Having a balanced budget is the goal,

having a balanced budget amendment is not.

Its a very serious constraint to put on the government the requirement to balance the budget every year.

Recessions, depressions, and wars( as if )could necessitate deficit spending.

Although with this government we've devolved to, I'm sure they'd just change the law as they needed. Debt Limit? Really, why bother.

There was a time when I wanted a balanced budget amendment, not anymore.

What I want is one of two things, I'm not picky, and am able to compromise.

I would like a repel of the 22nd amendment, the one that limits the President to two terms.

Or I'd like a new amendment to limit congressmen to two terms.

Even the playing field, then we'd start to see real substantial compromise and change and even fiscal responsibility on a yearly basis.

I think we'd even see some of these two bit dictators come around if they new the American president could be around as long as them. . . and that's a whole different world.

Yea I said it, a couple of post ago, the Obama administration isn't all bad.

Today I'm going to back up what I said, with a little help from Senior editor-at-large of Fortune magazine, Geoff Colvin. Grab the July 25th issue to read the entire interview for yourself.

Mr. Colvin profiled and questioned Vivek Kundra. Who is Vivek Kundra you ask? He's the very first CIO of the United States of America! That's Chief Information Officer.

And you know what he did that is so good, that a staunch conservative like myself can praise him despite his liberal leanings and efforts to elect Obama?

He shrunk the size of government.

Here's a sampler, according to the interview, there are over 2000 data centers in the federal government, Kundra has "plans to shut down 137 ... by years end and 800 over the next fours years, saving $3 billion."

I've been saying for a long time, its statistically improbable to not find anything you can agree with about your political opponent during the course of an administration. It was true during the eight years of Bush, and its true now. If your aren't finding at least one thing you can agree with about the Obama administration, then frankly you aren't paying as close attention as you think.

Conservatives, don't be what the liberals are, find something, if only just one issue, that you can agree with on the president. It will be an aid in tempering your arguments when in disagreement. It will allow you to sound more informed, and if that can't sway your audience, do what I do, encourage your conversationalist to not vote at all.

"What we've got here is failure to communicate. Some men you just can't reach. So you get what we had here last week. Which is the way he wants it. Well, he gets it. And I don't like it any more than you men."
-- Strother Martin, Cool Hand Luke

**** SPOILER ALERT DO NOT READ IF YOU'RE FOLLOWING BUDGET TALKS ****
If you haven't heard that line, get the movie, well worth your time.

The budget talks, not so much.

Its a horror flick, with b-rated actors and there will be a climax that is bound to disappoint every viewer. Not at all commensurate with the rhetoric and dire need of reform the poor actors are portraying on screen.

The setting is grand, the legendary capital of a once mighty empire. The plot is strong, the story of a nation's leaders coming together to forge a path toward prosperity and sustainability.

I've seen this flick before, here is what happens.

The stout conservatives, led by a strong man with strong words, will back off their line in the sand and compromise with the weaker antagonist, who in the end will take credit for all the work of the protagonists.

The problem with the budget talks, but not Cool Hand Luke, is that the conservatives are many, by circumstance, not virtue and when one speaks contrary to the rhetoric of the idealogue leader, the message gets compromised. Their position weakens.

The antagonist, the liberal, can be a lone voice, portrayed as sensible and well spoken, not answerable or beholden to any other liberal suggestion.

Eventually, public opinion, which starts firmly with the conservatives, by virtue this time of the elections results, begins to wane. Ultimately a compromise will be struck somewhere between what the conservatives want and what the liberal wants.

In the end, we all lose. There is no happy ending.

Didn't they pay attention to my campaign, he asked.

That part about hope....

What about the part about change?

I'm hard core, I actually expect a politician to do what he says, but Bush's third term is not what I expected.

To be sure, I didn't think Bush was all good, nor as bad as his critics would have us believe.

Obama has kept so many of the Bush policies, that its fair to call his term, this term, the third Bush term.

Its not all bad, and its not all good, where are the critics from the left?

Of course they don't say anything, but they should.

I expected change, I didn't vote for it, but I expected it.

Merely spending more by magnitudes wasn't exactly what I was hoping for.

The same tired old grandstanding on budgets? Just start cutting, and when you've earned some political capital then come at me with the tax the rich stump speech.

Obama and the Democrats could of taxed the rich into obscurity for the two years they shared power, 2008-2010.

But they didn't

Same old politics.

A lot of Americans hoped for change. That's what I remember about the campaign, but there really isn't any hope left, and certainly no good change.

Raising taxes isn't always going to work, at some point the economy isn't likely to respond to higher taxes with more revenues, lets not forget that taxes are by definition a deterrent, so raising income taxes deters higher incomes.

It deters jobs.

Now is the time to cut government, we are at that point where taxes are high enough. I won't accept the notion that taxes are higher in other western nations, let them have their high taxes.

At what point, if not now, do we face the tough analysis of what we as a society need out of government. What can be cut, jettisoned, done away with. What will be kept as a rightful function for inefficient bureaucracy.

We feed the poor, the children, the unable. Great. We give cell phones to the inept. Not so great.

Where are we when government is too big that no one wants anything cut, but something needs cut. When taxes are high enough, and the economy bad enough that more revenues are not a lock with higher rates.

Where and when? In 2011 is where we are, and its time to face those tough decisions that smart opinion makers have been saying are coming for decades.

Taxing the rich always gets my juices flowing, and I'm a far cry from rich!

I've called it a tired old ploy, and it is, but its become a phoenix rising from the ashes of the Democrat defeat in 2010 congressional elections.

It seems that Mr. Obama will use the old slogan to pulverize the GOP during the budget battles, and then, my word, we'll see a close election in 2012, or perhaps a flaming victory for the rejuvenated bird from Illinois.