[Congressional Record Volume 142, Number 9 (Wednesday, January 24, 1996)]
[House]
[Pages H806-H807]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




        GOVERNMENT SHUTDOWN OUTSIDE THE CONSTITUTIONAL FRAMEWORK

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentlewoman from the District of Columbia [Ms. Norton] is recognized 
for 5 minutes.
  Ms. NORTON. Mr. Speaker, with the talk now about whether we shall 
have clean or, shall we say, dirty CR's or debt limit bills, I would 
like to offer some views that go to the intent of the Framers. We need 
to think through this process, for we are engaged in something that has 
never happened in 200 years, or more than 200 years of the 
Constitution, and it looks like we are headed toward some recidivism in 
trying to attach things to the debt limit 

[[Page H807]]
or to the CR, when it would appear that the tolerance of the American 
people for this gridlock is way down.
  What is wrong with the strategy of dirty CR's and dirty debt-limit 
bills? Besides the fact that you do not want to stop the Government or 
put the full faith and credit of the United States in any doubt, one 
might begin with the fact that it is not working or it has long since 
stopped working. You got the President to the table with a 7-year 
balanced budget. If victory had been declared then we might be 
somewhere.
  But more seriously, this strategy is outside of the constitutional 
framework, and that is why it is stopping up this place. I teach a 
course at Georgetown, where I was a law professor, called Lawmaking and 
Statutory Interpretation. This gridlock has made me think about the 
course and about what we are doing in a deeper fashion.
  What we are doing is outside of the constitutional framework. It is 
not that it is unconstitutional; it is indeed an abuse of the 
Constitution, because it thwarts the intent of the Framers.
  Now, conservatives pride themselves on being what we in academic law 
call originalists. They insist upon going back to the Framers for 
everything, and it gets very awkward because very often the Framers did 
not even think about certain things. But here I think it is legitimate 
task, what did Thomas Jefferson and what did James Madison intend, what 
did they have in mind?
  We have heard the argument on the floor here that the Government is 
shut down or the debt limit will not rise because the President did 
something, the President vetoed it.
  My friends, the veto was not meant by the Framers to produce any 
counter weapon here in this House. Once there is a veto, three things 
are possible: A negotiated solution, let the matter stand, or overrule 
the veto with a supermajority.

  The Framers did not build a system that did not have cloture. What we 
are doing in this body now, 200 years after the Constitution was 
passed, is creating a system without cloture, where there is point-
counterpoint, shutdown of the Government following a veto. The Framers 
were more brilliant than that. They knew that if you could not bring 
cloture at some point, the Government could not operate.
  We have, in fact, done that. What we have done is to give new meaning 
to the word ``gridlock.'' First, we have created the word the Framers 
never intended. The Framers never intended that the Government would be 
paralyzed.
  Now, the gridlock that was the slogan of the last Congress have come 
back in ways that no one ever dreamed of, and if you think, 
particularly you on the other side of the aisle, that people sent you 
here to make gridlock worse, I think you got a big surprise coming for 
you when you go home to your primaries and when you go home in 
November.
  We must not introduce gridlock into a brilliant system that has its 
own built-in cloture. Do not blame the President for using the veto. 
The Framers intended that. Show me where the Framers intended to allow 
you to shut down the Government? Show me where the Framers intended for 
you to allow a game of chicken to be played with the debt limit of the 
United States? The were much too brilliant, much too thoughtful to 
leave the system in that state.
  We must not try to undo their brilliant work. What we must do is what 
the originalists, the conservatives, have always insisted upon doing. 
We have lost our compass. We have lost our way.
  Let us open the Constitution, try to find the original meaning in the 
structure of checks and balances, and understand that the veto was 
meant to produce civilized responses, and not to take the Government 
out. It is too late in the game, and it is too late in the day, for us 
to try to upset and wreck a brilliant system of Government. History 
will not forget us or forgive us if we allow this to happen.

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