[Congressional Record Volume 140, Number 18 (Friday, February 25, 1994)]
[House]
[Page H]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Printing Office [www.gpo.gov]


[Congressional Record: February 25, 1994]
From the Congressional Record Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov]

 
                       BALANCED BUDGET AMENDMENT

  The Senate continued with consideration of the joint resolution.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Robb). Who yields time?
  Mr. CRAIG addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Chair recognizes the Senator from Idaho 
[Mr. Craig].
  Mr. CRAIG. Mr. President, I yield to the senior Senator from Virginia 
10 minutes.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Virginia [Mr. Warner], is 
recognized for up to 10 minutes.
  Mr. WARNER. Mr. President, I thank the managers of the bill.
  Mr. President, I am in somewhat of an awkward position in that I had 
hoped to submit this amendment yesterday. Unfortunately there was a 
unanimous-consent request of which I was not aware and I accept the 
responsibility for not having gotten the amendment in a timely manner. 
At an appropriate time in the course of this debate, I will try to 
prevail on the managers and, if necessary, the Senate as a whole to 
consider the wisdom of this amendment.
  Mr. President, the balanced budget amendment, which I support, 
provides some flexibility with respect to Federal budgeting in time of 
war.
  Section 5 of the proposed constitutional amendment says that:

       The Congress may waive the provisions of this article for 
     any fiscal year in which a declaration of war is in effect.

  It also says that those provisions:

     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 is so 
     declared by a joint resolution.

  In subsequent debate, I will point out the very few instances in 
which--certainly in recent history--this country has declared war, 
despite the numerous military engagements we have been involved in 
short of such a formal declaration of war. Lives and limbs and the 
dollars of our Nation can be spent in military engagements, and have 
been spent in military engagements many times, without the Congress of 
the United States declaring war.
  That is the specific problem that I find with the underlying balanced 
budget amendment, which hopefully can be addressed with respect to my 
amendment.
  I am concerned that providing budget flexibility only in the 
situation of war--that is, where actual conflict has already 
commenced--is too tight a restriction to serve the Nation's security 
interests. My amendment would provide wartime flexibility also during a 
national security emergency declared by either the President or the 
Congress.
  Mr. President, there is a whole framework of laws that have grown up 
in this area describing what constitutes a national security emergency, 
and in subsequent debate I will specifically bring to my colleagues' 
attention those laws and what they are. My amendment tries to make this 
overall budget amendment, the constitutional amendment, comport with 
this recent body of law that has grown up here in recognition, Mr. 
President, of the fact that Congress does not declare wars as it did in 
times past.
  If the balanced budget amendment provided budgeting flexibility only 
when a war had already commenced, as written, it would be just too 
late, I say most respectfully to the authors. Modern wars are high-
tech, fast-moving, come-as-you-are affairs. In other words, we fight 
such wars, defend freedom and security, with what we have in our 
arsenals at the time that conflict arises, with the men and now the 
women that are in uniform and that are trained, and with the Guard and 
the Reserves, which are a very important adjunct to our overall 
national defense.
  Once a war has begun, it is too late, with today's technology, to 
start building ships and planes and ordering the equipment that our 
brave men and women in uniform need.
  We need to provide some budgeting flexibility there for periods of 
tension or increased threat that may occur in the period before a war 
breaks out, which would assure that our Armed Forces could prepare and 
ready themselves to either fight the war or hopefully deter it.
  And may I depart on that point?
  Very often, our President recognizes the opportunity to deter war, to 
stop it before it starts, by declaring a national emergency, by 
augmenting our overall national security, be it calling up the Guard or 
Reserve, or ordering the materials beforehand, and letting that send a 
signal to deter that war before it starts.
  I just simply say, in all due respect to the distinguished author and 
managers of the joint resolution, I think the balanced budget amendment 
is drawn too tightly, and it takes away from the Commander in Chief of 
the Armed Forces of the United States the opportunity to deter and take 
such steps that might avoid war, to give him the flexibility to do what 
he or she, as the case may be, thinks appropriate to deter, through 
diplomacy and other means, to protect American interest--again, a way 
to avoid a war as is written into this amendment.
  Accordingly, I propose that the budget flexibility that applies under 
the balanced budget amendment in wartime also should apply in time of 
national security emergency. We do not, of course, want to simply 
delegate broad authority to a President to claim, as a matter of just a 
passing moment with him, that a situation is a national security 
emergency and thereby escape the fiscal discipline imposed by the 
balanced budget amendment.
  We do not do that, I say to the distinguished author. My amendment 
would not do that.
  My amendment would provide a mechanism that if the President declared 
a national security emergency for the purposes of the balanced budget 
amendment, and Congress were to disagree with that declaration, we 
could, by joint resolution, override the President's waiver for the 
balanced budget amendment. Thus my amendment includes a set of checks 
and balances.
  In short, while I would give the President the authority to trigger 
the balanced budget amendment in the event of a national security 
emergency, my amendment reserves to the Congress the power to decide 
whether the balanced budget amendment would continue to apply during 
such period.
  So, Mr. President, at the appropriate time, I will discuss this 
amendment with the managers and hope that I can have it considered by 
this body as part of this debate. I regret not having included it 
yesterday in the unanimous consent agreement.
  I yield the floor
  Mr. SIMON addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Chair recognizes the Senator from 
Illinois, [Mr. Simon].
  Mr. SIMON. As the Senator knows, we have an agreement and it would 
take unanimous consent to permit the Warner amendment to be adopted.
  I ask a page here if you could take this to Senator Warner.
  This is from the GAO report of June 1992. This has obviously changed 
some, slightly. But if you will look at their projections from 1990 
down, take a look at defense spending in 1990, 24 percent, you see the 
squeeze that takes place in defense down to 8 percent.
  You know, when you talk about what is the threat to defense in the 
future, it is this growing cancer of interest, because we are just not 
being fiscally responsible.
  I join Senator Warner in wanting a strong, adequate, mobile defense. 
I look forward to working with him. But I just wanted to point that 
out, because it is one of the realities that we have to face in the 
future.
  Mr. WARNER. Mr. President, I thank the distinguished manager.
  Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to proceed for another 8 
minutes, if that is agreeable.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Chair would assume that the request would 
have the time chargeable to the Senator from Idaho.
  Mr. WARNER. Mr. President, would it be possible to ask unanimous 
consent to proceed in morning business for 6 minutes?
  Mr. REID. I object.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Objection is heard.
  Mr. REID. If I could respond to my friend from Virginia, we have been 
debating this balanced budget amendment and all day long we have had 
people coming over to speak in morning business and we have not debated 
the balanced budget amendment.
  I stated earlier today that we had to get to the balanced budget 
amendment. So I am constrained to object.
  How long does the Senator wish to take?
  Mr. WARNER. Mr. President, I simply wish to speak on behalf of a 
group that attended a meeting with the President of the United States 
this morning to discuss several key issues. But if it is going to be 
totally disruptive, I could possibly summarize my remarks in 2 minutes. 
I think I have maybe 2 minutes, Mr. President, under my current time 
allocation.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator has 1 minute and 37 seconds 
remaining on the time yielded to him by the Senator from Idaho.

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