[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 14 (Tuesday, January 24, 1995)]
[House]
[Pages H540-H541]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




 TWO PROVISIONS WHICH BELONG IN BUDGET LEGISLATION, NOT IN A BALANCED 
                            BUDGET AMENDMENT

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 4, 1995, the gentleman from Ohio [Mr. Hoke] is recognized 
during morning business for 5 minutes.
  Mr. HOKE. Mr. Speaker, I want to speak this morning about the 
balanced budget amendment that we are going to begin consideration of 
either later today or tomorrow.
  This body is going to consider a bill which has two very, very 
important features in it. The one is a three-fifths majority to raise 
the debt ceiling of the Federal Government, and the other is a three-
fifths majority to increase taxes, both of which are needed and are 
absolutely good policy and should be enacted.
  In addition, Mr. Speaker, there are other issues and there are other 
sections of the amendment that we are going to consider that really do 
not belong in a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution. The ones 
I am thinking of specifically have to do with, first of all, a 
requirement that the President of the United States submit to the 
Congress a budget that purports to be in balance, or that the Congress 
of the United States should adopt a budget that purports to be in 
balance.
  [[Page H541]] Mr. Speaker, I want to talk about why those two ideas 
do not belong in the Constitution, because although, as well-intended 
as they are, as needed as they are with respect to the adoption of that 
kind of a balanced budget, the fact is that they belong in budget 
legislation and not in the Constitution.
  In order to create a budget, when the President creates a budget, 
what he does, and when the Congress creates a budget through the 
Committee on the Budget, of which I am a member, what we do and what 
the President does is, he relies on the CBO, the Congressional Budget 
Office, or OMB, Office of Management and Budget, or Joint Tax 
Committee, to come up with projections about what we are going to 
spend, what we are going to receive in revenues, and then to make 
recommendations about what the budget should be based on those things.
  The fact is that all of those projections made by OMB, CBO, or Joint 
Tax are, by definition, wrong. They must be wrong, unless by some 
incredible, extraordinary chance of luck they should be on the dollar.
  However, what we are asking in this constitutional amendment, the way 
it is worded, is that the President and the Congress should determine 
in advance what will be in balance, what will not be in balance, what 
exactly every agency is going to spend, and how much money we are going 
to raise. It is impossible to do that.
  What we do know absolutely is how much money the Government has 
borrowed and what the debt ceiling is. This is the absolute brick wall 
that will stop, except with a supermajority. Remember, this is not a 
complete stop sign. It is merely a hurdle you have to go over. It is a 
60-percent hurdle in order to continue this binge of deficit spending 
we have been on, but it is a very, very important hurdle.
  That requirement, that you must have a supermajority, a three-fifths 
majority in order to raise the debt ceiling, that is the linchpin of 
this constitutional amendment from the spending side, because what it 
means is that you cannot deficit spend without a three-fifths majority. 
That is the one that will work.
  Bill Barr, former Attorney General under President Bush, has made 
that clear in his testimony. Dr. William Nescanin, former head of the 
Council of Economic Advisers under President Reagan, has made that 
point, and other judicial scholars and constitutionalists agree that it 
is the three-fifths supermajority to raise the debt ceiling which is 
the true linchpin that will finally at least create the resistance that 
Thomas Jefferson talked about in 1789 to borrowing money.
  Jefferson said in 1789 he had one concern about this Constitution 
that he had been so instrumental in crafting and then adopting. His 
concern was that it did not create any resistance on the part of the 
Federal Government to borrowing money. That is what this constitutional 
amendment will do, it will create the resistance of a three-fifths 
majority to borrowing more money and increasing the debt service, or 
increasing the debt ceiling.
  What I am urging today, Mr. Speaker, is as we consider this balanced 
budget amendment there will be, I hope, in order a substitute that I 
took to the Committee on Rules yesterday, that is in all parts 
identical to the bill that was reported out, and I urge that Members 
will support that substitute that will be on the floor.

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