[Congressional Record Volume 140, Number 16 (Wednesday, February 23, 1994)]
[Senate]
[Page S]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Printing Office [www.gpo.gov]


[Congressional Record: February 23, 1994]
From the Congressional Record Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov]

 
              THE BALANCED BUDGET CONSTITUTIONAL AMENDMENT

  Mr. CRAIG. Mr. President, let me say that the Senator from New 
Hampshire has spoken very clearly about the frustrations many of us 
have or are now beginning to have when we look at the President's 
budget and try to figure out what it means.
  Let me express another frustration that certainly will be part of the 
debate that will occur here on the floor of this Senate over the next 
week as we debate a constitutional amendment to balance the budget, and 
that is where does that all fit with this President and this 
administration and their budget and how can we possibly make that work?
  It is my understanding that there was an interesting internal debate 
down at the White House. The President's personal adviser said, ``Mr. 
President, you ought to be for a balanced budget,'' and yet OMB weighed 
in and said, ``You cannot be for a balanced budget.''
  Finally, Laura Tyson, the chairwoman of the President's Economic 
Advisers came up and said ``We are not for a balanced budget.'' So when 
all of these administration types paraded out in the last week to say 
we are against a balanced budget, what they were doing was saying, ``My 
salary depends on a balanced budget. If my boss had been for it, I 
would be for it.''
  What kind of fiscal commitment is that to the long-term economic 
stability of this country? It is not what I believe, it is who I do my 
bidding for.
  That is why the debate and the vote that will occur on a 
constitutional amendment for a balanced budget becomes critical in the 
coming days. Who do we do our bidding for?
  Well, I hope that this Senate starts doing its bidding for the 
taxpayers of this country, because what the battle will be here on the 
floor in the coming days will be who holds the power? Because we know 
that money is power, whether it is the personal money in your 
pocketbook, your checking account, or whether it is the ability of the 
politician to render to his or her constituency the largess of the 
Public Treasury, that is power.

  I am one who believes that power in this representative republic must 
rest with the people. That is why Thomas Jefferson believed in it and 
said we ought to have a balanced budget requirement or, in his words, 
``disallow the ability to borrow.''
  And then we heard the Senator from New Hampshire say that the 
President's own budget people, when crunching those numbers, willingly 
admit that a child born in 1994 will pay 82 percent of his or her 
personal income to Government. Where does that put that young person 20 
years from today in the prime of their productive years? It makes them 
the status of a Third World working person.
  How can this country, how could its leaders responsibly argue the 
budget process today and the one that the President has handed us and 
say that is the direction this country ought to head in? That is the 
future we offer the young people of America.
  Let us debate the balanced budget amendment. Let us look at the 
context of the President's budget. I hope that the two-thirds, the 67 
Senators that are required to send the balanced budget resolution to 
the citizens of this country, get enough political backbone to vote yes 
so that we can begin, over the course of a 6-year timeframe, to ensure 
that the young people of today will have a productive future equal to 
or greater than the one we have had the opportunity to experience.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senator's time has expired.
  The Senator from Mississippi.
  Mr. LOTT. I yield myself 5 minutes under the special order.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senator is recognized for 5 
minutes.

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