[Congressional Record Volume 143, Number 43 (Monday, April 14, 1997)]
[House]
[Pages H1449-H1452]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




    THOSE WHO WOULD AMEND THE CONSTITUTION ARE REVOLUTIONARIES, NOT 
                             CONSERVATIVES

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Pease). Under the Speaker's announced 
policy of January 7, 1997, the gentleman from North Carolina [Mr. Watt] 
is recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of the minority leader.
  Mr. WATT of North Carolina. Mr. Speaker, I do not think my colleague, 
the gentleman from California [Mr. Rohrabacher], could have set the 
table any better for my comments, because I, too, am here today to 
speak on behalf of the American people, and some of the principles for 
which the American people fought many years ago in the establishment of 
this country.
  This is a first for me. This is my third term in Congress. I am in my 
5th

[[Page H1450]]

year. I have never, ever requested an hour to address my colleagues or 
anyone in a special order. But I come today with such a firm belief 
that what we are about to do in this House on tomorrow, the issue that 
we are about to consider, which would require a two-thirds vote in this 
House for the passage of a bill which had the effect of increasing 
taxes, is so inconsistent with every single principle that is near and 
dear to me, and should be near and dear to the American people, that I 
asked for this time today.
  The American people will probably remember this debate from a year 
ago. On April 15, 1996, the Republican leadership brought a bill to 
this body that was essentially identical to this bill. It would have 
required a two-thirds majority to increase taxes. That bill was 
resoundingly defeated, bipartisanly defeated, and so one wonders 
initially, why would the bill be back again tomorrow, on April 15, 
1997, a bill that lost 243 to 177 last time? Why would it be back 
again?
  Mr. Speaker, my Republican colleagues I believe are trying to 
convince the public that they are doing something that is in their 
interest, and on tax day they are trying to fan some flames and get 
some political benefits. But the American people should not be fooled 
by this.
  Mr. Speaker, my colleagues tomorrow who bring this bill will say, we 
bring it to do a favor for the American people. We bring it as a 
conservative initiative to counteract those liberals who would raise 
taxes on the American people.
  I want to reflect back, at the outset of my comments, to comments 
made by President Abraham Lincoln on February 27, 1860. This is what he 
said. I am quoting him directly:

       But you say you are conservative, imminently conservative, 
     while we are revolutionary, destructive, or something of the 
     sort. What is conservatism? Is it not adherence to the old 
     and tried, against the new and untried? We stick to, contend 
     for, the identical old policy on the point in controversy 
     which was adopted by our fathers who framed the government 
     under which we live, while you, with one accord, reject and 
     scalp and spit upon that old policy, and insist upon 
     substituting something new.
       True, you disagree among yourselves as to what the 
     substitute shall be. You are divided on new propositions and 
     plans, but you are unanimous in rejecting and renouncing the 
     old policy of the fathers of our country.

  Amending the Constitution of the United States, Mr. Speaker, is not a 
conservative notion. It is a revolutionary, a radical notion, and I 
keep wondering why it is under those circumstances that over and over 
and over again this new majority, which calls itself a majority of 
conservatives, brings time after time after time again proposed 
amendments to the Constitution of the United States of America, in 
unprecedented numbers.
  During the last term of Congress there were 118 constitutional 
amendments proposed; various permutations, combinations, proposed to 
this body by this new conservative majority, calling themselves 
conservatives, attacking the very document which is the basis on which 
we operate our Government.
  In the last Congress we voted on four amendments to the Constitution, 
the balanced budget amendment, the term limits amendment, the flag 
desecration amendment, the supermajority for tax increases amendment, 
the same proposal that will be before the House again tomorrow.
  Mr. Speaker, four proposed amendments to the Constitution may not 
sound like a dramatic number, but 118 proposed amendments were 
introduced in this body, the great, great, great, great majority of 
them by my colleagues calling themselves the new conservative majority; 
in the 104th Congress, the last Congress, proposed amendments 10 times 
more than any of the prior 10 Congresses, this conservative new 
majority.
  Over the last 10 years, the average number of constitutional 
amendments introduced and voted on in the House was 1. Look back 
through our whole history in this country and look at the number of 
times our basic framework of our democracy has been amended, and here 
we are again tomorrow with a new constitutional amendment attacking the 
framework under which our Government and our country operates.
  Mr. Speaker, I come with a passion about this issue. I have told my 
colleagues in this body many times that I believe on constitutional 
issues I may be the most conservative, maybe the only conservative in 
this body. I think it is revolutionary to propose a constitutional 
amendment. It is not conservative.
  My colleagues can tell me over and over and over again how 
conservative they are, but it is not a conservative notion to amend the 
Constitution of the United States. Yet, over and over again during the 
last Congress and in this Congress, starting anew, there are a bunch of 
cavalier Members who believe that they have a better idea about how our 
country ought to operate than the Founding Fathers of our Nation, whose 
ideas have stood the test of time; a bunch of radicals calling 
themselves conservatives, and saying, we have a better idea about how 
to run this country.
  Those are the kinds of people that my colleague, the gentleman from 
California, was talking about, who are supporting not ordinary citizens 
who believe in the Constitution under which we operate, but they are 
supporting a different notion.
  Why do I choose this proposed constitutional amendment to come and 
address? Mr. Speaker, I believe this is the most basic attack on our 
Constitution of any that were proposed during the last Congress, and 
any that will be proposed during this Congress.

                              {time}  1515

  It goes at the very heart of our democracy. Our democracy is based on 
majority rule, one person, one vote; every single individual in this 
country is equally weighted. And to come with a constitutional 
amendment which says require a two-thirds majority diminishes the value 
of somebody's vote and enhances the value of somebody else's vote. It 
is counterdemocratic.
  Mr. Speaker, the essence of democracy is majority rule. Lord knows, I 
have been in a minority my entire life. I have no objection to being in 
a minority. What I have objection to is some supermajority requirement, 
because I understand that our democracy is based on majority rule.
  Why is majority rule so basic? Go back to our Founding Fathers, 
Alexander Hamilton, in The Federalist Papers, here is what he said: 
``The fundamental maxim of republican government requires that the 
sense of the majority should prevail.''
  That is Alexander Hamilton, majority rule is the basis of our 
democracy. We litigated for years and years to establish the 
requirement that each person's vote out in the populace should be 
equally weighted in the selection of Members of the U.S. House of 
Representatives. In the cases of Gray versus Sanders and Wesberry 
versus Sanders, the U.S. Supreme Court specifically articulated that 
every single individual has an equivalent right to select the Members 
of this body.
  Here is what the court said in Westbury versus Sanders:

       We hold that, construed in its historical context, the 
     command of Article I, Section 2 of the Constitution that 
     representatives be chosen by the people of the several States 
     means that, as nearly as practicable, one man's vote in a 
     congressional election is to be worth as much as another's. 
     To say that a vote is worth more in one district than in 
     another district would not only run counter to our 
     fundamental ideas of democratic government, it would cast 
     aside the principle of a House of Representatives elected by 
     the people, a principle tenaciously fought for and 
     established at the Constitutional Convention.

  We spent in 1990 almost $3 billion, and in the year 2000 we will 
spend another $4 to $5 billion to count every citizen in the United 
States and reapportion our Government, because we believe in the 
principle of one person, one vote. We do not count and do a census just 
for the heck of it. It is the basis of our democracy. It is the basis 
on which the membership of this House of Representatives is 
constituted.
  We will spend $4 billion in support of that proposition in the year 
2000. And guess what? After that census is taken, in order to ensure 
that one person one vote is appropriately applied, the whole system of 
districts, congressional districts throughout the country will be 
reordered. Some States will lose representatives because they have lost 
population in proportion to other States. Some States will gain 
population. There will have to be a redrawing of congressional lines 
all across this country, because we believe in the principle of one 
person one vote. It is

[[Page H1451]]

the basis of majority rule. It is the basis of a democracy.
  Now, what happens then when a constitutional amendment is offered 
that requires a two-thirds vote? What you have said to the American 
people is, oh, no, we understand that you have the right to be equally 
represented in the selection of your Representatives, but your 
Representatives do not have the right to be equally represented in 
their voting on this issue. That, my friends, is the reason that the 
number of places in the U.S. Constitution requiring anything other than 
a majority vote is severely limited, limited to only four instances, 
four instances: Ratification or consent to a treaty, that is our 
relationship with an external entity, somebody external to our country 
so we require a higher level of support for that kind of endeavor; 
conviction in impeachment trials or expulsion of Members, our 
relationships internally in this body, we require a higher 
constitutional requirement; to override a Presidential veto, we require 
a higher than majority vote because that has to do with the balance of 
power between the various branches of the Government, and that is the 
way our Founding Fathers set it up; or passing a constitutional 
amendment.
  That ought to tell us something about what our Founding Fathers 
thought about willy-nilly, based-on-popularity polls, based on the 
issue of the day or the thought-of-the-moment thought about amending 
the Constitution. That ought to tell us something about how serious 
they were about it. Yet this new conservative majority would have us 
believe that they are somehow being conservative, attacking the very 
document that is the basis of our democratic society.
  We do not even require a supermajority, anything other than a 
majority in this House to declare war. Would anybody submit to me that 
a declaration of war is less important than raising somebody's taxes?
  Mr. Speaker, this is a counterdemocratic movement that is being 
proposed, and it is being brought out here tomorrow onto this floor on 
April 15, just like it was on April 15 a year ago, not for any 
substantive purposes but for political purposes.
  Well, what do some of our Founding Fathers have to say about this 
majority rule or supermajority requirement? Listen, if you would, to 
Alexander Hamilton again, when he debated at the convention this whole 
notion that there ought to be something other than a majority vote to 
decide issues. Here is what he said:

       What at first sight may seem a remedy is in reality a 
     poison. To give a minority a negative upon the majority, 
     which is always the case where more than a majority is 
     requisite to a decision, is in its tendency to subject the 
     sense of the greater number to that of the lesser. Its real 
     operation is to embarrass the administration, to destroy the 
     energy of the government, and to substitute the pleasure and 
     caprice of an insignificant, turbulent or corrupt junta.

  He called them a junta. Hey, that is a revolutionary term. It is a 
revolutionary term.
  He went on to say,

       This interruption of regular deliberations in decisions of 
     a respectable majority would lead to tedious delays, 
     continual negotiation and intrigue, contemptible compromises 
     of the public good.

  Mr. Speaker, those are not my words. Those are Alexander Hamilton's 
words on the founding of this country about this same kind of notion 
that is coming to the floor of the House of Representatives tomorrow.
  Well, was Alexander Hamilton alone in his contempt for this 
requirement of something other than majority rule? No, he was not. What 
about James Madison in The Federalist Papers? It has been said, and I 
am quoting,

       It has been said that more than a majority ought to have 
     been required for a quorum and in particular cases, if not in 
     all, more than a majority of a quorum for a decision. In all 
     cases where justice or the general good might require new 
     laws to be passed or active measures to be pursued, the 
     fundamental principle of free government would be reversed. 
     It would be no longer the majority that would rule, the power 
     would be transferred to the minority. Were the defense 
     privilege limited to particular cases, an interested minority 
     might take advantage of it to screen themselves from 
     equitable sacrifices to the general will or in particular 
     emergencies to extort unreasonable indulgences.

  Those are the words of James Madison on the founding of our country. 
They are not my words. And yet my colleagues would have us believe that 
this two-thirds supermajority to raise taxes is just, we are protecting 
the people of the United States. Well, which people of the United 
States are they protecting?

                              {time}  1530

  Which people are they protecting? I submit that they are not 
protecting any of us. Because if we truly believe in democracy, then we 
truly believe in the rule of the majority. And if we need to raise 
taxes or lower taxes or declare war or take any action that is not 
already specified in the Constitution as requiring a higher than a 
majority vote, then we ought be able to do it based on majority rule.
  I did not come here to talk about raising taxes or lowering taxes. 
This is not about the issue that underlies this. This is about the 
document that is the fabric and basis of our democracy. It is about 
majority rule. It is about standing up for every single person to have 
the same right that every other person in this country enjoys. It is 
about every single representative, each one of us, representing an 
equivalent number of people in the scheme of our Government, not having 
his or her vote in this House of Representatives diminished in any 
measure.
  So it is not about taxes. That is not the issue at all. It is about 
the Constitution of the United States of America. It is about the 
principles that underlie majority rule and democracy in our country.
  Mr. Speaker, this proposal that will come to us tomorrow is not even 
well drafted. I could not believe that I could pick up a document that 
proposes to amend the Constitution of the United States and find some 
of the language that I found in this bill. It says, ``In order to pass 
a tax increase, you got to have a two-thirds vote if the tax increase 
is something more than `de minimis'.''
  Who knows what de minimis means? There is not a person in this body 
who knows what de minimis is. There is no such word in the Constitution 
of the United States as we speak today. There has never been any 
definition of what that means.
  So this constitutional amendment, this proposed constitutional 
amendment, were it to pass, would pass that authority to decide what 
the word ``de minimis'' means to the judicial branch of our government, 
interrupting, unbalancing the balance of power that has been 
established between the legislative body and the judicial branch of the 
Government.
  The wording somehow was pulled out of the air for the purposes of 
this moment so that we could get it to the floor of the House of 
Representatives on April 15 because everybody is going to be worried 
about paying their taxes tomorrow.
  That is the only reason this bill is coming to the floor tomorrow 
because my colleagues want the American people to think about this in 
an emotional fashion. They do not care about the merits of the bill. 
They do not care that 200 years from now they will have interrupted the 
most cherished notion of majority rule that our country is based on. 
They just want to make some political points on April 15, and they 
think that is the day to make them because people will be incensed 
about having to pay taxes. And they are going to come here tomorrow and 
tell the American people that they are trying to do a favor for the 
American people.
  I want to spend just a minute or two, I am not going to take the 
entire time I have, but I do want to take a few more minutes just to 
alert my colleagues that this is not about protecting the American 
people.
  Understand that in 1952, corporate income taxes constituted 32 
percent of all Federal revenue. By 1992, corporate taxes represented 9 
percent of Federal revenue.
  Let me repeat that. In 1952, corporate taxes constituted 32 percent 
of the Federal revenue. By 1992, corporate taxes constituted only 9 
percent of Federal revenue.
  During that time, we gave major tax breaks to trans, multinational 
corporations. They can set prices on an intercompany basis, sales and 
elect whatever country they wanted to pay taxes in. And nobody ever 
collects any taxes in the United States, so we built in an incentive 
for them to take our jobs abroad to other places. Represents $12

[[Page H1452]]

billion in tax subsidies a year. Pass this constitutional amendment in 
order to undue that corporate tax welfare; it would take a two-thirds 
vote.
  Do my colleagues really think this is about protecting the American 
people? This is about imposing more of the burden on the American 
people.
  I am not going to go through all the corporate loopholes and 
subsidies that we provide to corporations, but it should tell us 
something, that if over a 40-year period the percentage of income that 
the Federal Government gets from corporations went down from 32 percent 
of income to 9 percent of the income, that somebody had to pick up that 
difference.
  Now we are here, my colleagues, telling us that they are 
conservatives in this body, willing to undermine the basic principle 
that individual citizens and rights that individual citizens have in 
this country to have their vote equally counted and equally 
represented, with a piece of legislation that would require a two-
thirds vote now to get rid of any of those corporate tax subsidies. We 
could not even go after them. Could not do it.
  So tell me, my colleagues, whether this is about protecting the 
individual. Is this about protecting individual citizens of this 
country? My friends, it is not. What protects individual citizens of 
this country is being equally valued, being able to cast a vote and 
know that my vote counts as much as my colleague's vote and my 
colleague's vote counts as much as the next person's vote.
  We go to great pains every 10 years to do a census because we value 
that notion. We value majority rule. We value one person, one vote, and 
we should resist as a people any attempt to undermine the value that we 
place on that notion of majority rule. That is the essence of our 
democracy.
  Mr. Speaker, you may have gathered by now that I feel strongly about 
this piece of legislation. Not because it has anything to do with 
taxes. I have been on this floor many times since I have been in this 
body speaking against proposed amendments to the Constitution of the 
United States. Were this a two-thirds majority requirement to reduce 
taxes, I would oppose it. Were it a two-thirds majority requirement to 
declare war, I would oppose it. Were it a two-thirds majority 
requirement to declare a war on poverty or to rescind a war on poverty, 
I would oppose it.
  I cannot think of any single thing that I could want a two-thirds 
majority in this House to have to make law that is not already in the 
Constitution of the United States. And the reason I feel so strongly 
about that is because I believe that our country is founded on the 
notion that we all are equal. The value of our votes are equal, and the 
value of our Representatives in this body ought to be equal. This 
proposed constitutional amendment would end that in this instance.
  I call on my colleagues to consider the value that our Founding 
Fathers placed on majority rule. They debated it at length. They did 
not want a dictatorship. They did not want the value of the wealthy to 
be greater than the value of the poor. They did not want the value of a 
person in California to be less than the value of a person in North 
Carolina. All they wanted was equality. That is all I want.
  I urge my colleagues to defeat this proposed constitutional 
amendment, to preserve and respect the Constitution of the United 
States.

                          ____________________