Mr Saakashvili also earned credit for reaching out to the opposition, including offering to set up an opposition-led commission to draft a more balanced constitution and bringing forward local elections.
On Wednesday, the Senate begins debate on a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution, a top Republican priority the White House wants defeated.
Instead, it spoke in dire terms of the possibility that America could lose its AAA credit rating, and advocated spending cuts, spending caps, and a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution as the solution.
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That would mean Congressional authorization to add trillions more to the national debt, with no cuts in future planned spending of any sort, or any other limitations on future spending, such as a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution.
And Mr Hatch, for all his conservative bona fides (he has introduced bills in the Senate to amend the constitution to require balanced budgets four times over the years), worked happily with no less a leftie than Edward Kennedy to bring in children's health insurance and the Americans with Disabilities Act.
Republicans in the Senate failed by one vote to win passage of a balanced-budget amendment to the constitution.
Germany's new balanced-budget amendment to its constitution will force it to pursue a tight fiscal policy, unless the coalition circumvents it to permit tax cuts.
Some Republicans are clamouring to include still more in any agreement, including a cap on spending at 18% of GDP and backing for a balanced-budget amendment to the constitution.
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Although the Socialists opposed Mr Sarkozy's plan to adopt a balanced-budget amendment in the constitution, Mr Hollande promises to pass a golden rule of his own (as an ordinary law).
But a new balanced-budget amendment to the constitution will force Germany to slash spending or raise taxes next year the opposite of what is needed to correct Europe's imbalances and shore up growth.
Also, in a new twist that analysts say illustrates the discord among the Republican party, Republican Senator John McCain, the party's 2008 presidential nominee, took to the Senate floor to criticise House Republicans who continue to push for a balanced budget amendment to the US constitution as the price of raising the debt ceiling.
Madison and the Boys who created the U.S. Constitution attempted to guard against democracy running amok in this fashion by constructing a delicately balanced arrangement of limited government with separated and divided powers, and by erecting institutional checks and balances.
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