WASHINGTON -- The White House on Friday resoundingly rejected a push by Republicans to amend the Constitution with a balanced budget amendment as part of ongoing deficit talks."This is not a constitutional issue," White House Press Secretary Jay Carney said during his daily briefing, in response to a question about whether President Barack Obama has ruled out the idea in his negotiations with congressional leaders on a potentially $4 trillion deficit reduction deal.
"The fact is that the balanced budget amendment would be, is basically an admission by Congress that they can't do anything, right?" Carney said. "And that's not true, as [evidenced by] these discussions that we're engaged in right now. And it should not be true. And it's a shame if people actually believe that. So no, we don't support it."
The bottom line is that Congress needs to come up with a solution to budget deficits and long-term debt, he said, not punt the issue to the Constitution.
Such an amendment "is not good for the economy; it doesn't answer the problem, and we need to act because we are capable to doing the work that the American people sent us here to do," Carney said.
Brendan Buck, a spokesman for House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio), defended the need for a constitutional amendment and maintained that it wouldn't be in place of making spending cuts, but in addition to them.
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Source: Huffington
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