[Congressional Record Volume 143, Number 10 (Thursday, January 30, 1997)]
[Senate]
[Page S830]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




             BALANCED BUDGET AMENDMENT TO THE CONSTITUTION

  Mr. GRAMM. Madam President, I understand that our colleagues today on 
the Democratic side of the aisle are offering in the Judiciary 
Committee an amendment that says that, if we require the Federal 
Government to live on a budget, if we fulfill the constitutional 
requirement that Thomas Jefferson thought necessary when he first saw 
the document upon returning from France, we ought to set up a system 
where we count the Social Security trust fund while it is in surplus 
between now and the year 2002 as part of the accounting system of the 
Government but that after 2002 we not count it as part of the budget of 
the Federal Government.
  What our colleagues would have us do is to make it easy now to spend 
money but that when the Social Security system begins to move into the 
red, to not count that deficit as part of the deficit of the Federal 
Government. If we are going to balance the Federal budget, if we are 
going to guarantee the future of Social Security and Medicare and of 
Government services that our people need and deserve, we are going to 
have to control spending. We cannot balance the budget by simply 
exempting the largest program of the Federal Government from the 
budget. And the idea of saying that in the future, when Social Security 
is running huge deficits, it will not count as part of the budget, it 
seems to me, is not only shameless but is typical of an era where our 
own President in this year's budget is proposing that we take the 
single fastest growing item in Medicare, home health care, that we take 
it out of the Medicare trust fund in order to make the books look 
better. I do not think you have to have much imagination to understand 
that, if you do not count the deficit of Social Security in the future, 
not only will we have no incentive to control that deficit and make the 
system solvent but more and more Government functions will be shifted 
over into the part that does not count for a balanced budget amendment.
  So I think we all know what the game is here. The game is we have a 
lot of people who promised in the election that they would vote for a 
constitutional amendment to force Congress and the President to balance 
the budget and now we are seeing gamesmanship where they say, ``Well, I 
would vote for it but only if the largest spending program of the 
Federal Government were excluded and only if we could use the benefit 
from the surplus now, and only if we do not have to make up the deficit 
later.'' Have our Democratic colleagues who have offered this proposal 
no shame?
  We have a choice as to whether we are going to change America. If you 
want to change America, you are for the balanced budget amendment to 
the Constitution and you are for a balanced budget where every program 
counts, where every program is important, where the Federal Government 
is forced to pay its bills.
  How many families would like to be required to balance their budget 
without counting their mortgage payment or without counting the cost of 
their new car? I believe we make a mockery of the process.
  I look forward to the day when we are going to stand up on the floor 
of the U.S. Senate and we are going to say yes or no. As we look back 
at the campaign literature of some of the very people who are now 
undecided and we look at what they said about being for a balanced 
budget amendment to the Constitution, what we are going to really test 
is, does our word count for anything? When we tell people we are for 
something and they vote for us and send us here to do it, will we do 
it, or will we engage in gimmicks to try to confuse the people and try 
to cover what is little more than going back on our word?

  Madam President, I look forward to having my name down as one who is 
for the balanced budget amendment to the Constitution.

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