[Congressional Record Volume 140, Number 17 (Thursday, February 24, 1994)]
[Senate]
[Page S]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Printing Office [www.gpo.gov]


[Congressional Record: February 24, 1994]
From the Congressional Record Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov]

 
                     THE BALANCED BUDGET AMENDMENT

  Mr. CRAIG. For the last several days, I have been on the floor 
talking about options that are available to us and the reality of what 
we are about in the consideration of a balanced budget amendment to our 
Constitution. I thought for a little bit of time this afternoon I would 
share with my fellow Senators an editorial that appeared in U.S. News & 
World Report on June 1, 1992, which I think is so very profound. Many 
of the arguments I have made, and Senator Simon of Illinois and Senator 
Hatch and Senator Strom Thurmond have made as it relates to the very 
important debate that is at hand.
  Let me read from that editorial:

       In one of his pithier observations, Winston Churchill once 
     said that ``Americans can be counted on to do the right 
     thing, after they have exhausted all other options.''
       The politicians of this country have now exhausted a raft 
     of different options to bring Federal finances under 
     control--deficit limits, tax increases, caps on domestic 
     spending, cuts in defense spending--but the Nation's budget 
     remains shamefully out of whack.

  This editorial goes on, and we will leave this on the floor for other 
Senators to share. But it draws some very profound conclusions. So let 
me read the concluding paragraph:

       But we can no longer flinch from reality; we can no longer 
     afford the illusion that we can borrow our way to prosperity. 
     President Bush, who shares responsibility with the Democratic 
     Congress for the dreadful state of our finances, should now 
     work with Capitol Hill to ensure that an amendment to the 
     Constitution is carefully and wisely drawn, that the country 
     is fully informed of the consequences, and that we move 
     forward immediately--to restore our financial solvency. 
     Somehow 49 out of our 50 States have learned to live within 
     laws requiring balanced books; surely Washington can do the 
     same.

  The person who wrote this is David Gergen, a man who is becoming well 
known around Washington in his relationship to the Clinton 
administration. I agree with what he said. I guess my only reaction to 
it is: Oh, what a difference a day and a dollar can make. But more 
important, I wish David Gergen would whisper very loudly in the ear of 
his boss that he was not only right in June of 1992, but that this 
statement is phenomenally valid today as we deal with this issue.
  So for a few more minutes let me discuss, once again, as I did the 
other day, the very essence of the amendment that has been 10 years in 
the crafting. This amendment was not dreamed up in just a few hours in 
the leadership's office of the Republican or Democratic leadership here 
in the Senate. This amendment has been before the Judiciary Committee 
time and time again in full hearings; constitutional scholars from 
across this land have looked at this amendment, have argued every point 
of it; there is a full committee report out. While it is meager, there 
are volumes and volumes behind it that back up every section that we 
have assembled in Senate Joint Resolution 41.
  Let us look at it section by section once again:

       Total outlays for any fiscal year shall not exceed total 
     receipts for that fiscal year, unless three-fifths of the 
     whole number of each House of Congress shall provide by law 
     for a specific excess of outlays over receipts by a rollcall 
     vote.

  In our terminology, a rollcall vote means a recorded vote. So, in 
other words, we have provided what is the very concern that many 
Senators have expressed here today, that in times of extraordinary 
circumstances--and there are those times in the history of nations.
  Two weeks ago, we voted on an extraordinary circumstance, and that 
was money for Los Angeles or the Los Angeles basin after it had been 
rocked by a devastating earthquake. That particular vote passed this 
Senate by the three-fifths required in section 1 because it was an 
extraordinary event. It was not the screwing in of light bulbs or the 
vacuuming of carpets, the day-to-day operations of Government. It was a 
cataclysmic or extraordinary situation.

       Section 2. States held by the public shall not be 
     increased, unless three-fifths of the whole number of each 
     House shall provide by law for such an increase by a rollcall 
     vote.

  When we look at this amendment, it is important that we look at 
section 1 and section 2 together because they are in sync, and it is 
important to understand them in the whole and not in the separate.
  What we are saying is that when the extraordinary event comes along, 
that there is an opportunity, if we choose not to raise taxes, to pay 
for it, but to recognize an alternative funding mechanism that we can 
in fact deficit spend. But we also say that it must be an extraordinary 
event, that it cannot come daily, that we should not be doing our--if 
you will--O&M budgets, the operation and maintenance budgets of our 
Government, in deficit. Today, we are doing that. Today we borrow over 
$200,000 annually, at least under the current budget scenario, and it 
can be argued just to keep the lights on, just to vacuum the carpet, 
just to remove the snow. That is bad business. That is bad budgeting. 
That is financially risky.

       Section 3. Prior to each fiscal year, the President shall 
     transmit to the Congress a proposed budget for the United 
     States Government for that fiscal year, in which total 
     outlays do not exceed total receipts.

  That is what Presidents should do.
  Now, should President Clinton do it next year if this becomes 
constitutional law? The answer is no, because all of us are realistic 
enough to understand that he could not do it next year, that it is 
going to take a reasonable period of time of the Congress and the 
executive working together to bring this budget into balance. And we 
will say, when we finally reach a final vote on Senate Joint Resolition 
41, that that should occur by the year 2001.
  So anybody who stands on the floor today and says we are going to 
destroy Social Security, we are going to have to cut $200-plus billion 
out of the budget next year either is ignoring the obvious; they are 
blind; or they did not pass the first grade in reading, because that is 
not what this amendment says at all.
  This amendment is very clear that we will work through a 6-year 
scenario to arrive at a balanced budget, and it is also assumed that 
when a President submits a balanced budget, he will also submit a 
revenue statement. He will do exactly as Bill Clinton did just a few 
weeks ago when they sent their budget to the Hill. Not only are there 
total expenditures in it, but there are estimated receipts.
  We have just heard the Senator from West Virginia and others talk 
about the impossibility of estimating receipts. We do it every day. We 
have done it for years, and we will continue to do it.
  The only difficulty here, and they do not like it nowadays, if this 
is to pass, is that there is no fallback anymore. You have to be a lot 
better at doing what you are doing. You cannot say: If we miss it by a 
few billion, we will just go out and borrow the money. If you do that, 
it would take a three-fifths vote. In other words, we have to be better 
bookkeepers and better accountants and figure our estimated receipts in 
a much better way. Many State governments do it, and they are extremely 
accurate. Why cannot our system be more accurate? Well, it can, if that 
is our dedication.

       Section 4. No bill to increase revenue shall become law 
     unless approved by a majority of the whole number of each 
     House by a rollcall vote.

  That is a constitutional majority. That is 51 votes. It is a rollcall 
vote. It does not happen in the dark of night with the yeas or the 
nays. It is: Stand up and be counted for. And the reason it is 
important that we say stand up and be counted for is that the ultimate 
pressure, the ultimate decider of who is or is not being responsible 
under the Constitution, is not this Congress, nor is it the judiciary. 
It is the individual voter in your State or my State, Mr. President, 
who is going to say, ``Senator Craig violated the amendment.'' That is 
why we want a rollcall vote, so that Senator Craig and every other 
Senator here can be held accountable.
  Today, when we handle the finances of this Nation, there is always a 
good reason for having done what we did or did not do. The 
accountability is very tough for the average citizen. And it is not by 
coincidence that this amendment is not our law; it is the people's law. 
It is the Constitution. So we ought to clearly allow them to understand 
the mechanism at hand so it is their instrument by which to judge the 
performance of the individual Members of the U.S. Congress.

       Section 5. The Congress may waive the provisions of this 
     article for any fiscal year in which a declaration of war is 
     in effect. The provisions of this article may be waived for 
     any fiscal year in which the United States is engaged in 
     military conflict which causes an imminent and serious 
     military threat to national security----

  And that is not just a judgment by the President.

     and is so declared by a joint resolution, adopted by a 
     majority of the whole number of each House, which becomes 
     law.

  In other words, it is serious business. We have engaged our men and 
women in uniform by a vote of the U.S. Congress, and in that case, as 
we always have done in times of war, spent in an extraordinary way not 
only for the safety and security of those men and women whom we have 
asked to engage in the ultimate form of foreign policy, war or military 
action, but because we have also recognized that we are investing in 
our Nation's freedom and, therefore, it is legitimate in that instance 
to spend in an extraordinary way. We did that in World War I, and we 
paid for it. We did it in World War II, and we paid for it. But 
something happened after the Korean war. We quit paying for our wars. 
We kept deficit spending and borrowing.

  This amendment brings us back to the kind of rationality that gave us 
the economic stability coming out of our first two World Wars. That is 
part of the responsibility of this amendment.

       Section 6. The Congress shall enforce and implement this 
     article by appropriate legislation, which may rely on 
     estimates of outlays and receipts.

  Oh, my goodness. We heard a phenomenal amount of debate about 
estimates and receipts the last few days. The President is going to do 
it in his budget. We do it every year now.
  Some will argue we were $20 billion off. I will tell you the reason 
we were $20 billion off. There were no consequences to being off. All 
we did was borrow the difference. If you miss it, so what? The ``so 
what'' ended up being $4.5 trillion worth of debt and $200 billion 
worth of deficit on an annualized basis. So the ``so what'' now makes a 
lot of difference. It does not mean we cannot do it better. We will do 
it better. But it does not mean we have to do it. It is not a mystical 
game. It is not in smoke-filled rooms. It is a reasonable and 
responsible process.
  This morning, I entered into the Record the statement by 250 
economists around the country who believe it can be done in a 
responsible and rational way based on this amendment. So that section 
is responsible and it is reasonable.

       Section 7. Total receipts shall include all receipts of the 
     United States Government except those derived from borrowing. 
     Total outlays shall include all outlays of the United States 
     Government except for those for repayment of debt principal.

  I think we are going to hear some interesting debate in the coming 
hours of the remainder of this week and into next week about taking 
certain items off the budget--removing them from the budget, putting 
them on autopilot. Is it wise? Well, that was the demise of Gramm-
Rudman. We took just a few things off. And it worked pretty well for a 
little while. Then we took a little more things off when decisions got 
tough, and it fell apart. And the very pressure we had, the downward 
pressure on spending that Gramm-Rudman had produced for us went away.
  There are some who are going to offer an amendment, I believe--or 
amendments--that would suggest that we take certain items off budget, 
and they will say if we do not, Social Security will be cut and slashed 
and destroyed.
  I have never yet seen this Congress, in tough, decisionmaking 
environments, ever touch Social Security. They protect it because they 
believe it is a responsible covenant and agreement with the American 
people. Money has been invested in its trust funds, and it ought to be 
honored and respected. But why should it be off budget when it becomes 
such a major portion of consideration of the finances of Government? Of 
course, it should not be, and under this amendment it would not be.

       Section 8. This article shall take effect beginning with 
     fiscal year 1999--

  We know there is an amendment out there that the authors of this 
resolution have accepted that will take that to the year 2001.
  That is the 6-year window of implementation. That is when we move 
back up to the section that says that the Congress will be responsible 
for enforcing and implementing by legislation and doing so by 
estimating receipts and outlays or outlays and receipts.
  Now some will say--and we have heard the argument before--where are 
you going to make the cuts? Well, we are suggesting, first of all, you 
create the environment in which cuts have to be made or revenues have 
to be raised before you begin that argument. We are not talking about a 
budget process here. We are talking about an arena in which a budget 
process goes forward. And, yes, we are going to have to rewrite the 
budget rules of our Government because under this amendment to our 
Constitution, they must change significantly.
  Senate Joint Resolution 41 is nearly 12 years now in the making. It 
has been looked at by constitutional scholars from all over the United 
States. It has been debated at least three times on the floor of this 
Senate and four times on the floor of the House. And it has been 
adjusted and crafted and changed a little bit in the course of that 
time to make it a more responsive document.
  This is the product, the work product. Probably this effort has been 
given more time than any other piece of legislation that will come to 
the floor of the U.S. Congress this year. And it is deserving of that 
time because it is our Constitution. It is the law of the land. It is 
that document that we so love to talk about and are so proud of, that 
our Founding Fathers, in some divinely inspired way, crafted, that has 
guided us and directed us for so long.
  But we also recognize that it is a document that, with time, can 
accept change--27 changes to date, and this would be the 28th amendment 
to the U.S. Constitution. So it is not a document that is rigid, 
unbinding, or unmalleable. Our Founding Fathers knew that it should be, 
that you had to change over time just a little bit because society 
would change. But once you have crafted an amendment and placed it in 
the Constitution, you would make it extremely difficult to change it 
once again.
  So it is not unusual--and you heard Senator Byrd and me discussing 
the majoritarian approach the other evening, the three-fifths vote; a 
tremendous vote it will take here on the floor to even send an 
amendment out to the States. Our Founding Fathers clearly wanted to 
protect this document, and so do we.
  And so, in the course of the next few days, as we continue this 
debate, let us recognize the importance of the work at hand, the time 
involved, the dedication, and the scholars who were involved with all 
of us in crafting this amendment.
  It is simple. It is clear. It is a clarion directive to the budgeting 
processes of our Government but, most importantly, to developing the 
fundamental right that I believe is inherent within the budget, and 
that is the right of every American citizen to be unburdened by the 
deficits and debt generated by its Government in a profligate way.
  So we are debating a fundamental right. And once embodied in the 
Constitution, I believe it will be every bit as strong a right as any 
of those embodied in the first 10 amendments or any other portion of 
our Constitution.
  I yield back the remainder of my time.

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