[Congressional Record Volume 143, Number 25 (Monday, March 3, 1997)]
[Senate]
[Pages S1822-S1826]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




             BALANCED BUDGET AMENDMENT TO THE CONSTITUTION

  Mr. GLENN. Mr. President, I rise today to add my comments to the many 
others who have voiced their opposition to Senate Joint Resolution 1, 
the balanced budget constitutional amendment.
  Mr. President, like the others before me, let me preface my comments 
by stating clearly that I support balancing the Federal budget. I have 
for a long time. I wanted to balance the Federal budget clear back when 
it was only $1 trillion way back in the days when Jimmy Carter was 
still President. I note that the total Federal debt at that time was 
still under $1 trillion, totaled up for every President between George 
Washington and the end of the Carter years.
  So I do not come lately to this idea of balancing the Federal budget. 
I wholeheartedly agree we need to exercise discipline to both balance 
the budget and eliminate the deficit. But, Mr. President, I do not 
believe that changing our Constitution to require a balanced budget is 
in this country's best interests. For reasons I will outline, I believe 
that a constitutional amendment requiring a balanced budget is far more 
likely to cause more trouble, more harm, than good.
  The amendment before the Senate would dramatically change the way our 
political process has worked for over 200 years. While there have been 
times when partisan fighting may have caused what many term gridlock, I 
do not believe it is necessary or desirable to turn the fundamental 
concept of our system of Government on its head.
  Moreover, this amendment would ensure that gridlock is the rule 
rather than the exception. By requiring supermajorities in order to 
conduct the routine business of the Congress, this amendment overthrows 
the concept of majority rule and empowers minority factions to hold the 
Congress and the country hostage. I submit that this type of minority 
control of our Government is the exact evil the framers sought to 
eliminate in the drafting of our Constitution. For this reason alone I 
oppose the balanced budget constitutional amendment.
  It is not hyperbole when I say it is dangerous to our form of 
Government. Compounding the problem, Mr. President, is the fact that 
the proponents of this amendment would topple one of the basic tenets 
of our Government, as I see it, for no reason at all.
  First, from a historical perspective, the constitutional amendment is 
not needed. The only time in this country's history outside of times of 
war, the Great Depression, or recession that we have run up a 
significant deficit, one viewed as unmanageable, is in the preceding 
two decades through our time right now on the floor. We had the 
experiments in supply-side economics back during the last 12 years 
before President Clinton came in, which ran our debt from $1 trillion 
up to nearly $5 trillion.
  But we are no longer debating how we got into this situation we find 
ourselves in, pointing fingers, or placing blame for a deficit so 
staggering that it is beyond our comprehension or imagination. Instead, 
a more productive political consensus does now exist to bring the 
budget into balance and eliminate our deficit. So I do not think we 
need a constitutional requirement to balance the budget. Congress and 
the President, working together, have the ability, and now, I believe, 
the will to bring our budget into balance.
  Now, everybody describes this as being a political climate that is 
overly divisive. I agree. Congress in both Houses, on both sides of the 
aisle, and the President, all profess to want a balanced budget, and I 
do not doubt that. I think everyone does, and they want to eliminate 
the huge deficit that is the legacy of the 1980s. Now we have different 
ways we are looking at this thing, but we have made substantial strides 
in at least getting unanimous consent or unanimous opinion that this is 
something that we do have to deal with and do have to deal with now. 
But there are still some very basic disagreements on how to achieve the 
balance and how to reduce the deficit.
  The Democrats and Republicans alike have proposed balancing the 
budget by the year 2002, and the deficit has been reduced from 5.1 
percent of our gross domestic product in fiscal year 1986 to only 1.4 
percent in fiscal year 1996. Mr. President, 5.1 of GDP in 1986 down to 
1.4 percent just 10 years later in 1996. Right here and right now we 
are working toward achieving the very goal of the balanced budget 
constitutional amendment without sacrificing our democratic form of 
Government to get there.
  I might put those figures in a different term. When President Clinton 
came in, our national budget deficit was running at $290 billion a 
year. We passed on this very floor one of the toughest votes that many 
of us have made since being in the Senate. We passed during the 
Reconciliation Act in August of 1993 the President's program, without 
having one single Republican vote--not a one in either the Senate or 
the House of Representatives; not a one--and there were all sorts of 
predictions about what horrible things were going to happen to the 
economy and the millions of unemployed that would be added to the 
rolls. What happened? Well, that did not happen and we have gone on 
with a very, very, strong economy, and we have gone from a budget 
deficit of $290 billion down to $107 billion for the latest estimate 
for what 1996 will turn out to be.

  We are in the middle of doing something right here. We are doing it 
right now with action that we have taken in this Congress. This is not 
something we are waiting for and hoping for some magic wand like a 
balanced budget amendment. This is something that we are doing right 
now and we are headed toward a balanced budget. I grant anyone that 
wants to discuss this, we, in fact, are looking forward to some times 
out here where it will be tougher to do that, tougher to balance the 
budget. We know that. But that will require some equally tough votes on 
this floor.
  I hope when we make those tough votes on this floor we have support 
from the other side of the aisle that we did not have when we made that 
vote the summer of 1993. Now, in Treasury Secretary Rubin's words, a 
balanced budget constitutional amendment ``could turn slowdowns into 
recessions, and average recessions into more severe ones,'' and he 
added, ``it would seriously increase the risk of default on our 
national debt.''
  Those are quotes taken from Secretary Rubin's February 2, op-ed in 
the

[[Page S1823]]

the Washington Post. I ask unanimous consent that his Washington Post 
op-ed piece be printed at the end of my remarks.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  (See exhibit 1.)
  Mr. GLENN. It is a thoughtful piece that makes a very powerful 
argument against this amendment.
  Economists consider a balanced budget requirement to be what they 
would call procyclical. In other words, adding to the cycle instead of 
correcting the cycle. It makes it worse. It is an economic autopilot. 
When revenues are slow coming into the Federal coffers because the 
economy is slow, deeper spending cuts have to be made to make up for 
the revenue shortfall in order to keep the budget in balance.
  We have AFDC, food stamps, unemployment insurance, trade adjustments 
assistance, all of these things cut in during the beginning of a 
recessionary period, and the farther we get into that approach to a 
depression the more these programs sort of prime the pump or level 
things off. There is no way that can be shown better than the chart 
that has been on the floor here many, many times in the past. I will 
hold this up to illustrate, but we have seen this real economic growth, 
and you can see what happened on this chart. Way back in the 1880's and 
1900's on the wide cyclical swings and what happened post World War II, 
and we got some of the countercyclical programs in place.
  Look how the economy has just leveled out in that period of time. The 
economy has leveled out with no great huge swings down like we had 
during the Great Depression when I was a boy back home in New Concord, 
OH. These are things that would happen again, we would get back into 
the wild swings, if we, indeed, had the balanced budget amendment 
passed, because there is no other way to get the money to take care of 
the requirements of a balanced budget amendment unless you either cut 
many of those programs back or raise taxes. That is the other source of 
revenue. If you did that, either one of those things would be exactly 
the wrong thing to do and would add to the inclination, the trend, 
toward a cycle that we want to stamp out, not make worse.
  It is sort of a perverse, Look, Ma, no hands approach to budget, the 
exact wrong thing for a slow economy. That is why Secretary Rubin says 
the balanced budget amendment ``can take an economic slowdown and turn 
it into a recession and then take a recession and make it even worse.''
  I submit that is probably exactly an analysis that most economists 
would show happened back during the days of Herbert Hoover when he 
tried to raise taxes to make sure we were not going into more of a 
deficit position.
  I cannot believe the proponents intend to force us into this kind of 
an economic straitjacket. I know the people across the country want a 
balanced budget. So they say, ``Balanced budget amendment, oh, that 
sounds great, that sounds magical after the last 12 or 14 years when we 
had budgets run sky-high and deficits running sky-high.'' So that 
sounds very attractive.

  I think when the people of this country know what will be cut, they 
are informed about what will be cut, informed they will have difficulty 
within their communities with AFDC and food stamps and unemployment 
insurance and things like that that are administered by the States, but 
partly with Federal dollars, then I think they would realize this is 
more of a danger than anything they have come up against for some time.
  Mr. President, I grew up during the Great Depression. I was about 10 
or 12 years old in the depths of the Great Depression. During those 4 
years we had 20 percent of the country unemployed and 1 year when 
almost 25 percent were unemployed. What happened? The country had hit a 
situation it had never been able to handle before.
  We always were proud in this country of families taking care of 
families, of communities taking care of themselves. They didn't look 
for outside help. In those days of the Great Depression, in the town of 
New Concord, OH, my hometown, everybody planted big gardens. My dad 
rented an extra couple of acres, in addition to our big garden, and we 
grew our own food and took it down and gave it to neighbors. We shared 
in those days. That's how we got by.
  But everybody wasn't that fortunate. In some of our cities, we had 
soup kitchens on the corner where people could get something to eat in 
order to keep them going. We used to see what we called the ``bums'' 
going by on Route 40, and that went right by our house, as a matter of 
fact. We called them the ``bums'' because they were people who were, 
quite often, walking or getting a ride in a railroad boxcar across 
country someplace. They would get off sometimes and come up to the 
house and knock on the back door and ask my mother if she could give 
them something to eat. She never turned anyone down that came to that 
back door, I can guarantee you that. They were good people, down on 
their luck. I'm sure some were deadbeats that weren't much to begin 
with. But they were Americans and they were hungry, and it was the 
Great Depression and it was tough.
  The movie reels of those days show the Okies heading west out of the 
dust pit in Oklahoma with the mattress on top of the car, because 
communities had lost control. What happened? Programs were put in by 
Roosevelt--programs that we still argue about on the floor of the 
Senate to this day--and they primed the pump. That is the point I want 
to make. They primed the pump. They may have been very wasteful for 1 
or 2 years, but they primed the pump and got our economy going again. 
You can make a million jokes about those time periods, but they are not 
a joke, as far as I am concerned, because I remember them very well.
  I remember one conversation between my dad and mother that I will 
never forget as long as I live. We had finished dinner and I went in 
the other room. I heard them quietly talking at the kitchen table, and 
they were discussing whether the mortgage was going to be foreclosed on 
our home. You talk about striking terror in the heart of a 10-year-old 
boy--that was me. I didn't know where we were going to go. That was a 
bad one. Do you know what happened? FHA was put in, and it was possible 
to negotiate a mortgage then with that kind of a Government guarantee 
that helped people like my dad and mom have a shot at keeping the home. 
Lots of mortgages were foreclosed and people could not keep their 
homes. Those are the days we were living in then.
  The point I'm making is that the pump-priming efforts at that time 
worked. They largely put our economy back to work again and got it 
going again. It wasn't perfect and never had been completely healed 
until we got through World War II, I guess. That was the ultimate 
primer of pumps, World War II. Anyway, the program of having 
countercyclical funds that cut in when a recession starts or when a 
downturn really gets serious is something that works. It works just as 
well as it did back in those days of the Great Depression. It worked, 
obviously, from the time, since 1946, that we started the first of 
these programs, and we have built on similar programs since that time 
that really do work.
  A balanced budget amendment would force us, in a time when we are in 
deficit, to dig into those things and cut down on those funds, or raise 
taxes, either of which would be exactly the wrong thing to do at that 
cycle of depression or near depression.
  Another truly frightening consequence of the adoption of a balanced 
budget requirement is the fact that it puts the creditworthiness of the 
United States of America at risk. Mr. President, this is a concept that 
I admit I find to be almost unimaginable. By requiring a supermajority 
to raise the debt ceiling, this constitutional amendment would allow 41 
Members of this body--not a majority, but a minority of the Senate--to 
trade the creditworthiness of this country for the passage of 
legislation that otherwise would not pass the Senate. In other words, 
it is what has been termed in the past as the ``tyranny of the 
minority.''

  Try and imagine what default by the Government of the United States 
of America would do to the world's financial markets. I can't. I am not 
saying this will happen necessarily, Mr. President, but I cannot 
support an amendment to our Constitution that would allow a minority to 
dictate legislation to a majority of the Senate or place our 
creditworthiness at risk.

[[Page S1824]]

  I want to take a minute to talk about what this amendment would do to 
our ability to make expenditures in order to respond to emergencies, 
natural disasters, or even military operations, like Desert Shield, 
where we were not technically engaged in a military conflict. I will 
only take a minute. This amendment prevents us from doing anything in 
these situations without the agreement of a supermajority, for all 
intents and purposes--even for military. The practical implications of 
this amendment are that Congress may be able to offer assistance to 
tornado or hurricane victims, or victims of any other natural disaster, 
if that disaster happens early in a fiscal year because only a majority 
vote would probably be necessary while we are still on budget, while 
things are looking well. But if a disaster happens in the third or 
fourth quarter of the fiscal year, those disaster victims are on their 
own, unless three-fifths of the Congress agrees to provide some sort of 
assistance.
  These same accounting practicalities will not be lost on our 
potential adversaries, either. I don't think it is too big a leap of 
logic to say that Saddam Hussein would not have to be a financial 
genius to figure out that if he wants to make another run at Kuwait, it 
is better to move the republican guard units in the third or fourth 
quarter of a fiscal year, because it will take the action of three-
fifths of both Houses of Congress to approve funding for any military 
operations, which would bring the budget out of balance.
  Mr. President, that is a completely unacceptable way for the United 
States of America to act, I feel. That is the straitjacket that this 
balanced budget amendment would put us into if it were passed.
  So, to me, these are some very serious flaws in the constitutional 
requirement. There are also separation of powers concerns raised by 
this amendment. Let us take the situation in which it is discovered 
during a fiscal year that the budget will not balance and that outlays 
will exceed expenditures. If the Congress fails to approve additional 
spending by the required three-fifths majority, the President might 
feel compelled to impound funds in order to bring the budget into 
balance. Now, the President would decide what to fund and what not to 
fund. Mr. President, let me state that again. The President, in that 
situation, would decide what to fund and what not to fund, because that 
is what he would be required to do by law. This represents a shift in 
power to the President that once rested with a simple majority in the 
Congress.
  A similar troubling situation would be where the budget goes out of 
balance or never gets into balance, and the President does not correct 
the situation. Say the President doesn't want to do anything about 
this. He says, OK, we are not going to correct it. What do we do? In 
that circumstance, do you know what would happen? The courts would step 
in and decide which programs would be funded and which programs would 
not be funded, again, taking away what has heretofore been a 
congressional prerogative.
  Then there are equity issues that argue against passage of the 
balanced budget constitutional amendment. This amendment is a policy 
decision not just about how to keep the books, but also about who will 
benefit from Federal spending programs. It cannot be denied, and should 
not be overlooked, that the Tax Code's tax breaks to individuals and 
corporations are a type of Government spending. Not everyone realizes 
it, but when an individual's or corporation's tax burden is reduced by 
a tax break, that is Government spending, and we should not forget 
that. Eliminating these tax breaks is considered increasing revenues. 
Under the balanced budget amendment before us, Congress can increase 
revenues only by a majority vote of both Houses.

  In contrast, cutting funding for programs requires only a majority 
vote by those present and voting or could even be passed on a voice 
vote. This is not an esoteric point, Mr. President, because in program 
terms, this amendment creates a presumption in favor of cutting funding 
for programs because it is easier to do. I argue that this presumption 
favors the more affluent in our society, because their Federal spending 
programs, known as the Tax Code, are more difficult to cut than the 
spending programs of the less affluent.
  That kind of an imbalance just plain is not fair.
  Finally, Mr. President, I must mention the relationship that exists 
between this balanced budget amendment and Social Security. As the baby 
boom generation reaches retirement age, Social Security expenditures 
will increase dramatically.
  And despite the fact that some action has been taken in anticipation 
of this demographic shift in the population, this balanced budget 
amendment would have us pay for baby boom Social Security out of 
current year revenues and will likely break the bank.
  Right now, we are paying more into Social Security so that we can 
generate surpluses to pay for the baby boomers when they reach 
retirement age. This approach is far sounder than expecting to pay this 
enormous expense out of a single year's revenues. I'm afraid that the 
only way we would get there under a balanced budget requirement is 
either to reduce substantially the benefit baby boomers receive or cut 
radically other Government programs.
  This is just another example of where, in my view, a constitutional 
requirement to balance the budget in the manner proposed will do more 
harm than good.
  Mr. President, we all want to eliminate the enormous deficits of the 
recent past. We all want to bring the budget into balance and keep it 
in balance when it makes sense to do so. And, it would be a lot easier 
to stand here and have the American taxpayer believe that supporting 
this legislation is a simple way to solve all of our problems.
  But it's not the right thing to do, Mr. President. This legislation 
forces this country into a budgetary straightjacket and it limits 
democracy as we have known it for more than 200 years.
  It's unsound from an economic perspective and it is unfair to the 
less wealthy. It puts this Nation's security at risk and it prevents us 
from responding to disasters.
  And it could result in the elimination of virtually all Government 
programs except Social Security once the baby boom reaches retirement 
age.
  As I said, Mr. President, it would be easy to say that I support the 
legislation before us because the concept of requiring a balanced 
budget appeals to the average American--but only on a superficial 
level.
  Regrettably, for the reasons I've outlined, the solution isn't so 
simple and I cannot support this legislation.
  Mr. President, let me just summarize once again.
  We are on the way to a balanced budget now with the existing Federal 
budgeting processes. We have been since the summer of 1993. I do not 
think most Americans yet have gotten this fact driven home to them. 
They are so accustomed to deficits coming out of Washington that they 
can't believe that we really are heading toward a balanced budget. We 
can't do it all in 1 year or we would destroy the economy. But what we 
have done is, with the budget reconciliation bill that was passed in 
August 1993, we are proceeding step by step toward a balanced budget. 
It has gone from a budget deficit of $290 billion a year when President 
Clinton came into office down to an estimated $107 billion for the year 
1996. That is certainly measurable progress. It was estimated earlier 
that would go down this year to about $40 billion. That may be revised 
up a little. We have to take some action to do that.
  But to go the drastic step of a balanced budget amendment that would 
deal so unfairly with so many people I think is something that we do 
not want to do.
  Mr. President, we have programs that are called countercyclical. 
Those programs cut in as the economy gets worse. They automatically cut 
in and dampen that slide and bring it back up again. It prevents things 
like the deep Depression of the early thirties and all of the wild 
swings that used to occur back before we had some of these 
countercyclical programs.
  There is no way that you can get by it with a balanced budget 
amendment. You are going to be cutting some of these programs like 
AFDC, Social Security, food stamps, unemployment insurance, maybe 
Medicaid, and trade adjustment assistance. Those are all

[[Page S1825]]

things that would be targets for potential cuts. The money has to come 
from somewhere. With the balanced budget amendment you have no choice 
but to cut, or, if you want to keep the balance, raise taxes, either 
one of which would be absolutely wrong on an economic cycle basis.
  Mr. President, for all of those reasons, and others that I have not 
even mentioned here today but which Mr. Rubin refers to in his Outlook 
piece in the Washington Post that I asked to be placed in the Record, I 
think it would be unwise to go for a balanced budget amendment that 
puts us in an economic straitjacket. I think we need to continue our 
efforts here on a bipartisan basis, on both sides, here and over in the 
House, and do the things that we see are working right now with our 
budget. Continue those, and we can have a balanced budget if we all 
work together on this without violating the Constitution or without 
going back into the Constitution, which will enable us to do it.

                               Exhibit 1

                [From the Washington Post, Feb. 2, 1997]

                       The Balanced Budget Brawl

                          (By Robert E. Rubin)

       I spent 26 years on Wall Street before joining the Clinton 
     administration and came to believe deeply in the profound 
     importance of fiscal responsibility to our national economy. 
     I have now spent four years working in government to 
     implement this conviction, which members of both parties 
     share.
       However, I have an equally strong conviction that a 
     balanced budget amendment is a threat to Social Security and 
     our economic health. it will expose our economy to 
     unacceptable risks and should not be adopted. Like the 11 
     Nobel Prize-winning economists and 1,000 other economists who 
     signed a letter on Thursday to ``condemn'' the amendment, I 
     believe it is strongly against our national interest.
       A balanced budget amendment would reduce our ability to 
     cope with recessions, risk putting budgetary decisions in the 
     hands of the courts and create risks with respect to Social 
     Security. Should we balance the budget? Yes. Do we need a new 
     constitutional amendment? No.
       Throughout our history, with the exception of wartime and 
     the Depression, budget deficits--when they existed at all--
     were generally small. In the 1970s and 1980s, they began to 
     rise and the cumulative federal debt grew sharply. But after 
     experiencing this period of fiscal indiscipline. I believe 
     the atmosphere in Washington has changed.
       In 1993, we took an enormous step forward with the deficit 
     reduction program, which has cut the deficit from 4.7 percent 
     to 1.4 percent of gross domestic product. Last year, both the 
     administration and Congress proposed budgets that would 
     eliminate the deficit by 2002, and both are expected to do so 
     again this year.
       There is also a new enforcement factor at work, which is 
     the emergence of global markets attuned to fiscal 
     responsibility. Those markets will punish a national that 
     does not address fiscal matters by imposing high interest 
     rates that can severely impair its economy.
       Today, politically, historically and economically, the 
     forces are in place to balance the budget. And I believe we 
     will. However, there is a distinction between that and 
     passing a constitutional amendment. I believe the balanced 
     budget amendment proposal would subject the nation to 
     unacceptable economic risks in perpetuity.
       First, it could turn slowdowns into recessions and average 
     recessions into more severe ones.
       Second, it could prevent us from dealing expeditiously with 
     emergencies such as natural disasters or military threats.
       Third, it would seriously increase the risk of default on 
     our national debt.
       Fourth, the escape clauses it provides are likely to be far 
     from fully effective. The escape clauses would also enable a 
     minority in either the House or Senate to use its leverage to 
     subject the nation to unacceptable economic risks.
       Fifth, a balanced budget amendment poses immense 
     enforcement problems that might well lead to the involvement 
     of the courts in budget decisions, unprecedented impoundment 
     powers for the president or the temporary cessation of all 
     federal payments, including, for example, Social Security. 
     Alternatively, the balanced budget amendment might be 
     unenforceable and therefore have no effect at all, 
     contributing to cynicism about the process of government.
       For these and other reasons, a balanced budget amendment 
     poses unacceptable risks. Let me elaborate.
       More severe recessions. As secretary of the treasury, I am 
     deeply concerned that a balanced budget amendment could 
     worsen recessions or downturns, first by eliminating 
     automatic stabilizers that protect people during a downturn 
     and, second, by forcing tax increases or spending decreases 
     precisely in the midst of a slowdown or recession when the 
     economy is already suffering from lack of demand.
       Since World War II, we have made substantial progress in 
     reducing the toll of the boom-and-bust cycle through the 
     introduction of automatic fiscal stabilizers and effective 
     use of counter-cyclical fiscal policy. For example, if 
     unemployment rises, unemployment insurance payments rise as 
     well, moderating the economic impact of recessions and job 
     losses on companies workers and their families.
       A balanced budget amendment would undo this progress and 
     put more people out of work during downturns by turning 
     off these stabilizers and foreclosing action to soften a 
     recession.
       Even if Congress wanted to put back the stabilizers (an act 
     that would require a three-fifths vote), slowdowns and 
     recessions are hard to recognize or anticipate. Congressional 
     action would almost surely come, at the very best, months 
     later, by which time critical damage to the economy would 
     already have been done.
       Inability to cope with crises. A balanced budget amendment 
     would also prevent us from dealing quickly and effectively 
     with major problems, from a second savings and loan crisis to 
     a second Hurricane Hugo to an escalating military threat.
       For example, in September 1989, Hurricane Hugo struck the 
     Carolinas, causing billions of dollars of damage. After 
     President Bush declared a disaster, Congress immediately 
     appropriated $2.7 billion in emergency assistance. Under the 
     balanced budget amendment, if the budget were otherwise in 
     balance, this could not be done until after a vote of 60 
     percent in both houses.
       Increased risk of default. As secretary of the treasury, I 
     am also concerned that limits on our flexibility would 
     increase the risk of default on the federal debt. The 
     possibility of default should never be on the table. Our 
     credit-worthiness is an invaluable national asset that should 
     not be subject to question.
       Default on payment of our debt would undermine our 
     credibility with respect to meeting financial commitments, 
     and that in turn would have adverse effects for decades to 
     come. A failure to pay interest on our debt could raise the 
     cost of borrowing not only for government, but for private 
     borrowers including small businesses and homeowners.
       Finally, as we saw in 1995 and 1996, the history of debt 
     limits shows that raising the statutory debt limit is never 
     an easy process. Yet right now it is possible to raise the 
     debt limit with a simple majority vote in both houses. By 
     requiring a three-fifths supermajority vote, the amendment 
     would make it far more difficult.
       Potential for gridlock. Proponents argue that when 
     necessary, Congress would waive the provision of this 
     amendment with a three-fifths vote. But, in fact, the history 
     of Congress shows that it can be extremely difficult to 
     obtain such a majority, and would be even more difficult when 
     the issue is the momentous one of waiving a provision of the 
     Constitution.
       While 60 votes are usually required in the Senate for 
     cloture--that is, ending debate and bringing a matter to a 
     vote--and the members have long honored the rights of a 
     minority, the Senate also recognizes that certain matters 
     should not be held up. It therefore permits a reconciliation 
     bill, which can be a vehicle for passing a budget or 
     increasing the debt limit, to be passed by a simple majority.
       Under this amendment, 41 Senators or 175 House members 
     could hold our economy hostage to a special agenda.
       Enforcement difficulties. A balanced budget amendment poses 
     immense enforcement problems. If the budget is not in 
     balance, there is no way to compel Congress and the president 
     to enact legislation to cut spending or raise taxes to make 
     it so. Yet there is also no way to compel enactment of 
     legislation to waive the provisions of the amendment. It is 
     not hard to imagine a situation in which a two-fifths 
     minority of Congress opposes tax increases, a different two-
     fifths minority opposes spending cuts, and another two-fifths 
     minority opposes a waiver of the balanced budget amendment or 
     a raise of the debt limit. The amendment provides no method 
     for resolving such an impasse and it could well end up being 
     decided by the courts.
       Some proponents have suggested that under these 
     circumstances, the president would stop issuing checks, 
     including those for Social Security. Alternatively, judges 
     might become deeply involved in determining budget policy, 
     including whether Social Security or Medicare checks should 
     be stopped. The president might also impound funds of his 
     choosing, including Social Security. Of course, the amendment 
     might just prove to be unenforceable, reducing respect for 
     the Constitution. All of these potential outcomes are 
     extremely undesirable.
       A balanced budget amendment would embed economic policy 
     inflexibility into the Constitution in the face of unknowable 
     economic and political conditions 10, 20, 30 or 40 years from 
     today.
       I have a deep commitment to the importance of deficit 
     reduction and fiscal discipline to our nation's economic 
     health, and I believe that we can put in place balanced 
     budget legislation this year. But I have an equally strong 
     conviction that a balanced budget amendment poses real risks 
     for our nation's economy. Congress should not adopt it.

  Mr. GLENN. Mr. President, I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of 
a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.

[[Page S1826]]

  The assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. LOTT. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

                          ____________________