Richardson rolls out economic agenda

This week, Democratic candidate Bill Richardson rolled out his economic proposals for if he is elected president.  He became the first candidate in either party to call for a balanced budget amendment.  The Des Moines Register had a general run-down of the proposals:

Richardson’s economic plan also comes in the midst of a massivedownturn in the U.S. stock market, a point the governor noted in theopening lines of his speech.
He proposes four ideas to remedy the country’s economic woes:

• Support a constitutional amendment to balance the federal budget.

• Eliminate pork-barrel spending, which, he said, would save $40 billion over the next five years.

• Cut corporate welfare to save $230 billion over the next five years.

• Stop tax cuts for the wealthy, cutting taxes instead to create jobs and help the middle class.

A balanced budget amendment is more necessary now than ever before.  We have so much debt floating around in foreign markets, which we will have to pay interest on years from now.  Also, high amounts of debt can affect the value of currency.  Look at the European Union.  They have a constitutional amendment that requires a balanced budget each fiscal year.  Their currency has been beating ours for most of this decade.  A balanced budget amendment would force our Congress to be careful how it spends money, and make it harder for Senators like Ted Stevens to finance bridges to nowhere.

Comments

[Robert]

Todd I hate to have a dissagreement. I think you make many valid and well informed points in all your post and I enjoy reading them. Still I do not think it is wise to bring in the EU economy into our own. The Euro is kicking the crap out of the US dollar is because we Americans have to pay for the war and have to borrow so much money from other places which will drive down the Value as we have to then make the money or that money has to in some way enter into our market and thus, if my thinking is correct which I may be off base with, driving up our own inflation and bringing down the dollars value.
The EU still has much to learn about uniting the Europe as a whole and for being still a young organization it still have a good chance, but will take I believe compromises from their members to ever unite into a true force.
Also I disagree with the thought of a constitutional amendment for a balanced budget. Is it important, yes. It should be done without the consitution being involved. and if at some point we do create this Amendment what would happen if the nation failed to achive that balance one year. Many of our social programs started out by creating a defict in the federal government. It should be us the tax payers that demand our elected officals to do a job they were sent there to do and balance the budget. You and I dont need someone to make a law for us to balance our personal budgets for if we don't well... we don't eat. I don't have a great solution for the problem. But I would hope we could avoid the amendment.
As for the other part. We need to find another way to pay for the war. what ever happened to Iraq Oil that we were so protective of while the schools, museums, and historical landmarks were being distroyed during the early ocupation????