Dear Editor: A balanced budget amendment sounds absolutely great, until you look at the obvious.

Let’s assume that Gov. Scott Walker were to sign such an amendment to Wisconsin’s Constitution. Would you trust your politician to vote on your behalf, given that his political campaign is funded by corporate interests that want just the opposite?

Ask these questions:

If your politician’s choice is to “balance the budget” by either (a) cutting entitlement or social spending or (b) cutting spending on pork barrel projects or no-bid contracts for the corporate interests that fund his elections, which way do you think the vote will go?

If your politician’s choice is to raise taxes on the top 3 percent of wage earners, or not, would you expect him to do that if those top 3 percent are the funders of his campaign? Even if raising those taxes are necessary to the vital interests of the state or nation? Or would he instead cut entitlements to protect his funders?

The truth is that a balanced budget amendment will not work until we have public funding of campaigns. We cannot trust these yokels today and we will not be able to trust them tomorrow -- unless we get the campaign bribes out of the system.