[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]

 
                BALANCED BUDGET CONSTITUTIONAL AMENDMENT

  Mr. GORTON. Madam President, on two previous occasions, in 1982 and 
in 1986, I opposed an amendment similar or identical to the balanced 
budget proposal to the constitution which is before this body at this 
time. I am inclined to believe that calling it a balanced budget 
amendment is something of an exaggeration. It is an amendment to the 
Constitution which will make it clearly more difficult to pass one 
unbalanced budget after another, year after year after year.
  The reason for my two negative votes on the predecessors to this 
proposal is similar to those which opponents have outlined with both 
force and eloquence yesterday and today in this body. The opponents 
make two points. First, that Congress and the President ought to accept 
the responsibility of directing this country toward a balanced budget. 
And second, that a statute rather than a constitutional amendment would 
provide a more flexible and even possibly more effective method of 
bringing the budget into balance.
  In that connection, I was an enthusiastic supporter, and I believe a 
cosponsor, of Gramm-Rudman, a statutory proposal designed to bring the 
budget into balance, which I may reflect actually caused a reduction in 
the budget for each of the years in which it was in full force and 
effect. But I observed, as did others, in the year 1990, that when the 
Gramm-Rudman shoe began to pinch, it was for all practical purposes 
repealed by this body with the assent of the President. In that case 
neither the President nor Congress were willing to deal with the 
necessity to balance the budget with severe and drastic measures.
  I believe that I can reflect on the fact that that budget debate in 
1990 was pivotal to my change of views on this subject. In that year, 
as a substitute for Gramm-Rudman, we were presented with a so-called 
budget agreement in which both high taxes were imposed by the Congress 
with the assent of the President and in theory at least a degree of 
spending restraint was imposed at the same time.
  We all know the result. The tax increases, of course, went into 
effect; few, if any, of the spending cuts went into effect; and the net 
result was that the budget deficit went up every year after the 1990 
budget agreement until the year in which we find ourselves today.
  That budget agreement led to a worse deficit by far than would have 
been the case without new tax increases but with the enforcement of 
Gramm-Rudman.
  So it is my observation after 11 years in this body that we simply 
are not going to do the job unaided or unforced; that we are not going 
to do the job by statute; that we simply are going to have to have an 
outside impetus, an outside drive to reach a balanced budget or even to 
close in on that desirable object.
  I suppose one could put it slightly differently. Since the last 
debate on this issue in 1986, we have had a couple of trillion reasons 
for the passage of this constitutional amendment, each one of those 
reasons being an additional dollar of debt for the United States of 
America.
  Now, I confess, of course, that I made up my mind on this issue some 
time ago, no later than sometime last year. But that change in heart 
was overwhelmingly reinforced by an incident which took place less than 
2 weeks ago. This Senator and a handful of others were present in a 
hearing of the Senate Budget Committee, at which the sole witness was 
Laura Tyson, the Chief of the President's Council of Economic Advisers. 
The distinguished senior Senator from Illinois [Mr. Simon], the primary 
sponsor of this resolution, was present and engaged in an extended and 
intellectually stimulating debate with Ms. Tyson on the balanced budget 
amendment.
  She forcefully expressed the views of the administration in opposing 
this resolution with one technical objection, one objection to the 
effect that the resolution, the constitutional amendment would not 
work, after another.
  I found the answers to each of those questions, none of which were 
new, by the distinguished senior Senator from Illinois to be 
persuasive. But I also was impressed with the arguments made by 
Chairman Tyson. Simply by luck of the draw, I was permitted to question 
Ms. Tyson immediately after the end of that debate. The question I put 
to her was, if she and the administration believed that this 
constitutional amendment was not the right way to go, would not succeed 
in reaching its goals, contained technical flaws, what alternative 
course of action did she and the Clinton administration propose that 
would reach the goal of a balanced budget in any of the years through 
1999 covered by the budget figures in the submission to the Congress 
from the White House, or for that matter, through the year 2001, the 
year in which this resolution would become effective if passed by the 
Congress and ratified by the States?
  I can quote to you. Ms. Tyson said: ``It is my belief that we should 
not try to get to a full balanced budget by the year 1999.'' She went 
on to say that she did not believe, though she had not scored all the 
figures, that we should not try for such a goal by the year 2001 
either.
  Madam President, that was a candid and an honest answer. On previous 
occasions we had witnesses tell us that this was a great goal, and they 
just were not sure how they would get to it. But Chairman Tyson said we 
should not even try.
  And of course when one looks at the budget submitted to us by the 
President, one sees that by next year we are at a deficit, if 
everything comes out right, of a mere, apparently, according to the 
President, $150 billion. But the deficit figure never goes below that 
number in any succeeding year projected by the President's budget. In 
fact, it starts back up again, and I presume would be at a level of 
some $200 billion by the year 2001, the year in which this 
constitutional amendment will go into effect, if passed by the Congress 
and promptly ratified by the States. If nothing else should persuade us 
of the necessity of this outside discipline, that admission should.
  The opposition to the administration does not come from the 
proposition that there is a better way to get to a balanced budget. It 
comes from the proposition that we should never even try, that $150 
billion to $200 billion of deficit as far as the eye can see in good 
times as in bad constitutes a better fiscal policy than does a balanced 
budget.
  I do not see as a consequence any other alternative than to pass this 
proposal.
  I have one other insight into this proposal which may be of some 
value to some of my colleagues. The State of Washington last November 
voted on two initiatives having to do with taxing and with spending. 
One was a quite drastic initiative which would roll-back all of the tax 
increases passed by a new State administration in the 1993 session of 
this legislature, and therefore of course require a rollback of many 
spending programs. After a spirited and expensive campaign on both 
sides of that initiative, it lost by a relative narrow but nonetheless 
decisive majority.
  On the same ballot, however, was another initiative, an initiative 
very similar in its philosophy to the resolution which is before this 
body now, an initiative which said in short that the government of the 
State of Washington and the spending in the State of Washington by the 
government, will not grow any more rapidly than the economy of the 
State growth without a supermajority vote of the members of the State 
legislature, and under some circumstances a vote of the people of the 
State of Washington.
  That, Madam President, is precisely the philosophy of this 
resolution. That initiative in the State of Washington was passed by 
the people of the State in spite of the fact that its proponents had 
almost no money to spend on advertising, barely enough to gather the 
signatures and do a grassroots campaign. That one was passed. And it 
was passed in spite of the fact that all of the money being spent 
against the other unsuccessful initiative was being spent against it 
too.
  But the people of the State of Washington, and I think the people of 
the United States of America, do not want Government constantly to grow 
more rapidly than does the economy of the Nation as a whole.
  And finally, and related to this matter, is the fact that there is 
not a single Member of this body, no matter how junior, who is not well 
aware of the fact that lobbying organizations, whether they are 
professional and located full time here in Washington, DC, or whether 
there are those that come from our own States, overwhelmingly lobby 
Members of Congress to spend more money or to increase the size of 
Government. That lobbying effort as against those who lobby for a 
general fiscal conservatism or a general fiscal responsibility is on 
the order of 5, 6, 8, 10 to 1.
  That seems to me, Madam President, highly to justify this 
proposition, that clearly that lobbying effort does not represent or 
reflect the view of the majority of our constituents, and so to make 
the hurdles which the lobbyists for more money, for more government, 
must surmount somewhat higher than they are at the present time in 
exactly the sense the people of the State of Washington have made them 
higher by their own free vote.
  It seems to this Senator to be highly consistent with the views and 
the constitutional philosophy of those who more than 200 years ago 
wrote our Constitution in Philadelphia. I strongly suspect that if they 
had had any insight into the dynamics or politics and of lobbying and 
of logrolling and of pork barrel which are present in the lives of 
every one of us here today and at the level in which we find them, that 
they would not only have approved of but would have insisted on a 
supermajority requirement like that in this resolution.
  This resolution, Madam President, does not require a balanced budget. 
I do not see how it could require a balanced budget. But it does make 
it more difficult for those who constantly want to increase the size of 
Government and to increase its spending at a rate more rapid than the 
growth of our economy. It does make their task somewhat more difficult.
  It is a proposition which restores a degree of balance which has been 
lost not just for the last year, not just for the last decade, perhaps 
not even for the last century, but a balance which has been lost for 
some time in this country.
  So Madam President, I stand before you, before the Senate, as someone 
who, having I believe thoughtfully opposed this proposal in the past, 
now believes, with a greater depth of understanding of the real forces 
which drive politics and fiscal policy in this country, and am 
persuaded that this is a protection which we must offer to the people 
and which the people demand from us.
  So, Madam President, this is one Senator who hopes that he has 
companions who have seen the light, who believe that the time has come 
for their constitutional amendment, and the time is now.

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