Rep. Paul Ryan Votes Against Balanced Budget Amendment Because It Doesn’t Ruin The Constitution Enough

By Ian Millhiser on Nov 18, 2011 at 2:50 pm

Earlier this afternoon, just 261 members of the House voted in favor of a balanced budget amendment — far fewer that the two-thirds majority necessary for the amendment to move forward. One somewhat surprising “no” vote was House Budget Chair Paul Ryan (R-WI). Ryan is the House GOP’s chief Chicken Little on the deficit — Ryan spent the last two years of his life running around the country warning that the sky would fall unless we phase out Medicare and enact a long list of equally draconian budget reforms.

Yet, today, when Chicken Little had the opportunity to write a balanced budget amendment into the Constitution, he ran away screaming that the amendment wouldn’t do enough to transform the Constitution into a Tea Party fantasy: