America's 'National Chaplain" preaches federal balanced budget amendment, then evaporates as House votes it down

When he first came to public office back in 1978, Ohio's term-limited, lame-duck governor offered up a resolution for a federal balanced budget amendment.

Donald Trump, see here campaigning in 

Columbus in 2016, signed two bills that

will add $2.7 trillion to the national debt 

over the next decade.

John Kasich has made it part of his performance politics mission to rail against red-ink spending in Washington throughout his 18 years in congress and after. Ohio's soon to be gone CEO voted for each and every one of President Ronald Reagan's budgets that ballooned the federal deficit, especially in military spending as the Great Communicator sought to grind Russia down by out spending them.

Kasich has made it part of his agenda over 40 years to blather on about how Washington should rein itself in on spending. At the same time, he's never turned down a dollar DC was handing out if those bucks furthered some aspect of his political agenda.

In Amazing Grace, the composer says, "I once was lost, but now am found. T'was blind but now I see." Kasich, who can hardly keep the Lord out of any comment he makes, is still lost and still can't see, when it comes to debts and deficit spending.

In Ohio, where he's cut income taxes several times based on his misunderstanding of economics, the state found itself nearly a billion dollars short of a balanced budget. So what did the GOP-controlled legislature do? Of course, it made cuts to other important programs to come into balance as state law requires. For reasons too numerous to cover now, Ohio ranks 40th among states, a measure of how poorly Kasich's budget razzle dazzle has worked over two terms.

In DC this week, the U.S. House of Representatives, with a large margin of like-minded Republicans who cry about deficits and debt but only add to it when they can with tax cut bills and massive military spending, failed to pass a federal balanced budget amendment.

As the Los Angeles Times put it, "As House Republicans prepare to vote this week on a constitutional amendment to require a balanced federal budget, it's hard to know what adjective to apply: Cynical? Ironic? Hypocritical? Or all of the above?"

The Golden State newspaper added this observation: "...Republicans have taken every one of those opportunities to make the deficit worse, whether by passing a wholly unwarranted and enormously expensive tax cut or demanding budget-busting increases in spending on defense and homeland security (increases that Democrats were more than happy to support, as long as their favorite domestic programs were similarly blessed)."

Back in Ohio, a state where Kasich spends increasingly less time governing because hes mounting another peek-a-boo campaign to run for president in 2020, his voice on one of his favorite topics—a federal balanced budget amendment—was a silent as a rural night in Appalachia. Instead of being the lead voice in pushing his party members to adopt the bill—which lost 233-184—Kasich disappeared from the effort.

As Maya MacGuineas, president of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, put it according to USA Today, "Anyone supporting a balanced budget amendment should also have a plan to achieve a balanced budget and support efforts to implement such a plan; otherwise, it is not a serious proposal."

Kasich and others have no plan that doesn't include exempting military spending while simultaneously cutting Medicare, Social Security and Medicaid drastically to make up for being blind on defense spending and tax cuts that don't create jobs of prosperity for anyone but one-per-centers.

The combination of debt expected to be added after President Trump signed a massive tax cut bill and an equally massive spending bill is projected to be $2.7 trillion more in debt over the coming decade, a figure the congressional budget analysts had not anticipated just a year ago. "It made sense for Washington to run large budget deficits in the wake of the deep recession in 2007-08. It makes no sense to run bigger ones now, after eight consecutive years of economic growth," the LA Times editorial board opined.

Kasich and other Republican governors who won office in 2010, including Scott Walker in Wisconsin and Rick Scott in Florida, mocked then-President Obama for his stimulus spending bill, that was far less than many responsible economists of the day said was necessary to pull the nation out of the economic ditch it found itself in, when Lehman Brothers—the storied Wall Street investment bank Kasich worked for—imploded from derivatives and sub-par mortgaged backed securities.

Rep. Jim McGovern, D-Mass., the top Democrat on the Rules Committee, said on the House floor Wednesday according to USA Today, "This Balanced Budget Amendment is supposed to trick people into believing Republicans still care about fiscal responsibility."

The woman Republicans love to demonize, that helped guide important legislation like Dodd-Frank, the stimulus bill and the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, said of the GOP bill, "The balanced budget amendment is in no way balanced in terms of values and how we invest in our future." House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., said, "Now Republicans have the chutzpah to bring forth a balanced budget amendment." She added, the real goal of that measure was “to force devastating cuts to Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security.”

Kasich voted for Ronald Reagan's Social Security fix, but then told people in his 100-plus town hall events in New Hampshire in 2016, that they would have to work longer and receive less when they retired, based on his mindset that austerity, not increasing the resources the federal government needs to do its job, is his preferred choice to make ends meet.

For these and many other reasons media are afraid to challenge Kasich on, he won't be president in 2020. He won't run as a third-party or independent candidate, since both are the kiss of death. He will find a handful of loyal donors who will keep his name and voice in the mix going forward after he leaves office later this year.

Sadly, the National Chaplain from Ohio is still lost because he still can't see.