Amity Shlaes has a Bloomberg column digging into the details of the new Gramm-Rudman being discussed as part of a budget deal:
More important though is to decide what the goal here is, mere budget balancing or government cutting. A new constraint mechanism that includes tax increases may indeed check government growth, or even shrink it. Such a trigger plan, however, may also allow the House and Senate to prance around claiming they are demonstrating discipline even as they expand government. It is, after all, possible to maintain a large balanced budget. My preference would be for a mechanism whose sole aim is to make government smaller, where any spending increases triggered spending cuts of double the size.
The same beneficent "shield" effect that Gramm describes in relation to budget cuts would here, in relation to tax rate increases, work perniciously. Congressmen would be able to say raising taxes wasn't their fault, and therefore would find them easier to permit.
