NE1: Budget Sanity Amendment (Failed)

[Talleyrand]

I'm not a fan of "muh balanced budgets" in the game or real life. Instead of a constitutional mandate to balance budgets in this game, I would rather leave this to the discretion of our lawmakers. Not only does this allow them much more flexibility with spending, it also creates an interesting gameplay dynamic by producing possible deficits and debts. This could create possible tension in elections and be an interesting issue, as one Assembly might have to "clean up the mess" left by another.

Forcing the Northeast government to issue balanced budgets in a document as concrete as our constitution is ridiculous.

[Talleyrand]

I might be leaning no on this to be quite honestly. We've ran surpluses in our fine region for about as long as I can remember, which I feel has helped us establish programs to better serve The People.

If the future Assembles feel that this is the appropriate course of action to go with, then they can still choose to do so. All that this proposal does is create more flexibility and not restrict them.

[Talleyrand]

Also, deficit spending might make the game more interesting, but it would also make it a lot more complicated. How do you plan on incorporating government bonds, interest payments, and creditors?

This is an interesting question. Either, we'd have to oversimplify the deficit process (aka just total up excess spending not covered by revenue), or have to find a G.M. willing to help us handle things like that.

My hope with this is not to produce deficits for the sake of it, but simply to give us more flexibility. And in addition, since this is a game foremost, as you pointed out, this has the potential to make it more interesting.