Congresswoman Gillibrand has suddenly seen the light with regard to fiscal responsibility. Apparently our freshman Congress person feels like proposing a balanced budget amendment as part of her valuable time in the Washington. 
While Kirsten may pay lip service to the obvious problems of a 9 trillion dollar debt, little examination is placed on the area of unfunded future mandates (that tune runs over 50 trillion by some conservative estimates). On the campaign trail last year she was touting an Apollo like project for alternative Energy and promising a host of provisions for health care etc. So far she's supported subsidized agri-business (dairy compact) and wage price controls (minimum wage) and there's probably no end to the goodies list her progressive supporters demand on a daily basis. Aside from the general economic theories of debt (see after the jump), one can easily point to another 120 billion wasted in Iraq as part of an effort to placate conservative voters in the district. Will there be any future candidate willing to support lower spending, rather than a convoluted constitutional process ? Unless yours truly considers another bid (that post coming soon) it's doubtful the GOP will field such a candidate. After all, Sandy Treadwell is all about other people's money too.
One of the 'outs' in this proposed ammendment is for times of war or economic down turn. While I have no doubt that war will always be high on the list of American priorities, the strikingly Keynsian concept of pumping up the economy with fresh government bills has been suspect for some time. The Nobel Prize winning economist F.A. Hayek did a neat end around on the likes of Keynes while he himself was at the London School of Economics. Needless to say like most things American, our sense of personality and either/or impressions of life don't give us adequate measure of potential alternative ways or thought. I doubt Kirsten's Ivy League education or professional life as a parasite would give her much insight on these other ideas.