Gabriel Gomez, the Republican nominee to fill John Kerry’s open Senate seat in Massachusetts, is running on a platform of Congressional reforms including a constitutional balanced budget amendment. But while he is using the recycled talking point that the federal government should model itself on businesses and families and stop spending more money than it takes in, a ThinkProgress examination of his own financial disclosure filings reveals that he has taken out debt of his own.

Gomez, a wealthy private equity investor who was paid more than $993,000 last year in salary and bonuses, won last Tuesday’s Republican primary and will face Rep. Ed Markey (D) in the June 25 Senate special election. The cornerstone of his campaign is his plan to “reboot Congress.”

In addition to proposing unconstitutional legislative measures including a line-item veto and a “No Budget No Pay” law, he suggests Congress should enact a dangerous Balanced Budget Amendment to the U.S. constitution.

He explains:

BALANCED BUDGET AMENDMENT: Massachusetts has to balance its budget, and so does every family and every business. The federal government should do the same.

Government is nothing like a business and cannot be run as one — its aim is to protect its citizens, not to turn a profit. But even businesses and individuals often borrow in the short term to make investments for the long term — mortgages, lines of credits, and other sorts of loans are facts of life for millions of Americans and businesses of all sizes. Start-up businesses rarely break even for the first several years and few people can afford to buy their first home outright or pay for their kids to go to college out of pocket.

None of this should come as news to Gomez, who himself has borrowed money. His financial disclosure form reveals that despite his massive holdings and income, he took out a student loan in 2010. The debt, currently between $50,001 and $100,000, is to be paid back over a 23-year term at a 3.5 percent interest rate.

And his former company? It’s website’s frequently asked questions section says:

Does Advent use external debt as well as equity to finance its investments?
Yes, we do use third party debt financing as well as equity to finance our investments. This is typical industry practice. However, we take a very prudent approach to the use of debt.

A 2011 study by the non-partisan Center for Budget and Policy Priorities found that a Balanced Budget Amendment could throw about 15 million more people out of work, double the unemployment rate from 9 percent to approximately 18 percent, and cause the economy to shrink by about 17 percent instead of growing by an expected 2 percent.

As Congressional Republicans again rally around Rep. Paul Ryan’s (R-WI) budget and its goal of eliminating the deficit in ten years, many are using an old talking point. They claim that the federal government should model itself on the families and businesses and stop spending more money than it takes in. But a ThinkProgress examination of recent personal financial disclosure filings reveals that many of the same lawmakers who are urging the nation to balance its books are themselves in debt and have taken out personal and/or business loans.

Government is nothing like a business and cannot be run as one — its aim is to protect its citizens, not to turn a profit. Businesses and individuals often borrow in the short term to make investments for the long term — mortgages, lines of credits, and other sorts of loans are facts of life for millions of Americans and businesses of all sizes. Start-up businesses rarely break even for the first several years and few people can afford to buy their first home outright or pay for their kids to go to college out of pocket.

Still, many politicians who advocate for cuts to vital programs and a dangerous Balanced Budget Amendment to the U.S. Constitution use the argument that government needs to live with in its means because everyone else does — but have debt of their own. These hypocrites include:

• House Budget Committee Member Tom Rice (R-SC): Wrote: “At a time when hardworking American families are living off of a budget, the federal government should be no different. My colleagues and I believe it is time for America to change course and get back on a path of prosperity. This begins with a balanced budget plan.” Reported five mortgages totaling over $4 million.
• House Budget Committee Member Diane Black (R-TN): Wrote: “The state of Tennessee balances its budget, American families and businesses balance their budgets and so should the federal government,” and “Balancing the budget is not extreme; it is what American families across this country do on a regular basis.” Reported four mortgages on three properties, totaling more than $3 million.
• House Budget Committee Member Roger Williams (R-TX): Said Wednesday: “We have to have a balanced budget. I have to balance my budget. Everybody in America has to balance their family’s budget or their business’ budget, not every ten years, not even every single year, but every single day.” Reported more than $2.5 million in business debts.
• House Budget Committee Member Scott Rigell (R-VA): Boasted that he voted for a balanced budget amendment because: “I know that American families do what they have to do to live within their means; and so too should the government.” Reported $1.5 million in lines of credit, a $500,000-plus mortgage, and over $10,000 in credit card debt.

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Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal (R) has been cited as a “new voice” in the GOP and potential presidential candidate for 2016. However, in a recent op-ed, Jindal suggests Congress enact a balanced budget amendment (BBA) to the Constitution.

Not only is this a disastrous idea, it is also an old one. Bob Dole supported the policy during his 1996 presidential campaign, and the most recent GOP platform states:

We call for a Constitutional amendment requiring a super-majority for any tax increase with exceptions for only war and national emergencies, and imposing a cap limiting spending to historical average percentage of GDP so that future Congresses cannot balance the budget by raising taxes.

A balanced budget amendment overwhelmingly favors tax and spending cuts over increased revenues and puts the country “in a fiscal straightjacket.” Though tax increases require a super-majority of all members — not just those present — tax cuts can pass with a simple majority. As former Reagan economic official Bruce Bartlett explained, “the idea of mandating a balanced budget through the Constitution is dreadful.”

Requiring a super-majority to raise taxes is a recipe for fiscal calamity. Just ask California, which passed such a requirement, known as Prop 13, in 1978. Prop 13 resulted in multi-billion dollar drops in both revenue and spending and legislative gridlock. In addition, education funding per-pupil dropped from one of the highest rates in the country to one of the lowest by the 1990s.

– Greg Noth

The Republican Party spent all day Tuesday debating and drafting the party’s official platform, and by the end of the day, it approved a draft of the “most conservative platform in modern history.” After enshrining its support for radical immigration, abortion, and women’s health laws, the GOP made sure to include support for a provision that would make it virtually impossible for the federal government to raise taxes in the future:

“We call for a Constitutional amendment requiring a super-majority for any tax increase with exceptions for only war and national emergencies, and imposing a cap limiting spending to historical average percentage of GDP so that future Congresses cannot balance the budget by raising taxes.”

Requiring a 60-vote supermajority to raise taxes would make doing so virtually impossible, as the GOP’s repeated use of the filibuster in the Democratic-controlled Senate has made painfully evident. States that require a supermajority to raise taxes, like California, have created a fiscal disaster, and such a plan ignores a broad consensus among economists that tax increases, as well as spending cuts, will be necessary to reduce the nation’s debt and eventually balance its budget.

The supermajority requirement isn’t the only destructive part of the platform proposal, which is similar to the Balanced Budget Amendment the GOP pushed during the debt ceiling debate last year. That plan, according to studies, would have doubled the nation’s unemployment rate, put 15 million people out of work, and required spending cuts that would destroy the social safety net.

As for the idea that the GOP would contemplate raising taxes to pay for war, that too is ludicrous. A decade ago, the GOP took control of both sides of Congress and the White House and inherited a budget surplus. The party promptly passed massive tax cuts immediately before putting two wars on the nation’s credit card, creating the train wreck that is America’s fiscal situation right now.

Republicans have spent the last three years promising to reduce the debt and create jobs. This policy, like the party’s budget and its “job creation” policies, proves the party isn’t capable of addressing either.

Former Sen. George Allen (R-VA) is trying to regain the seat he lost in 2006 after his infamous bullying of an Indian-American campaign tracker who he called “macaca.” In this campaign, he is playing up is his support for a constitutional balanced budget amendment, in order to clean up the massive budget deficit that he helped run up last time he was in congress. And his allies at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce are also playing up the issue in their “independent” ads supporting him.

But video on Allen’s campaign site highlights his selective memory on this subject. As part of his “Ask George Allen” video series, Allen tells a questioner, “you do have my word to fight for a balanced budget amendment to the constitution as well as line-item veto authority.” He then explains his reasoning, saying:

In fact, while I was a member of the House of Representatives for one year in the early 1990s, I introduced the line item veto [and the] balanced budget amendment. We got it to a vote on the floor. And when I was in the Senate, a few years ago, I introduced it as well.

Watch the video:

But here’s what actually happened. In 2000, he ran against then-Sen. Chuck Robb (D), promoting his support for a balanced budget amendment. After getting elected, Allen waited more than five years to act. He neither authored nor co-sponsored a balanced budget amendment proposal in the Senate in the 107th or 108th Congress, while the Republican Congress and President George W. Bush took a $236 billion surplus and turned it into a $412 billion deficit. Instead, he focused his efforts on legislation like his Liberty Dollar Bill Act, a proposal to require that all U.S. one-dollar bills include the preamble to the constitution, a list of articles, and the first ten amendments.

Only in February 2006, when he was up for re-election, did Allen submit a balanced budget amendment proposal in the senate. In his speech announcing the bill, he said “I hope my colleagues recognize the seriousness, the importance, and the urgency” of his proposal. Allen was unable to get a single colleague to sign on as a co-sponsor.

But sure enough, his 2006 re-election site boasted that Allen “introduced a Constitutional amendment to require a balanced budget.”

A constitutional amendment to require a balanced budget is, in the end, a gimmick that would either require massive tax increases or massive spending cuts — cuts which could have put 15 million Americans out of work if they were enacted this year. But still, Allen is throwing his weight behind the idea as a crowd-pleaser, when there’s no chance of him actually getting it enacted.

Before the Senate took up its vote on a radical Balanced Budget Amendment proposal today, Utah Sen. Mike Lee (R) — a co-sponsor of the bill — called it “one of the most important pieces of legislation to come before the Senate in decades.” Lee is right: the Balanced Budget Amendment he and his Republican colleagues continue to push is important, since it would have tremendous ramifications for an already-struggling American economy, throwing the country back into the depths of recession.

Fortunately, the amendment failed to garner enough votes to advance, falling 47-53 along party lines. But as Republicans continue to talk about the importance of job creation and economic recovery, their repeated efforts to institute cockamamie economic policies like the Balanced Budget Amendment prove that such talk is only lip-service.

As ThinkProgress has reported since the push for such an amendment began earlier this year, the GOP’s Balanced Budget Amendment would have huge consequences for the economy. If it had been in effect this year, it would have pushed 15 million people out of work and doubled the unemployment rate, as Macroeconomic Advisers and the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities made clear last month:

If the 2012 budget were balanced through spending cuts, those cuts would total about $1.5 trillion in 2012 alone, the analysis estimates. Those cuts would throw about 15 million more people out of work, double the unemployment rate from 9 percent to approximately 18 percent, and cause the economy to shrink by about 17 percent instead of growing by an expected 2 percent.

The Republican version of the amendment would have capped spending at 18 percent of GDP and required a three-fifths majority in the Senate to raise taxes, thus requiring the budget to be balanced through drastic spending cuts that touched every federal program.

The Macroeconomic Advisers study found that the spending reductions caused by such an amendment would force deep cuts in Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, and the Children’s Health Insurance Program, findings that have been backed up by other studies as well. The Center for American Progress’ Michael Ettlinger and Michael Linden, for instance, found that such an amendment would require 25 percent cuts in every government program, from the Pentagon to Social Security to education. CBPP, likewise, found that the Senate version would require 25 percent cuts across the board.

Republicans can continue to claim they are the party that cares about protecting Social Security and Medicare. But by pushing so hard, so often for a radical amendment that analysts on both sides of the aisle have called the “worst idea in Washington,” the GOP’s policies will only exacerbate the effects of the last recession while ensuring that future recessions will be even worse.