[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 40 (Friday, March 3, 1995)]
[House]
[Pages H2644-H2645]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]


                       BALANCED BUDGET AMENDMENT

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from Ohio [Mr. Hoke] is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. HOKE. Mr. Speaker, the events yesterday and in the past several 
days in the other body have compelled me to come to the well to, if 
nothing else, at least vent a little bit to you and to the American 
people regarding the disgrace and hypocrisy that we have seen come out 
of the other side of this building unfortunately.
  It is just stunning that we stood on the brink, right on the brink of 
actually enacting at least from our Congress a balanced budget 
amendment that would then go to the States and the State legislatures 
could make their own decisions on these things, that we stood on the 
very brink of that, and now we have been completely--we are not able to 
find out even what the States want to do in this area. The truth is 
that there was hypocrisy, there was deceit, there was deception, and 
there was lying on the other side of this building, in the other body, 
with respect to promises that were made and promises that certainly 
were not kept.
  Let's go back to what this amendment is all about. Really to find out 
what it is all about you have to go back to the year 1789, when Thomas 
Jefferson wrote:

       I fear there is only one thing that we have kept out of the 
     Constitution of the United States. It has one flaw, and that 
     is that we have not restricted the Federal Government's 
     ability to borrow money. We have not restricted the Federal 
     Government's ability to borrow money.

  What extraordinary clairvoyance Thomas Jefferson could have, that he 
would see in 1789 what has truly come home to roost in 1995.

                              {time}  1515

  And with a $5 trillion or nearly $5 trillion debt, the ability of 
this Federal Government to borrow, borrow, borrow and mortgage the 
future of our country, of our children, of our grandchildren, and that 
he was able to see in 1789 that there ought to be some restriction on 
borrowing money by the Federal Government, because if we do not 
restrict it, as we did not, then the Government finally figures it out. 
It figures out that you can buy constituencies. You can purchase 
influence. You can buy votes. And that is exactly--I mean the votes of 
people that elect Members of Congress, elect people to the Senate--and 
that is exactly what has happened. That is how it is possible that this 
Government could be so far in the red that it could exist so far beyond 
its means.
  In 1789 he recognized that. And what is it exactly that this balanced 
budget amendment would do? It is pretty 
[[Page H2645]] straightforward what it would do. It restricts the 
ability of the Government to borrow money. It requires in its one 
single absolutely dispositive section, it says, you must have a three-
fifths majority in order to raise the amount of money, the debt ceiling 
on what, in order to raise the amount of money that the United States 
can borrow. The limit on that amount of money, in order to raise the 
limit on the amount of money we can borrow, you have to have a three-
fifths majority. That is precisely the kind of restriction that Thomas 
Jefferson was talking about in 1789.
  And what did the Senate do? Well, one Senator from the State of 
Florida who had personally campaigned on a promise to vote in favor of 
a balanced budget amendment voted against it, campaigned not more than 
5 months ago on that promise, not more than 4 months ago on that 
promise, said in a solemn promise to the people that she was wanting to 
represent, I am going to vote for a balanced budget amendment. And then 
come yesterday, she voted against it. And what was the excuse given by 
her and by other Members of the other body? The excuse given was that 
somehow this would possibly, this could somehow have an impact on 
Social Security.
  Well, A, that is not true. And B, where were those people in August 
of 1993, when they voted to cut Social Security by $25 billion and 
every single Republican in the Senate and every single Republican in 
the House of Representatives voted against that? But they voted to 
increase or to tax Social Security and cut Social Security payments to 
senior citizens $25 billion. Where were they then?
  And then to say, well, this is just, this is just a hidden ploy to 
make it possible to cut Social Security. It is a lie. They know it is a 
lie. It is a smoke screen.
  What is the smoke screen for? I will tell you what the smoke screen 
is for. It is for those people who truly believe that the Federal 
Government can solve all our problems. If you believe that the Federal 
Government can solve all of our problems through more spending, through 
bigger spending programs, through throwing more money at these 
problems, through hiring more Federal bureaucrats to do it, then you 
ought to be opposed to a balanced budget amendment. And if you are 
going to be truthful about it and if you are going to be honest about 
it, then that is what you will tell people, that is the way that you 
will explain it.
  The smoke screen is Social Security recipients, when every single one 
of them voted to cut Social Security.


                          ____________________