It seems like they take us all for fools, but as usual it is the genuflecting Congress and the emperor who are fooling themselves. While the United States as a functional value has been calmly downgraded (again!) to a C-minus and Americans rapidly seek alternative home bases, passports, ways of making a living off payroll and out of sight, conservatives recall the "glory days" of 1994 and 1995, and as the strutting feather-headed duo of Eric Cantor and Bob Goodlatte proclaim, it might have been so different, if only.
The crux of the Cantor-Goodlatte position is that, in March 1995, if only the Congress had sent a federal balanced budget amendment to the states for ratification, all of their congressional overspending, their lack of personal and institutional principle, their paucity of restraint, their blatant inability to comprehend basic economics, their obsession for power over the less worthy, their obscene vote selling and incessant influence whoring – all of these sins would have been washed away, instantly and permanently.
The whole debate is moot, because it has been demonstrated from the beginning that Congress has never met a law that it couldn’t ignore, modify, or break, starting with the original Constitution.
