Dopiest Constitutional Amendment of All Time?

Last week all 47 Senate Republicans signed on to a balanced budget amendment.

Bruce Bartlett calls it the Dopiest Constitutional Amendment of All Time. Not just because it's a bad idea, but because of "the incredibly slipshod and amateurish way it was drafted." Basically the math just doesn't work.

Ezra Klein called it The Worst Idea in Washington (which he followed with 3 more). "This isn’t just a Balanced Budget Amendment. It also includes a provision saying that tax increases would require a two-thirds majority in both houses of Congress — so, it includes a provision making it harder to balance the budget — and another saying that total spending couldn’t exceed 18 percent of GDP. No allowances are made for recessions, though allowances are made for wars. Not a single year of the Bush administration would qualify as constitutional under this amendment. Nor would a single year of the Reagan administration. The Clinton administration would’ve had exactly two years in which it wasn’t in violation. Read that again: Every single Senate Republican has endorsed a constitutional amendment that would’ve made Ronald Reagan’s fiscal policy unconstitutional. That’s how far to the right the modern GOP has swung."