[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 15 (Wednesday, January 25, 1995)]
[House]
[Pages H682-H686]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]


                     THE BALANCED BUDGET AMENDMENT

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Gekas). Under a previous order of the 
House, the gentleman from Texas [Mr. Barton] is recognized for 60 
minutes.
  Mr. BARTON of Texas. I yield to the gentleman from Illinois.
  Mr. WELLER. Well, you know, thank you. I would like very much to 
thank the gentleman from Texas for your hard-fought long effort 
historically to bring this initiative to the floor of the House for 
debate, and you have worked long and hard to bring a tax-limitation 
balanced budget amendment, and I just want you to know the phone calls 
that I have been receiving in my office here in Washington tonight from 
the taxpayers in my district, they are calling. I had six calls 
tonight.
  Mr. BARTON of Texas. I, too, have received a number of telephone 
calls, and I had a constituent call my office in Texas today and said, 
``We want Congressman Barton to vote for that Barton three-fifths tax-
limitation amendment.'' And my receptionist said, ``Well, he is the 
named sponsor.'' He said, ``Well, you just tell him if he does not vote 
for it, he is not going to get my vote next year.'' She said, ``Well, I 
think you can expect the Congressman to vote for his own amendment.''
  But there may be some people in this Chamber that want to make a 
phone call to their Congressman and do not know the phone number. The 
number, if anybody in the Chamber would like to make such a phone call 
tomorrow, is area code 202, 224-3121, and then just ask for their 
Congressman, Congressman Barton, Congressman Forbes, Congressman 
Weller, you know, whoever your Congressman happens to be, and you will 
be put through, and since the vote is going to be at about 11, 11:30, 
Eastern time tomorrow, those phone calls should come in earlier. If 
Congressman Forbes wanted to call his own office, he would need to do 
that before 11:30 tomorrow morning.
  I yield back to the gentleman from Illinois.
  Mr. WELLER. You are absolutely right. You know, there is nothing I 
value more than hearing from the folks that I have the privilege of 
representing, and when I know that I get 10 phone calls from the 
taxpayers in my district, I recognize that they probably represent a 
total of 100 voters who agree with them and just did not take the time 
to make the telephone call. So those telephone calls, I know, are 
extremely important and, you know, one of the questions that a caller 
told me tonight is that they say, you know, the Republicans are in the 
majority now. It is going to be an easy sell. You are going to be able 
to pass that, are you not? I said, ``Well, you realize it takes a 
supermajority to pass a constitutional amendment like this.'' We need a 
bipartisan vote. We need, if every Republican votes for this, we need 
over 60 Democrats to support us, and I said, ``You know, if you have 
friends that know Democratic Members of Congress that they should call 
them and support the balanced budget amendment.''
  It is so very important that they make calls, and I certainly made 
that point, and again, I want to thank my colleague for his leadership 
on this issue. It is so important that we give Congress the discipline, 
the backbone to balance the budget and to resist the temptation to go 
back to the old ways which is always to raise taxes.
  I served in the legislature for the last 6 years in Illinois. We were 
fortunate to have a balanced budget provision in the State 
constitution. That was effective in giving those of us who wanted to 
balance the books the backbone, the discipline, to get the job
 done before we went home.

  However, my State is one of those that unfortunately does not have 
what we call the tax accountability amendment, and we are still trying 
to do that in Illinois, which would require a three-fifths vote. We 
know if you require a three-fifths vote to pass a tax increase, those 
who would like to push a tax increase know it is going to be much more 
difficult, and the obvious solution is to cut spending.
  Congress needs that discipline. I am proud to cosponsor the Barton 
amendment, the tax-limitation balanced budget amendment, in the 
Contract with America, and I certainly am proud to join with you 
tonight and participate in tonight's discussion on this important 
initiative which frankly is a historic change on how Washington works.
  Mr. BARTON of Texas. I yield to the gentleman from New York if he 
sought time.
  Mr. FORBES. I thank the gentleman.
  I would say that it is startling to me to listen to this experiment 
that they had in Arizona, if you will, the notion that they went 
forward and did the responsible thing, but they did not hold the taxes, 
and the people of Arizona unfortunately were the recipients of some bad 
policy that hurt them over the years, and my concern here is that our 
Federal taxpayers, our folks back home, understand the urgency of 
getting to the phones and making sure that Members of Congress 
understand that they want Congress, while they want them to balance the 
budget, they do not want them to take the easy way out and increase 
spending and that they want a balanced budget amendment that does put a 
lid on the ability to raise taxes.
  I know the people on Long Island, we have amongst the highest taxes 
in the Nation. We have the highest property taxes and sales taxes and 
Federal taxes to boot, and it is tough on the people of Long Island and 
our economy is still very shaky there, and people are struggling to 
hold onto their jobs, and many people do not have jobs. They are 
looking for them.
  The difficulty is to think that you have a Federal Government that 
just does not quite get it and continues to grow at alarming rates, and 
the need, I think, across America is understood, the need for a 
balanced budget amendment, and most particularly the need again, and I 
cannot stress it enough, the need to make sure that it is a balanced 
budget that does put a lid on this Congress' ability to just wantonly 
raise taxes.
                             {time}   2210

  Mr. BARTON of Texas. I thank the gentleman from New York and I yield 
to the gentleman from Indiana.
  Mr. SOUDER. I thank the gentleman from Texas.
  Mr. Speaker, I have a question. The gentleman from New York [Mr. 
Forbes] and myself have served as staffers in the other body and have 
some healthy skepticism. The gentleman from Texas [Mr. Barton] as a 
Member maybe could enlighten us a bit. Under the balanced budget 
amendment, and part of the reason I am sure the gentleman has his tax 
limitation supermajority in it, is it not possible to have a category 
that would say with waste and fraud as a deficit reduction?
  Mr. BARTON of Texas. In my town meetings, and I am sure as the 
gentleman begins to do his town meetings, his constituents are going to 
come and demand that he cut out that waste, fraud, and abuse and cut 
out pork-barrel spending. The gentleman would say that he will do it 
and he is going to be a bulldog to do it. The problem is there is no 
line in the Federal Government's budget that says waste, fraud, and 
abuse. When you get to a specific program and you say, ``Mr. Director, 
can you tell me where the waste, fraud, and abuse is, in your 
particular program?'' And the director is going to say, ``Congressman, 
there is no waste, fraud, and abuse in my program.''
  Now, I was a White House Fellow at the Department of Energy in 1981, 
part of 1982, and was a staff liaison to the Grace Commission that 
President 
[[Page H683]] Reagan empowered to look for waste, fraud, and abuse in 
the executive branch of the Federal Government. One of my jobs was to 
look at all the committees that Department of Energy officials served 
on. It turned out there were over 300 standing committees that either 
the Secretary of Energy, Deputy Secretary of Energy, the Assistant 
Secretary of Energy served on.
  So I sent out a questionnaire to everybody who served on these 
standing committees. I said, ``How often do you meet? What are the 
subjects? Do you think you can do without this committee?''
  Not one Assistant Secretary, Deputy Secretary, or Secretary himself 
wrote back in response to my question and said that the committee was 
eliminated and did not need to be established. Some of those committees 
have never met. They had never met, and
 yet they were not even willing to disestablish any of these intra-
agency committees, Department of Energy, Defense, Department of 
Commerce.

  The bottom line, as the gentleman well knows, is we have simply got 
to put a disciplinary tool in the Constitution that says, ``You shall 
balance the budget.'' We need to put in that with it, ``You shall 
balance the budget, with the incentive being cutting spending, not 
raising taxes.'' That is why the three-fifths' tax increase is so 
important.
  Mr. SOUDER. Mr. Speaker, I am most concerned that most of the 
agreements that are made wind up with tax increases because the 
spending cuts are not real.
  Is it possible to give another possibility of how this could evolve? 
While I think the tax increases could be permanent but the spending 
cuts never occur, a common tactic is to have an asterisk saying, 
``Specifics will come at a later date.'' Is it possible under a 
balanced budget amendment to do that; that is, to have illusory 
spending cuts but the tax increases be real?
  Mr. BARTON of Texas. Mr. Speaker, in order to answer that, it might 
be illuminatory to explain how the tax limitation balanced budget 
amendment is actually structured. Section 1 says that the President 
shall submit to the Congress a balanced budget and Congress shall vote 
on a balanced budget. It requires that the actual expenditures and 
receipts be less than the estimates, it requires that in order to 
increase receipts, there shall be a three-fifths' vote in both bodies 
in order to borrow money in any fiscal year and in order to increase 
the debt ceiling there shall be a three-fifth's vote in both bodies.
  There is a section that requires that the Congress shall implement 
the amendment by the appropriate legislature. There is a section that 
says the amendment shall become effective in the year 2002, or 2 years 
after requisite 38 States ratify the amendment.
  Every effort has been made to close all the loopholes so that in fact 
the President will be submitting a balanced budget, the Congress shall 
be voting on a balanced budget, the actual numbers during the fiscal 
year cannot exceed the estimates so the magic asterisk that OMB 
Director David Stockman used as a Director of the Office of Management 
and Budget for President Reagan in the early 1980's, the magic
 asterisk has gone away.

  Even the unspecified savings that Director Darman, President Bush's 
Office of Management and Budget, unspecified, to be determined later--
he had over $300 billion in those types of savings--would go away. 
Under the leadership of the new chairman of the Committee on the 
Budget, the gentleman from Ohio [Mr. Kasich] and the distinguished 
leadership of our new Speaker, and, of course, the Senate majority 
leader, Senator Dole from Kansas, we are going to present to the 
American people a true budget that does move us toward a balanced 
budget by the year 2002. There will be no budget gimmicks, no magic 
asterisks, no funny money. This is real, it is serious, it starts 
tomorrow at approximately 11:30 on this floor in this city when we vote 
to pass the tax limitation balanced budget amendment and send it to the 
other body. So people in America can call the U.S. Senate.
  Mr. SOUDER. I thank the gentleman for his leadership.
  Mr. BARTON of Texas. I yield to the gentleman from Arizona [Mr. 
Shadegg], and I see the former member of the Gang of Seven a few 
Congresses ago is back and loaded for bear and is just brimming to 
speak in the next 3 to 4 minutes.
  I yield to the gentleman from Arizona.
  Mr. SHADEGG. I thank the gentleman from Texas, and I will be brief.
  You know, as I listened to the discussion tonight, it occurred to me 
it might be helpful if there was a practical explanation of at least 
how one Member of this body thinks this provision will work day to day. 
Let me tie into that how we got into the mess we are in now.
  Mr. Speaker I am on this floor for the first time. I am a freshman 
Member of this Congress. I have not served in any public office before. 
But I did serve a period of 7 years in the Arizona attorney general's 
office. Then I was hired to advise the Arizona State Legislature.
  I sat in on literally hundreds of meetings in those capacities where 
a member of the Arizona legislature would be present and a contituent 
or a group of constituents would come forward and they were well-
intended, serious, concerned citizens. And they would come forward and 
explain to the members of the Arizona legislature their dire need, this 
severe problem this, unmet problem in society which
 government could solve. In Arizona it was easy for the citizens to get 
to their legislature and to go and implore their members of the 
legislature to help solve this problem with one little program.

  That same scene happens here in Washington thousands of times every 
day. It happens in your office, I suspect, and in my office and the 
office of every Member who votes on the floor of this Congress. 
Constituents come in, lobbying groups come in, organizing groups come 
in and say, ``We have a small problem, but it is serious and it needs 
your help. We need just a little bit of money. It is not a lot of 
money, but a little bit to solve this very serious problem,'' sometimes 
it affects children, sometimes we say it is going to solve a problem 
that will pollute our society or pollute our Earth. Whatever the reason 
is, it is always compelling, whoever the advocate is, he is always 
sincere and well-intended.
  But there is something missing in that conversation.
  What is missing is the person of the people who have to pick up the 
tab. They are not sitting there. I often thought as I sat in on those 
conversations in the members' offices in the Arizona legislature, why 
not have one more Chair sitting in that discussion, empty, that says, 
``The Arizona taxpayer''? We ought to have somebody. We are all talking 
about lobbyists. The President devoted a great deal of time last night 
to the pressure of lobbyists.
  It occurs to me that the people do not have a lobbyist who sits in on 
that conversation.
  So the pressure is there and no one is sitting in that empty chair 
that I envisioned, saying, ``Wait a minute. Who is going to pay for 
this?''
  Well, a supermajority requirement for future tax increases raising 
the hurdle so that it is not just 50 percent but rather 60 percent 
would be a structural change which would put essentially that Chair in 
the room and say, ``It may be a good idea, but somebody has got to pay 
for it, and you have to go get the assent of just a few more people to 
do that.'' It is the kind of discipline we desperately need in this 
body.
  I thank the gentleman. I ask if it is possible to join in this 
conversation briefly with the gentleman from Illinois, my colleague.
  Mr. BARTON of Texas. If the gentleman, the distinguished gentleman 
from Illinois, requests such time yielded to him as he may require.
                              {time}  2220

  Mr. SHADEGG. I would like to ask one quick question. I noted that 
like Arizona----
  Mr. BARTON of Texas. The gentleman from Arizona [Mr. Shadegg] has to 
ask the question of me, and then we would yield time to the 
distinguished gentleman from Illinois [Mr. Weller]. That is the 
parliamentary triangle that we have to honor.
  Mr. SHADEGG. Then let me honor that tradition and ask the question.
  I understood from the gentleman from Illinois [Mr. Weller] that they 
[[Page H684]] have a balanced budget requirement in their State, but 
they do not have what Arizona now has, which is a supermajority 
requirement for future tax increases.
  Mr. BARTON of Texas. Would the gentleman from Illinois like to have 
time to answer that question?
  Mr. WELLER. I say to my colleagues, ``Thank you, thank you very much. 
I appreciate this opportunity, and I thank the gentleman from Texas for 
the opportunity to respond to the gentleman from Arizona's question.''
  As I pointed out in my little brief conversation with my colleagues a 
few minutes ago, Illinois is a State, of course a great State, and I am 
proud to represent the State of Illinois, and we have a balanced budget 
provision in the Illinois constitution. However it only requires a 
simple majority to pass tax increases, and I served in the Illinois 
legislature for 6 years, and during that period of time I was actually 
involved in the appropriations process where I was involved in the 
spending end of the State legislature, handling the human service 
appropriations portion of the State budget. It is about half the State 
budget. We have a State budget of $34 billion, 10 percent of what would 
be called the gross State product, which is a big chunk of the Illinois 
economy, and we wrestled every year.
  Of course we have a balanced budget provision which requires we have 
to balance our books, and all too often at--towards the end of session 
or at the beginning of session, if we had a hole in the budget where we 
knew we were short of dollars, all too often particularly certain 
special interests, and always representing those who want to spend 
money, would always say to the legislature, ``You know, we really need 
to do the right thing, and you know the right thing is to raise 
taxes.''
  Well, they knew that the so-called right thing to raise taxes, which 
they always argued for, is the easier way out because I guess, if we 
look at the history of this Congress, it has always been easier for 
Congress to raise taxes than it has been to cut spending, and I saw how 
those pressures worked in the State legislature, and rather than 
cutting spending the special interests would always say, ``Why don't 
you just raise taxes,'' because, as the gentleman from Arizona pointed 
out, the taxpayers are not in the room, and that three-fifths provision 
is the silent partner that the taxpayers need to have in this room when 
we debate whether or not we should raise taxes.
  And let me tell my colleagues, if we have a three-fifths majority in 
the Constitution as a requirement to pass a tax increase, there has to 
be a lot of public support, there has to be a real justification, to 
get those 290 votes to pass the tax increase, and, had we had that 
provision in Illinois, I can think--during the period of time that I 
was in the legislature I can think of about half a dozen tax increases 
that would not have been passed on the taxpayers of my State.
  I think it is so important that we include the tax limitation 
provision because not only does it protect the taxpayers' interest, act 
as a silent partner, but it is a reality check. It is going to require 
a supermajority. The special interests are going to realize that 
Congress is going to think twice before they raise taxes.
  It is time to protect the taxpayers' pocketbooks.
  Mr. BARTON of Texas. I thank the gentleman from Illinois.
  I would like to point out that the three-fifths requirement for a tax 
increase would not mean 290 votes in the House. It would mean 262 votes 
in the House. It is certainly more than 218----
  Mr. WELLER. If the gentleman would yield, that is certainly Illinois 
math. I apologize. It is the end of the evening I guess.
  Mr. BARTON of Texas. I might also point out that those who say all 
that necessary--the only protection that is necessary is protection of 
a constitutional majority to pass a tax increase--we have researched in 
the House, and there has not been a tax increase that passed with a 
minority vote.
  Now there have been some that passed on a voice vote, two in the last 
30 years that passed by a voice
 vote, but if it came to a vote, in every occasion obviously it won by 
getting a majority vote.

  So to say that a constitutional majority is sufficient protection 
against the tax increase on this floor every time a tax increase is 
passed by rollcall vote, it has had a majority, and in most cases it 
has had a constitutional majority, which is 218. A simple majority 
would be maybe 216, if several people were not voting, and 
traditionally the Speaker does not vote.
  But to get real protection against tax increases you do need the 
three fifths, and, as the gentleman from Arizona pointed out, in many 
of the States that have tax limitation provisions it is two thirds, and 
in some it is three fourths. In the President's home State of Arkansas 
it is a three-fourths vote necessary for a tax increase, so a three-
fifths vote, or 60 percent, is certainly stronger than the 
constitutional majority, but it is by no means as strong as many of the 
States have in their statutes or their constitutions.
  I see that the gentleman from California has approached the rostrum, 
and I would be happy to yield to him and welcome him back to the 104th 
Congress.
  Mr. RIGGS. I thank the gentleman from Texas [Mr. Barton] for both his 
kind comments and his outstanding leadership on this extremely 
important legislative initiative.
  The gentleman just a moment ago referred to--I cannot recall if he 
said famous or infamous gang of seven, but I can remember standing on 
this very floor in the wee hours of the morning, actually much later 
than it is now, participating with my fellow gang of seven colleagues 
on the debate regarding the balanced budget tax limitation amendment in 
the 102d Congress, and I can tell the gentlemen--in fact I frequently 
relate this story back home, that that was probably my single greatest 
disappointment from my prior service in this distinguished body.
  I recall though on that occasion one of the gang members, who has now 
gone on to greater heights in the other body as a junior Member from 
the State of Pennsylvania, holding up at a particularly poignant moment 
in the proceedings the photographs, little wallet sized snapshots, of 
his young children who now obviously are a few years older and making 
the point, as several of my colleagues did earlier, that we are really 
acting on their behalf and in their interests. We are talking about, of 
course, the future taxpayers
 of the United States of America who will inherit this enormous sum and 
growing debt that we, sad to say, have imposed upon them as a rather 
dubious legacy, one which, in fact, does indeed mortgage the future and 
diminish the economic opportunity they and their children will be able 
to realize.

  So, that was a tremendous disappointment, and I also wanted to share 
with the gentleman that just today I fielded a few calls from the media 
saying, ``Well, why is this really necessary? After all, you in 
legislative branch have the ability to ultimately adopt and enact a 
balanced Federal budget.''
  And I hasten to point out to those particular folks who--frankly they 
are the skeptics and the pundits who do not face the difficult 
decisions we will make in the days following our adoption of the 
balanced budget tax limitation amendment, but I point out to them that 
of course the Federal Government has the unique ability to make money, 
print new currency and to borrow more to continue its deficit spending 
ways.
  I also point out to them that history, as the great teacher, shows us 
that basically anything Congress does can be undone, short of an 
amendment to the Constitution, and that has clearly been the case in 
the past, and prior efforts of the Congress, as the gentleman well 
knows, have been routinely circumvented by this body whether it is 
sequestration procedures or the Gramm-Rudman Act which effectively 
gutted over a short period of time but allowing us to continue our 
spendthrift ways.
  The other thing I wanted to point out to the gentleman is that--he 
obviously knows, and he has been a leader in this body in terms of 
making this point frequently during this critical debate, and that is 
that we are not an undertaxed society. We need to make it difficult to 
raise Federal income taxes and to raise the debt limit.
  As my colleagues know, I--again having the distinct honor and 
privilege of serving in this body before, and taking 
[[Page H685]] a sabbatical away from the body, and now returning--I 
have a unique perspective on the matters that are deliberated in this 
body.
 I reflect back on that prior service, the 50 some odd town meetings I 
did the width and breadth of my Congressional District over that two 
year period, and I cannot recall a single occasion when a constituent 
came up and said ``you know, Congressman, we really are an undertaxed 
society, and I would like to pay more taxes.''

                              {time}  2230

  To the contrary, as the gentleman well knows, with 42 percent of our 
economy going to some taxing authority or another, 21 percent of that, 
I believe the numbers are roughly, or about 19 percent of that, rather, 
is going to the Federal treasury, and we are spending the equivalent of 
about 21 percent, and, of course, running these enormous deficits. But 
with 42 percent of our $6 trillion economy going to the taxing 
authorities, we are not an undertaxed economy. Furthermore, we have 
received a clear mandate from the American people to cut spending and 
taxes as well. In order to do that, the first step is clearly the 
gentleman's balanced budget and tax limitation amendment.
  The other point I wanted to share with the gentleman is a few weeks 
ago I had the opportunity to go up to Baltimore. I obtained an 
invitation to go up and, actually a first for me, observe a focus group 
being conducted by a well-known research group, and it was quite an eye 
opener.
  The purpose of this particular focus group, which we were able to 
observe through a one-way mirror, was to watch as ordinary Americans, 
and these were actually I believe above average in terms of their 
educational and economic backgrounds, but to watch the proceedings as 
they attempted to go through one of these exercises involving balancing 
the Federal budget.
  They were provided I think with a three or four page list of all the 
discretionary spending items in the Federal budget and then asked to 
make specific programmatic spending cuts by going down that list. And 
after two hours of discussion, they had not agreed on a single specific 
spending cut, illustrating the difficulty of our challenge ahead. They 
were able, after another hour or so of conversation, to finally agree 
on across-the-board spending cuts, which is frankly something we are 
going to have to consider in this body I think in order to meet our 
mandates and in order to comply with the balanced budget tax limitation 
amendment.
  But it was a very revealing experience for me and a very sobering 
drive back from Baltimore to the Capitol as a result.
  But in the course of that conversation, one of the folks in the room 
said ``if we all ran our personal finances like the government, we 
would all be bankrupt,'' reminiscent of the wonderful movie ``Dave,'' 
where the accountant is brought in to look at the Federal Government's 
books, and said, ``Who did these books? If I did my books like this, I 
would be out of business.'' The point being that, you know, the time 
has come to impose some very real constraints, a sense of restraint on 
what we do back here with the Federal taxpayers' dollars.
  Previous attempts short of the constitutional amendment approach have 
not worked. It is very clear that in enacting the constitutional 
amendment, the balanced budget requirement, we have to create, as the 
gentleman has put it, a disincentive for raising income taxes.
  So I commend the gentleman, and urge him on in his efforts tomorrow, 
which I fully intend to support on this floor, in the hope that 
ultimately we will do the right thing and we will show to the American 
people at the conclusion of the debate tomorrow by our votes as we 
stand and ultimately become accountable that we really did get the 
message from the voters last November, and that we really are serious 
about rearranging and ultimately reducing the size, the scope, and the 
cost of the Federal Government.
  Mr. BARTON of Texas. I thank the gentleman from California, and again 
cannot express in the most positive terms how delighted we are to have 
him back serving with great distinction in the body.
  The hour is getting late. I would be happy to recognize the gentleman 
from South Carolina for some brief remarks, so we may hopefully soon 
conclude.
  Mr. GRAHAM. I was very intrigued by the gentleman from California's 
comments there. I think they are right on point, especially the comment 
from the constituent or the lay person that said if we ran our affairs 
like you do up here, we would be bankrupt.
  Would the gentleman agree that if the American public ran their 
affairs like we do up here, that they would go to jail?
  Mr. BARTON of Texas. I would agree with that in a fiduciary sense. No 
cooperation in America could
 utilize its assets and abuse its borrowing privileges like we have 
here in Washington the last 30 to 40 years.

  Mr. GRAHAM. The essence of this debate I think comes down to this 
point: During your dissertation a while ago you made some very 
important points that I didn't realize, that I believe you said for the 
first time 30 years ago, in 1964 and 1965 era, that the entire Federal 
budget was less than $200 billion. Is that correct?
  Mr. BARTON of Texas. We reached the $100 billion spending mark at the 
Federal level in 1961 or 1962, and in the current fiscal year, it is 
expected we will expend just for interest on the national debt, over 
$225 billion. So we now pay more in interest than the entire Federal 
budget was in the early 1960's.
  Mr. GRAHAM. I believe the gentleman stated further that during that 
period of time the national defense sector spending has increased by 
1300 percent.
  Mr. BARTON of Texas. Thirteen hundred percent since 1964. This year 
we are expected to spend $1 trillion, which is 1 thousand billion, $531 
billion. Those numbers are from President Clinton's Office of 
Management and Budget. Those are not the Republican numbers, but the 
official budget numbers of the President of the United States.
  Mr. GRAHAM. Would the gentleman agree with that tendency in place, 
the ability to spend far more than we make and it is escalating at 
monumental proportions, that if there ever was a time to have a three-
fifths majority vote it is now, and could you comment on the likelihood 
of balancing the budget with tax increases if we don't have the three-
fifths majority?
  Mr. BARTON of Texas. If the gentleman would yield on that point, in 
the early 1980's, then President Reagan accepted a tax increase with 
the understanding for every dollar of taxes that were increased, there 
would be $2 of spending cuts. Well, we got the tax increase, but we got 
$1.58 of spending increase for every dollar of tax increase.
  We have researched that back to the mid 1940's. And in no year have 
we seen when a tax increase was passed, that the next year the spending 
cuts materialized. In the time that I have been in the Congress, and I 
was elected in 1984 and sworn in in 1985, we have eliminated in its 
entirety one Federal program, the Urban Development Action Grant 
Program.
  Now, we have reduced some in real terms, but in every year Federal 
spending in the aggregate has gone up, and it has averaged over $50 
billion a year increase in the time I have been in the Congress. And in 
the nineties it has averaged over $65 billion a year. I don't know 
about the gentleman from South Carolina or the gentleman from New York 
or California or Indiana, but in my family household, if I had an extra 
sixty or seventy billion dollars a year, I believe I could get by. I 
believe I could make it. And yet we talk and talk and talk about making 
the tough choices and cutting spending. The reality is in almost every 
case in Washington, that is a phony game. We take the baseline, adjust 
it for inflation, adjust it for growth, adjust it for unanticipated 
consequences that may never occur, and then say that is what we would 
really like, but we will take 10 percent less than that, and they end 
up with 10 or 15 percent more than they had the year before.
  There have been years when the average Federal program had a net 
increase after inflation and after growth in the economy of over 13 
percent. Yet we still cry out about needing more revenue. That is 
simply not the case.
  I am going to conclude this special order, if none of the other 
distinguished gentleman wishes time, by 
[[Page H686]] simply stating the obvious: Tomorrow is a historic 
occasion. For the first time in over 200 years, we have a real 
opportunity to amend the Constitution of the United States to require a 
Federal balanced budget, and to do so in a way that we would cut 
spending and not raise taxes by adding a three-fifths requirement for a 
tax increase.
                              {time}  2240

  Thomas Jefferson, one of our founding fathers, the author of the 
declaration of independence, rued the fact that when the constitution 
was adopted in 1787, it did not have a requirement that the budget be 
balanced. In the modern era, it is, I think, factual to state that if 
we do not amend the constitution to require a balanced budget, we will 
never have a balanced budget.
  When our current President's economic advisors state that there is 
not even an attempt to get to a balanced budget and that balanced 
budgets do not count and that under the most rosy scenario, the budget 
deficit begins to climb next year and climb to infinity after we get to 
the millennium in the year 2000, it is absolutely imperative that we 
act now.
  This dialog, colloquy that we have had this evening on the House 
floor is not an exercise in academic opportunism. We are going to vote 
on the constitutional amendment to require a balanced budget with a tax 
limitation provision tomorrow morning between 11 and 12 o'clock Eastern 
Standard Time. And if 290 Members of this body vote in the affirmative, 
we will have passed it. If less than 290 vote in the affirmative, we 
will have 4 other amendments that are made in order and whichever of 
those 4 gets the majority vote will be the vote on final passage for 
the two-thirds requirement sometime early tomorrow evening.
  This colloquy this evening on the House floor has the potential to go 
down in history as the most important colloquy that has ever been heard 
in this chamber in terms of fiscal responsibility. It is not of the 
same significance as declarations of war, which we have had in the 
early 1940's and some of those types of debates, but in terms of fiscal 
responsibility and our children's future to have the same type of 
economic opportunity that we have had, it is important.
  If the American people agree with the distinguished Members that have 
participated with us this evening of its importance and if they take 
advantage of the opportunity to express their serious demand that we 
pass the tax limitation balanced budget amendment, we will do so.
  I want to thank the gentleman from New York for having the first 
special order and the gentleman from Indiana and the gentleman from 
South Carolina and the gentleman from California and all the other 
distinguished gentlemen and gentlewomen that have participated this 
evening and simply ask that they really search their consciences and 
come prepared tomorrow to exert every effort in a positive way to pass 
this historic amendment.

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