[Congressional Record Volume 157, Number 102 (Monday, July 11, 2011)]
[House]
[Pages H4797-H4798]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
BALANCED BUDGET AMENDMENT
The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from
Oklahoma (Mr. Lankford) for 5 minutes.
Mr. LANKFORD. Nineteen years ago, when my wife and I married, I was
still in school, I was working as much as I could, and she was also
working, but we were barely making it. But we made the decision we were
not going to run up credit card debt and live beyond our means. We paid
our school loans, we tithed to our church, we ate a lot of peanut
butter, and we lived simply. As Dave Ramsey says, ``We determined to
act our wage.''
It is a biblical principle for myself and my family. Proverbs 22:7
states: ``The borrower is slave to the lender.'' Proverbs 22 applies to
families, and Proverbs 22 applies to nations. If we were living within
our means as a Nation, almost all the debate in the last 6 months in
this Chamber would have been different.
We've tried every method in the Fed's bag of tricks to protect our
interest rate, because if the rate goes up at all, the house of cards
falls. We work to manipulate banks, mortgage lending and manufacturing
because we must keep revenue up. We carefully manage every relationship
worldwide because we need the borrowing liquidity. We pour billions of
dollars into the economy that we borrow from future generations because
we're afraid this generation will have to make hard choices if we do
not keep up the borrow pace. Our economy struggles, which leads
Washington regulators to overmanage every sector, which causes even
more economic uncertainty.
Our focus has shifted from families to corporate bailouts because
we're living beyond our means, and we're trying everything we can to
make it work. It's not sustainable. We have to get back in balance.
Capital investment in business and industry is slower because so much
of the money that would go toward starting new businesses is actually
financing our national debt obligation. There's only a limited amount
of money in the world economy at any one moment to subsidize our debt
and the debt of other nations around the world. When we consume that
money for our debt payments, we remove it from the market.
America is the world leader. Unfortunately, we have led the world in
debt and deficit spending, and now it's time we lead the world in how
to solve a debt crisis.
You see, I believe we have a debt crisis, not a debt ceiling vote
crisis. If we increase the debt ceiling without beginning to solve the
debt problem, we did not avert the economic disaster; we accelerated
the disaster. I understand we're painted into a corner, and we cannot
balance our budget instantly without completely collapsing this fragile
economy. I get it. But I also get that we were sent here to make adult
choices.
This is a bipartisan problem. We all point fingers at each other, but
we all know both parties made promises with no plan to pay for it. So
since we know that, why don't we also agree to a bipartisan solution?
I've heard a hundred times since I've been here, we need a balanced
approach to solving this problem. Well, let me tell you I agree. We do
need a balanced approach--a balanced budget amendment approach. That is
the first big step to forcing us to get into balance permanently.
The Constitution is not a Republican or a Democrat document. A
balanced budget amendment is not a Republican or a Democrat issue. You
see, you can't make changes to the Constitution without both parties
engaged. But if both parties actually worked together, we can solve
this debt crisis for our children and grandchildren.
The last time this body dealt seriously with a balanced budget
amendment was 1996. It passed this House with overwhelming bipartisan
support, and it failed in the Senate by a single vote. Can you imagine
for a moment what our financial condition would be like right now if
we'd started balancing our budget during the good economic times of the
1990s and kept that discipline to this present day?
If you want to know the true consequences of that failed balanced
budget amendment vote in 1996, point to the financial collapse of 2008,
because I believe the financial collapse of 2008 would not have
occurred if we had balanced the budget when we did. Even if we did, we
would be in a position to
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better respond to it. We can either learn from that lesson or repeat
it. The balanced budget amendment passed the Senate in the 1980s and
failed in the House. Then it passed in the nineties in the House and
failed in the Senate. This is the moment we will either doom the next
generation of Americans to more financial uncertainty or we will solve
the problem.
A balanced budget amendment solves the S&P and Moody's rating
question because it settles the issue forever that we will live within
our means. While this body should be able to make tough choices, we all
know full well this body will make the tough choices only when it has
to. It has always been that way; it always will be that way. A balanced
budget amendment gives future Congresses the gift of a moment each year
when they must make tough choices. Let's bring up the amendment.
Let's send it to the States for a vote. It is the ultimate ``allow
the people to speak'' moment. I think Americans get this more than
Washington gets this. Forty-nine of our 50 States have a structure in
place right now for a balanced budget every single year. They make it
work every year. We can too. The only fear from Washington is the
inability to spend more money at will and to control the States with
our preferences and money.
At the end of this labor, if we birth a balanced budget amendment,
all the pain of this process will have been worth it. Let's show the
Nation we can work together. Let's solve the debt problem. Let's take
up and pass a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution, and then
let's get to work in solving our debt crisis.
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