[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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