The Tea Party is all about fiscal discipline. So what could possess Rapid City Tea Party diehard Gordon Howie to oppose a balanced budget amendment to South Dakota's constitution? The fact that the amendment was proposed by Governor Dennis Daugaard, the man who creamed Howie in the 2010 primary and whom Howie will find some way to challenge in the 2014 election.
Howie is so obsessed with undermining Governor Daugaard's power that he gives airtime on his otherwise absurdly right-wing theocratic YouTube program to the sensible ministrations of Senator Stanford Adelstein, one of the least Tea-flavored Republicans in the Legislature. In this video, Senator Adelstein explains why he's suing Secretary of State Jason Gant to place Adelstein's statement of opposition alongside Governor Daugaard's advocacy on the public explanation of Constitutional Amendment P, the balanced budget amendment.
Senator Adelstein raises some reasonable doubts about the wiggle room bad governors might get from Amendment P's fuzzy language about "anticipated revenue." To be clear, Constitutional Amendment P is entirely unnecessary. The South Dakota Constitution, Article 13, Section 2, forbids the state from incurring debt beyond $100,000. There's been some monkey business with the great Mike Rounds structural deficit, but for the most part, that clause has kept the Legislature and the Executive on a tight fiscal leash since 1889.
Adelstein says we should not risk that record of fiscal responsibility on fuzzy language. Never mind Gordon's crazy vendetta against Dennis; when in doubt, vote it out!
We need less not more laws. Each year the legislature is filled with hundreds of bills that are completely unnecessary.
Gordy looks like hell.