any way, increase revenues, let alone raise taxes.

It’s a ludicrous idea, and it deserves mockery, scorn and ridicule from every Democrat and less-crazy republican in the country. That is why this is so utterly infuriating.

One of the big victories by tea-party Republicans in the debt-ceiling measure signed into law Tuesday was securing a requirement that Congress vote later this year on a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution.

The measure would need a two-thirds vote in each chamber, and then ratification by 38 states, to succeed. And most observers believe passage in the Democratic-controlled Senate is all but impossible.

Enter Sen. Mark Udall, the centrist Democrat from Colorado, who has introduced an amendment proposal and said Tuesday that Democratic leaders have chosen his legislation to be considered in the fall.

President Obama and other senior Democrats have opposed any balanced-budget amendment, but the idea is popular with many voters – particularly independents, who are growing more fiscally conservative.

Udall is up for reelection in 2014. Many of his Democratic co-sponsors – including Sens. Claire McCaskill (Mo.), Joe Manchin (W. Va.), Bill Nelson (Fla.) and Ben Nelson (Neb.) – are running this year and need support from centrists.

Republicans in the Senate will likely rally around their own proposal, sponsored by Utah Sens. Orrin Hatch and Mike Lee, which would limit spending to 18 percent of GDP and require congressional supermajorities to raise taxes.

A bad idea is a bad idea, even when it can be described as “thoughtful.”

We don’t need a Balanced Budget Amendment to balance the budget and generate a surplus instead of spending shortfalls. All it takes is the political will to increase tax rates to what they were in the prosperous nineties and the backbone to say “no” to republican spendthrifts like Reagan and Little Boots Bush who wracked up most of the national debt all by themselves and ran deficits every year they submitted a budget.

In other words, the BBA is a cop-out. It’s a fig-leaf behind which the republicans can try to hide their shame and disguise their profligate ways.

But it is especially galling that a Democrat from Colorado is the braintrust from the Democratic side of the aisle that “went there,” because Colorado is the state that passed a “taxpayers bill of rights” back in 1994, and the BBA is to the nation what TABOR is to a state, and in Colorado it has been a formula for decline, cutting education at every level and dealing harsh blows to public health, including gutting Medicaid.

I don’t know about you, but I like the services my government provides, at every level. Everyone does, unless they’re a Randian nutjob who believes in hackneyed, magical thinking and who fervently believes (wrongly) that they would be fine without government because they are rugged individualists.

I like the fact that my city has good public transit and the purest drinking water in the country. I like that the streets are safe to drive on, I have nice, wide well-maintained sidewalks, and that a call to 911 will summon a cop, a firetruck or an ambulance should I need the services they provide.

I like the fact that my county provides healthcare to all via a voluntary tax levy we passed in 2005 with an overwhelming majority of voters supporting.

I like the services my state provides — highways, state parks, Medicaid, public health services, the highway patrol that keeps us safe on the state roadways…

I like the stuff the federal government provides. I like having a military. I like Social Security and Medicare and TriCare and the interstate highway system and scientific research and NASA and the FBI and the intelligence services.

I like having peace-of-mind when I fill a prescription that the drug I am taking is the drug that my physician prescribed, that it is safe if taken as directed and that the licensed pharmacist isn’t selling me baking soda. I like that the FAA keeps the skies safe when I fly and that the EPA keeps the businesses that operate near where I live from fouling the air and water and that OSHA makes sure that my workplace is safe.

I like that the government does these things and I don’t mind paying for them in the form of taxes, and I don’t want the beast starved. I want the beast well-fed and fit and groomed.

And if that makes me a Socialist in your eyes, then we’re on the same page.

In case you want proof that GOP nowadays stands for nothing more than Gut the Obama Presidency – no matter how badly it damages the public welfare – I’ve got a story for  you. The essential background involves the way GOP pols won’t shut up about the “failed” stimulus, even though almost all analyses of the facts show that the stimulus spending was one of the factors that saved us from a flat-out depression. Some of you have also no doubt read about the numerous instances where GOP pols who voted against the stimulus and who continue to lie about its success, have also tried to take credit for projects that the stimulus brought to their states.

Which brings us to the 112th congress where the House of Representatives is dominated by the gentlemen of the Spiteful Old Party who are getting ready to kick, scream, and hold their breath until they turn blue and pass out, or until they get their way. And it seems that what they want is to destroy the economic benefits created by the stimulus – for no more reason evidently than to deny the other guys a tangible success, even one that has already been misrepresented almost out of political existence.  

One of the ways they are planning to achieve this goal is by canceling the authority to expend the small amount of unspent money allocated to the stimulus – although such funds are almost all already committed to in-process projects. This move packs, as Think Progress observes, a double whammy:

… By cutting off stimulus funds to current projects, Republicans could leave projects half-finished and force mass layoffs at stimulus-funded sites. This wasteful idea is even more cynical given the fact that Republicans have taken credit for major stimulus projects that are still ongoing and could be affected by their new anti-stimulus budget:

Guess what Missouri project fits this description? If you guessed the Highway 141 expansion that isn’t due to be completed until September 2012, you’d be right. And guess what Missouri Tea Party Caucusing GOPer is giving his imprimatur to recalling the funds for the project? This time, you’d be right if you said Todd Akin (R-2). Now remember back to the time when work on the Highway 141 project first began, and Rep. Akin was on hand to bless the highway project and try to garner his little bit of credit for the jobs it would create and infrastructure improvement we would all enjoy. He wasn’t a bit shy about trying to hog the camera then.

Akin has been pretty blatant about claiming credit for stimulus projects in the past – we wrote some time ago about how he falsely tried to take credit for securing funds for the old Gravois bridge that was rebuilt with stimulus funds he voted against. Of course, ignoring the source of the funds for the expansion of Highway 141 in St. Louis County wasn’t in the cards, so Akin tried to hijack part of the credit for the project while simultaneously backhanding the stimulus:

This was paid for by a bill that I hate.. I didn’t vote for it and I still wouldn’t vote for it and on the other hand.. we ended up getting the money for this project which I think is a very high priority,” he said.  “It’s unfortunately just a very small part of that bill.

Much of the spending in that bill went to similar projects and to tax cuts. I wonder what it is Akin hates? Especially now that he wants to leave all those projects in the lurch without funds that have already been allocated.

While it’s sometimes fun to watch a hack politician try a delicate balancing act, the performance leaves me with another question. Just what would it take to wake up the complacent individuals who have continued to vote for Akin in election after election? Surely, few individuals, even everyday, rank-and-file Republicans, want to endorse hypocritical politicians who can turn on a dime and sacrifice the welfare of their constituents in order to score political points?