Is it time for a balanced budget amendment?

That's the Scripps Howard column topic this week. Ben and I note: "The current proposal -- introduced by Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., -- would require the government to spend no more than it takes in, but it doesn't stop there. It would limit government expenditures to 18 percent of the gross domestic product, and require a two-thirds majority of Congress to approve any tax increase. The government could depart from those guidelines only when the country is at war."

My take:

Tea Partiers and conservatives make a big show of their fealty to the Founders, but the proposed balanced budget amendment is a big slap in the face of Alexander Hamilton.

Hamilton, after all, urged Americans to adopt the Constitution precisely because it gave Congress unlimited power of taxation.

Limiting that power, he said, would leave the central government weak and toothless, unable to provide for the common good. He knew what he was talking about -- the Articles of Confederation that previously governed the country so restricted Congress' taxing power that it was unable to pay America's Revolutionary War debts.

"The federal government," Hamilton wrote in Federalist 31, "must of necessity be invested with an unqualified power of taxation in the ordinary modes."

He added: "How is it possible that a government half supplied and always necessitous, can fulfill the purposes of its institution, can provide for the security, advance the prosperity, or support the reputation of the commonwealth? How can it ever possess either energy or stability, dignity or credit, confidence at home or respectability abroad? ... How can it undertake or execute any liberal or enlarged plans of public good?"

Somebody should run these questions past the GOP, which seems not to care these days about the "dignity or credit" of the federal government. If Hamilton was right, the proposed balanced budget amendment -- which makes it virtually impossible to raise or levy new taxes -- would return America to the days of being a weak, fractious country with a weak, fractious government.

Balanced budgets are good things in times of peace and prosperity -- something Republicans forgot under George W. Bush. They can be actively harmful during wars or recessions. The proposed amendment addresses only half that equation, and is thus a danger to America's future.

The Founders knew better; too bad today's GOP doesn't.

Ben's take: He's agin' it too, but for different reasons.

About that FDA-sponsored SWAT team at Rawesome Foods

Stuff like this makes me think about becoming a weirdo libertarian:

A multi-agency SWAT-style armed raid was conducted this morning by helmet-wearing, gun-carrying enforcement agents from the LA County Sheriff's Office, the FDA, the Dept. of Agriculture and the CDC (Centers for Disease Control).

Rawesome Foods, a private buying club offering wholesome, natural raw milk and raw cheese products (among other wholesome foods) is founded by James Stewart, a pioneer in bringing wholesome raw foods directly to consumers through a buying club. James was followed from his private residence by law enforcement, and when he entered his store, the raid was launched.

Law enforcement then proceeded to destroy the inventory of the story by pouring the milk down the drain and / or confiscating raw cheese and fresh produce for destruction.

Understand: food safety regulations exist for a reason. Nobody's very happy when grandmas start dying of E coli because they ate bad spinach. At the same time, Rawesome Foods and its customers have made a deliberate—possibly even informed—decision not to abide by standard food practices, seeing possible benefits they think outweigh the risk.

Maybe there's a way to balance both the concerns and desires, in a way that protects public safety while giving producers and consumers the choice to experiment.

Here's my proposal: let raw food producers semi-opt out of FDA regulations—but require they plaster all their products with huge stickers and labels with a warning: "This product has not been inspected by the FDA and may not meet minimum food safety requirements." What's more, the FDA would retain the right to take away the opt-out status for five years if a producer ended up being the source of a bacterial outbreak of some sort. I'm guessing that provision would be used rarely.

What does my proposal do? Well, it lets producers and consumers make free, but informed, choices. (The cost barriers to entering the market would probably come down for new entrants, as well.) Major producers would probably opt to stay within the FDA system rather than afix those large labels to their products. But the FDA would be relieved of some of its more piddling inspection and enforcement duties. Everybody wins.

And we might not be treated to the spectacle of a SWAT team raiding a dairy farm.

Let's get rid of our government, start over with a parliament

That's the case I (probably needlessly provacatively) make in this week's Scripps Howard column.

The debt limit debate is only the latest, greatest manifestation of America's broken politics. For more than two years, President Obama has faced unprecedented Republican obstacles to getting executive branch appointees and federal district judges confirmed. The day-to-day business of government is increasingly going undone because the GOP is happy to obstruct for obstruction's sake.

Why is this the case? Partly because the two major political parties are more ideologically coherent than ever ― there are no more conservative Democrats like Scoop Jackson or liberal Republicans like Lincoln Chaffee in Congress. Politicians are less willing and less able to compromise, for fear the other side will get credit.

The problem is compounded by the divided control of Congress, where Republicans have the House and Democrats hold the Senate. Add the Senate filibuster into the mix and there are simply too many procedural roadblocks to getting even the simplest things done.

Maybe it's time to scrap the system, and start over again with a parliamentary democracy.

As commentator David Frum noted on Twitter recently, ``We're getting a good real-life poli-sci lesson as to why so few other democracies have adopted U.S. separation of powers idea."

He's right: In parliamentary democracies, one party ― or a coalition of parties ― captures control of parliament and appoints a prime minister.

It controls all the levers of government, and is thus responsible for everything that happens (and doesn't happen) on its watch.

It's no coincidence that a country like Britain was able to slash its budget a year ago, while American politicians are still dithering.

Here, politicians spend inordinate amounts of energy figuring out how to deny credit and pin blame on the other side; in the U.K., voters know exactly who is responsible.

Yes, the Founders wanted separation of powers ― but what we've ended up with is an abdication of responsibility. Maybe it's time to toss aside our broken machinery of government and start over.

Ben advocates a return to pre-FDR strict constructionism.

Back from surgery. Ish.

On July 8, I entered Thomas Jefferson University Hospital here in Philadelphia for the second surgery in my Summer of Surgery. The first was a colostomy to relieve the life-threatening diverticulitis inflammation that had brought my gastrointestinal system to a standstill. This follow-up was designed to remove several inches of diseased colon and, if all went well, to reverse the colostomy during the same procedure—making it possible to poop out my butt again, among my most cherished aspirations.

All did not go well.

Turns out a reasonably large section of my colon wasn't just diseased: it had collapsed, and the dead portions fused themselves to my bladder. And in the course of trying to separate live bladder from essentially dead colon, my bladder was nicked with a scalpel blade. A surgical urologist was called; an operation originally scheduled to take three hours or so took seven. The surgeon told me afterwards it was one of the three or four worst cases of diverticulitis he'd seen.

I came home Friday afternoon. I'm in more pain this time—my lower abdomen is basically a shambles, and it won't surprise you to understand how much THAT part of the body plays a nexus for the movement of the rest of you. But I feel more emotionally resilient. Except for one thing: after a week of inconsiderate roommates blaring their TVs without regard for anybody else, I've developed panic attacks when I hear Dr. Phil's voice. This is not nearly as funny as it sounds.

The colostomy wasn't reversed. I have to recover a couple of months from this surgery for that to happen. But I'm kind of back.

Should government do more to encourage marriage and prevent divorce?

That's the subject of this week's Scripps Howard column. It's prompted by news in several states of social conservatives leading legislative efforts to make it more difficult to divorce, as well as the unveiling of a new "Marshall Plan for marriage" by the conservative Heritage Foundation. My 300-word limit only lets me scratch the surface of the creepiness involved, but here's my shot at it:

Let's talk about freedom.

Republicans use that word -- and its cousin, "liberty" -- quite often.

Usually they're talking about financial matters. Individuals should be free from taxes. Businesses should be free from regulation. So it's odd that when the topic turns to marriage, conservatives rush to embrace the kind of nanny-state infringement on adult decision-making they otherwise decry.

What Republicans have failed to do is consider how their supposedly freedom-oriented policies may have undermined marriage in this country. One of the prime benefits of wedlock -- beyond the uniting of two persons in love -- is the economic security that comes from partnering. But such security has been increasingly difficult to come by: America's median household incomes have stagnated since 1980, even though many more households now have both a mother and a father working outside the home. That stagnation is easy to attribute to conservative policies that have steered more money to rich individuals and big corporations at the expense of workers.

In other words: It's much harder to raise a family. No wonder more middle-class Americans are "retreating from marriage," choosing cohabitation or divorce over the increasing economic strains of commitment. Rather than face those factors, though, Republicans would rather clamp down on freedom -- repeal no-fault divorce and require counseling sessions of couples that have already decided they're better off apart.

Marriage is, generally, good. That's why so many gays and lesbians have fought for that right in recent years, and why weddings and anniversaries are so significant to the rest of us. The conservative instinct to protect and promote healthy marriages is a good one.

But activists would be best served by offering carrots -- in the form of tax incentives and other economic assistance -- rather than using the stick of government to force couples to remain yoked. There's no reason to choose between promoting marriage and protecting freedom. We can do both.

Ben, needless to say, is more optimistic than I. Forget about gay marriage, though: I suspect plain ol' marriage marriage is the next front in the culture wars.

Time for my next surgery

I go under the knife again on Friday. It will probably be extra-quiet around here for awhile. I'll post a link to the latest Scripps Howard column today, and after that it'll probably be a week before I get back to a keyboard. If you want to keep up with my progress, or my half-assed opinions about anything else, you can always follow my Twitter feed.

The Wall Street Journal's misleading op-ed about defense cuts and China

You know what? I really hate it when op-ed writers deliberately conflate apples and oranges to make the oranges appear to be hordes of Chinese soldiers bent on dominating the world. That's exactly what the Wall Street Journal gives us in an offering from Dan Blumenthal and Michael Mazza. The key graph:

Last year, the Obama administration took the first steps in a $400 billion defense spending cut, ending several crucial programs. The White House has now asked for another $400 billion in cuts. China, meanwhile, has averaged 10% annual spending increases for more than 20 years. As former Secretary of Defense Harold Brown once said of the Soviets, "When we build, they build; when we cut, they build."

Here are the three faulty points of comparison:

• The writers compare China's 10 percent annual increases with $400 billion in U.S. cuts that will be made through 2023. We're not cutting $400 billion out of next year's defense budget—that's the target spread out over the next decade. And you can argue whether that's good or not, but it certainly makes the comparison completely lopsided and completely misleading. That's not fair to the WSJ's readers.

• What's more, that $400 billion in cuts? Not actually cuts, but a cut in the projected growth of spending. The defense budget would still be bigger in 2013 than it is now. Republicans call BS when Democrats pull that trick with entitlement spending; it's just as misleading when applied to the GOP's pet causes.

• What's more, the writers compare the dollar amount in cuts versus the percentage increase in China's military budget. I hate to drag out this chart again, but I have no choice:

Using Wikipedia as a quick reference, we see that U.S. defense spending in 2010 was $685 billion—about 4.7 percent of the national GDP.  China's defense spending the same year $91.5 billion—a 12 percent increase from the previous year's $78 billion, and less than 2 percent of that country's GDP. China has a long, long, long way to go before it's making the same kind of investment as the United States. You wouldn't know that from the WSJ's very misleading comparison.

We need to have a serious national conversation about America's military posture in the world, and how we should approach China as it becomes increasingly confident, capable, and assertive in the Pacific. But that conversation should be grounded in facts. That's not what the Wall Street Journal gives us.