A RULE of thumb in American politics is that the value of an idea is inversely proportional to the amount it is attacked by the Left. A corollary to this rule is that any law that passes with more than eighty votes in the Senate or four hundred in the House is probably a very bad law-e.g., last year’s Kennedy-Kassebaum bill.
Now here’s a bit of cheery news: the Left is nearly apoplectic over the prospect of a Balanced Budget Amendment-which will be the first order of legislative business on Capitol Hill in February. Listening to the liberal intelligentsia’s hyperbole regarding the amendment, one might think that what was being proposed was the reintroduction of the polio virus into the population. For example, former Clinton economic advisor Alan Blinder recently moaned: “I believe it’s an unmitigated horror story. I’m as against it as I can possibly be.” Left-wing former congressman Robert Drinan, now a law professor at Georgetown University, complains that “When you begin to think about the implications, it’s horrendous.”
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