[Congressional Record Volume 157, Number 174 (Tuesday, November 15, 2011)]
[House]
[Pages H7622-H7624]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
WE NEED A BALANCED BUDGET AMENDMENT
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of
January 5, 2011, the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Gohmert) is recognized
for 30 minutes.
Mr. GOHMERT. Mr. Speaker, I appreciate so much the comments of my
friend from Ohio, from Washington State, good people, good
observations. It's an honor to serve with devoted people like that.
Spending is at an all-time crisis. We do need a balanced budget
amendment. There's no question. We have got to have a balanced budget
amendment.
The great Senator from the State of Texas, Phil Gramm, joined forces
and got a bill referred to as Gramm-Rudman through. That was supposed
to force, legislatively, the House and Senate to only spend within the
revenue coming in. But since it was legislation, since both bodies can
create such legislation, then both bodies can undo such legislation.
Just like both bodies can create a debt ceiling bill, as occurred late
July, early August this year, both bodies can decide to do something
different a few months later. That's the problem with legislation.
That's why we do need a balanced budget amendment.
Now, the bill that was brought through committee this year, this
112th Congress, titled H.J. Res. 1, it passed out of committee, the
Judiciary Committee. It says that the purpose is proposing a balanced
budget amendment to the Constitution of the United States. Massive
number of cosponsors. And it was a good bill. It was, it is.
And all gratitude goes to Mr. Bob Goodlatte. He has been a strong
proponent for advancing a balanced budget amendment for numerous
Congresses for many years, and he has done a good thing with this bill.
I appreciated his also including an amendment that I brought to
committee that was passed in committee and is part of the joint
resolution. But it's House Joint Resolution 1. It's a good bill. It's
to provide for a balanced budget amendment.
In section 1 it simply says:
Total outlays for any fiscal year shall not exceed total
receipts for that fiscal year, unless three-fifths of the
whole number of each House of Congress shall provide by law
for a specific excess of outlays over receipts by a rollcall
vote.
Well, you might think that would be sufficient just to say total
outlays cannot exceed total receipts. But those of us who've been
around Congress long enough know that's not good enough unless you add,
as Mr. Goodlatte does in Section 8:
Total receipts shall include all receipts of the United
States Government except those derived from borrowing.
If Section 8 is not in there, some Member of Congress down the road,
if the balanced budget amendment were made into law as an amendment to
the U.S. Constitution, would be clever enough to say, hey, it doesn't
say you can't borrow. It just says you can't have outlays exceed total
receipts. Well receipts, if you get loans, you've got money coming in,
even from loans, well, that ought to be good enough.
So we need Section 8 that says total receipts include all receipts
except those derived from borrowing. That's a good provision to have in
there because we know that this body, different parties in charge,
different groups in here, as Members of the House and Senate, have
always had people that found a way, found a loophole, found a way to
get around the laws, the Constitution.
A good example of that, no, a great example of that is the ObamaCare
bill. Article I of the United States Constitution, section 7 makes very
clear that any bill that raises revenue, increases the amount of
revenue, it has to start here in the House. It can't originate in the
Senate. It has to start in the House. That's where the founders wanted
bills involving taxes in any way, that raise revenue at all, had to
start in the House.
Over the years, people found a way around that. And we saw that with
the ObamaCare bill. The election of Scott Brown in the Senate made
clear that they were going to have to do something different than what
was originally planned in order to get the ObamaCare bill passed. So
they took a House bill--they knew they couldn't wait on the House to do
anything. They were going to have to start it.
So to get around the clear requirement of the Constitution that bills
that raise revenue, as did the President's health care bill--raised
taxes quite a bit actually--they said, okay, we're going to take a
House bill that's already passed the House. They took one that provided
a tax credit for first-time homebuyers who happened to be veterans.
That was the basic intent of the bill.
Beginning with line 1, page 1, the Senate then deleted every word and
substituted therein 2,400, 2,500 pages of ObamaCare. That way the
Senate could say, hey, it didn't originate here in the Senate. This is
a bill that originated in the House. We just struck every single word
and put in the Senate bill.
Well, that violates the intent of the Constitution because, clearly,
that health care bill did not originate in the House. But that was
deemed to be a loophole in the rules and in the constitutional law, and
so it's been gotten away with before and it was gotten away with on
that bill.
So we know games get played like that. If you don't specify that
receipts do not include borrowed money, then somebody's going to figure
that out and use it and probably get away with it. So it has to be in
there.
The rule has now been reported from the Rules Committee about the
balanced budget amendment version that we're going to be taking up. And
people keep referring to it as a clean balanced budget amendment.
That's the one we're going to take up, one that does not have anything
else other than total outlays must not exceed total receipts.
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Now, in this House Joint Resolution 1, it has another provision that
says:
Total outlays for any fiscal year shall not exceed 18
percent of economic output of the United States, unless two-
thirds of each
[[Page H7623]]
House of Congress shall provide for a specific increase of
outlays above this amount.
It goes on in section 3:
The limit on the debt of the United States held by the
public shall not be increased unless three-fifths of the
whole number of each House shall provide by law for such an
increase by a rollcall vote.
That means in order to increase the debt ceiling, you can't do it
with one more than 50 percent, that also will require three-fifths to
raise the debt ceiling.
Section 4 is a requirement that the President transmit to the
Congress a budget for the United States Government. That's a proposed
budget for that fiscal year. ``Total outlays do not exceed total
receipts.''
Well, we've already seen with the Senate, seen previously the
President can just choose to ignore that, not because it's not a matter
of law. The law requires the Senate to pass a budget. They've chosen to
ignore that, to violate the law. They have violated the law. They
continue to refuse to follow the law. But, unfortunately, it's another
loophole in the law even though they're required to pass a budget, and
the Senate's failed to do so for going on a thousand days now. There is
no enforcement mechanism of what we do to the Senate if the Senate
violates the law by not submitting a budget, so we've seen games get
played. The games continue.
Now, in this House Joint Resolution 1, section 5 says: ``A bill to
increase revenue''--in other words, raising taxes--``shall not become
law unless two-thirds of the whole number of each House shall provide
by law for such an increase by a rollcall vote.'' So, in other words, a
supermajority is required in the House and the Senate in order to raise
taxes.
Now, of course, section 6 makes an exception for war. As it says:
``The Congress may waive the provisions of this article for any fiscal
year in which a declaration of war is in effect.'' It's a war exception
because we know in times of war we have to do whatever has to be done
in order to provide for the common defense and to ward off those who
would destroy this country that we love.
So I think those are all important.
But now we're going to be taking up something that is so important to
the country, a balanced budget amendment. And I believed when I was
elected in 2004 a balanced budget amendment is very important to become
a part of the Constitution through the amendment process, and I still
believe that. My beliefs have not changed. But in my over 6\1/2\ years
now here in Congress, it's become very clear to me that unless we have
a constitutional cap on spending, the House and Senate will not be able
to control themselves. And all one need do is look at who's paying the
taxes now.
We're told somewhere between 50 percent and 53 percent of all of the
adult Americans will pay all of the income tax. We're now told over 47
percent of American adults are not paying any income tax. When a
country has close to 50 percent who are not paying any income tax, then
you're always going to have a situation where there is a hue and cry
among those who are getting money from the government and not paying
money in not to cut spending but to raise taxes.
I feel like having a cap on spending is so important that even though
I really appreciate and think a supermajority to raise taxes is a good
idea, I think it would be okay to let that go. If we have a cap on
spending, the provision that would say it takes three-fifths to raise
the debt ceiling, if we have a balanced budget amendment and a cap on
spending, I think we can let those go.
But I've become increasingly convinced that if we don't have a cap, a
maximum amount of spending--and the best way we've seen, I'm open to
other ideas, but the best proposals have indicated a percentage of our
gross domestic product is the best thing to take a percentage of and
make that the maximum amount the government can spend. If we don't do
that, I've seen repeatedly, whether the Republicans are in charge or
the Democrats are in charge, we can't control spending. No better
example than what's been going on lately.
We have a President in the White House who has threatened that he'll
veto a bill that makes cuts that he doesn't want. He's threatened to
veto a bill that tries to rein in the extra trillion dollars of
spending that he immediately came in and spent.
I mean, good grief. It would seem that since this body, under control
of Speaker Pelosi for 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, that we had spent more
money than in history, that we could at least go before the big Wall
Street bailout, October of 2008, we could at least go back to 2007
spending. That was spending that was created by the liberal Congress
headed by Speaker Pelosi. Surely we could go back to 2007 before we
added an extra trillion dollars and then President Obama added a
trillion dollars, and then we keep adding that extra trillion dollars
that we didn't spend in 2007 and actually wasn't spent until fiscal
year 2009 because it was so late in 2008. We'd already passed October
1. We're in 2009 spending. Why couldn't we go back to 2008 levels of
spending before we added an extra trillion, before this President ran
up spending to about $1.5 trillion more than we were bringing in in
receipts?
It just seems so grossly ridiculous to have a President come in and
increase and say: We're going to have this big, over a trillion dollars
in added spending we've never had before. And, by the way, if you dare
try to cut any of this spending, I'm going to veto the bill.
So we don't cut spending. We had the biggest wave election last
November since the 1930s. Over 80 new Republicans coming into the House
of Representatives. Having met them, gotten to know them, these are
good people. These are good Members of Congress. They came with the
right motivation. They were elected by people who had the right
motivation. They want to see this country thrive and not just survive
but really prosper and protect liberty. They were driven by those
beliefs. They were driven by the same desire that I have that motivated
me to run for Congress in 2004.
I do not want to be a part of the generation that gave our children a
lesser country than we inherited. That's why so many of us work so
hard. We don't want to be that generation. This country could go on for
200 more years and still be the greatest, freest land in the history of
the world, but not with the level of spending that we have embraced.
{time} 1710
So I've come to see, when you look at what has happened with that
wave election coming in and when you go back and look at our
conservative Republican pledge made by wonderful people I love serving
with, that we pledged to the American people. I didn't write that
pledge, but I agreed to it. It said we were going to return spending to
pre-stimulus, pre-bailout levels. We promised that. We pledged that.
Not only that, we said, Here is our marker. We promise you we're going
to cut at least $100 billion in the first year if you put us in office.
That's our pledge.
Everybody who took that pledge meant it. Then we had a wave election
after that pledge, and wonderful, wonderful people came into this body
with the intention of keeping the pledge.
We got to the spring of this year. Well, actually, we got to
December--Speaker Pelosi was still in charge. There was more money
given away by Congress in December than in any lame duck session in the
history of the country, which was after the most conservative wave
election since the 1930s. Actually, that wasn't a conservative election
back in the thirties, but this was a wave election. A powerful majority
of Americans wanted restraint on spending, and with the wonderful
people who were elected and sent up here, we had the biggest giveaway
last December of any lame duck session in history.
Then we come in at the first of this year, still with the best of
intentions. We still knew, Okay. Just forget about December because
we're going to keep our pledge. Then some realized, Gee, we're up
against an awful lot of people who don't pay any income tax, and they
don't want any cuts in spending. We may not get enough in the Senate to
do what we promised, so let's do a compromise. It was with the best of
intentions. There was nothing ill-intended about working out a
compromise with the Senate.
The way it should have worked is for this House to pass the bill that
they believed was appropriate. It was for this House to pass a bill
that cut $100
[[Page H7624]]
billion off of spending and then wait and demand for the Senate to pass
something, because the Senate just seemed to have trouble passing
anything. It's why the President is 50 percent right when he says this
is a do-nothing Congress, because the Senate has been doing nothing.
They've got our bills piled up down there, led by able leadership here
in the House. They're letting them pile up down there. They're not
going to pass them. They don't want to create those jobs or it might
look good for Republicans who are driving the agenda. So they're just
going to let them die down there unless the American public makes it
very clear: You either pick up those Republican bills in the Senate and
pass them or over 20 Democratic Senators won't be back come January
2013. Maybe that will motivate them.
In the meantime, we should have forced them to pass something. Then
it would go to conference, and then a compromise would be worked out.
That's how the system was intended to work. Then we could say to our
constituents here from the House, where the Republicans have the
majority, You see what the House passed. This is what we believe. We
passed what we said we would. If you want this to become law as we
passed it in the House, you've got to give us the majority in the
Senate, and we'll do that.
As it is, all we have is a majority in the House. This is the only
place we can pass it. We had to work out a compromise in the conference
committee, and that's why we got what we did. But in the meantime, if
you want what the House passed before the compromise, give us the
Senate next year and you'll get it. That's the way the system was
designed to work.
Then it allows the Senate to say, Look, see all these giveaway
programs that we passed here in the Senate? We had to drop some of
these giveaway programs in the conference committee because, the dadgum
fiscally responsible Republicans in the House, they wouldn't go along
with all the giveaways, so we had to cut some in conference; but if you
want more and more giveaways like we're passing in the Senate, then
give us back the majority in the House, and you'll get more and more
giveaway programs. That's the way the system is supposed to work.
Then in November next year, the American voters can say either they
want a majority in the House to have more giveaway programs like the
Senate has passed or they can say we want more fiscal responsibility as
we found in the House by virtue of the bills they passed. The problem
has been that we have been negotiating with the Senate to see what we
think they might pass and then shoot at the target that they say they
might pass in the Senate rather than passing what we believe in in the
House.
This summer, it is to the Republicans' credit in the House that we
passed a bill called Cut, Cap, and Balance. There were some issues and
concerns I had, but overall it was a good bill and it passed. We should
have demanded that the Senate pass something that would go to the
conference committee with our Cut, Cap, and Balance and that we would
work out a compromise from there, but that's not what we did. We turned
around and passed a debt ceiling increase that had been negotiated and,
basically, was what the Senate said they might be willing to pass, and
we got it passed.
My point being, we keep passing bills that really haven't cut
spending. With the wave election like we had and with a big group
coming in, we couldn't control spending? We couldn't get a majority to
pass it in the House to cut $100 billion in spending? What are the
hopes in the future?
The time has come for a balanced budget amendment with a cap on
spending. I think that cap on spending is so important to help future
Congresses, to help this country last. I think it is so important that
I think we can forget about the two-thirds to raise taxes. I think we
could forget about some of the other provisions if we just have those
two things: one, a balanced budget requirement where outlays do not
exceed the receipts and where the receipts don't include borrowed
money; number two, a cap on spending. We've seen time and time again we
haven't been able to control spending even with the incredibly good
Representatives that were added last November.
With regard to the debt ceiling and bringing down the spending, good
grief. We added over $1 trillion. We're spending nearly $1.5 trillion
more than we're bringing in in receipts--and we can't find $100 billion
to cut from that? I mean, good grief. This House this year had agreed
to a 5 percent cut in our legislative budgets. We did that to
ourselves. Most of America has no idea about that. Then for next year,
we're going to have a little over a 6 percent cut in our legislative
budget. Most of America has no idea about that either, but we did it.
The only way that's going to really make a difference in the deficit
is if we make that demand of every other agency, of every other
department, of every other amount of discretionary spending and if we
say, Look, we did it to ourselves, that gives us the moral authority to
say, You're cutting your budget 5 percent next year and 6 percent the
year after that, and we're going to bring this down 11 percent over the
next 2 years. Then, voila, we have met the requirement that was put
upon the supercommittee.
You see some problems with the so-called supercommittee. There are
some great people on there. The people who were put on there from the
House and the Senate, the Republicans, they're friends and they're good
people. Pat Toomey--there's not a more conservative guy anywhere--he
was even willing, from the reports, to have a framework that actually
raised revenue like the demand had been made by the Senate Democrats
and by the President. Some of us were wincing at it--ooh--but he was
willing to do that. It looked like the Democrats were so impressed--
gee, this is great. So I'll tell you what. This may be the deal that
works. Then they went back and talked to their Democratic leadership,
whoever that is, and they came back and said, We can't work out a deal
here.
That should have made it pretty clear, when the agreement was made to
cut hundreds of billions of dollars from our national security and at
the same time cut hundreds of billions of dollars from Medicare, that
some people on the other side of the aisle have realized, if we go into
next year's election and if the only cuts to Medicare have been the
$500 billion that ObamaCare did last year--that the Democrats rammed
through against the will of the Republicans in the House and the Senate
and against the people across America--we're going to be toast next
November. So, if we could have this failure of the supercommittee and
if all this doesn't work out and if all these hundreds of billions are
cut from Medicare, then we can tell them the Republicans did it instead
of ObamaCare, which AARP thought was a good idea.
{time} 1720
They'll forget about that if we have those cuts this year because we
blame the Republicans.
Mr. Speaker, may I inquire how much time is left.
The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Huizenga of Michigan). The gentleman
from Texas has 55 seconds remaining.
Mr. GOHMERT. Let me finish up by saying, we need a cap on spending.
And with respect for the veterans, let me finish with a prayer from
George Washington, just a small excerpt since my time is so short. It's
Washington's prayer:
Almighty God, we make our earnest prayer that Thou wilt
keep the United States in Thy holy protection; and Thou wilt
incline the hearts of the citizens to entertain a brotherly
affection and love for one another and for their fellow
citizens of the United States at large, and particularly for
their brethren who have served in the field.
Those are our veterans. I'm a veteran. I didn't serve in combat. But
thank God for those willing to make the ultimate sacrifice for our
liberties. Now we should not squander it.
With that, I yield back the balance of my time.
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