I’m sure there are people who’ve explored this issue, but in reading about the Democrats’ successful effort to raise the debt ceiling I was reminded of a suggestion a colleague made: rather than a balanced-budget amendment, which will always have exceptions, waivers, and trapdoors, why not a much simpler constitutional amendment requiring a super-majority to raise the debt ceiling? It should be a really big super-majority — say three-quarters or even seven-eighths. That way, if the Chinese bomb Pearl Harbor, there won’t be any problem getting the debt ceiling raised, but otherwise it would be extraordinarily difficult.