[Congressional Record Volume 162, Number 25 (Thursday, February 11, 2016)]
[Senate]
[Pages S863-S865]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                       BALANCED BUDGET AMENDMENT

  Mr. HATCH. Mr. President, having said that, during the 2008 
Presidential campaign, one of the candidates criticized the outgoing 
President for adding $4 trillion to the national debt. He called that 
increase not only irresponsible but even ``unpatriotic.'' Barack Obama 
was that candidate. He won the election and took office with the 
Government Accountability Office warning the long-term fiscal outlook 
is ``unsustainable.''
  The national debt on inauguration day 2009 was $10.6 trillion, and it 
stands at $19 trillion today. The national debt for American households 
has risen from $93,000 to nearly $160,000 since President Obama took 
office.
  If a $4 trillion increase is irresponsible and unpatriotic, what 
words describe an increase that is more than twice as large? The 
national debt crisis has been around for a long time, but we have never 
been in a more serious, perilous situation than we are today. One way 
to grasp the magnitude of the national debt is to compare it to the 
size of the economy, or the gross domestic

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product. In other words, we can compare what we owe to our ability to 
pay.
  When President Obama took office, the national debt was 82 percent of 
GDP. It is now 105 percent of GDP today, by far the largest increase in 
American history during a President's first 7 years. Economists tell us 
that the national debt above 90 percent of GDP for a sustained period 
of time will lead to substantially slower economic growth and higher 
interest rates.
  The United States is now in the longest period in history with a 
national debt above that toxic 90-percent level. Not surprisingly, 
since the recession ended in June 2009, the national debt has grown 
more than twice as fast, and GDP has grown less than half as fast as 
during the same period after previous recessions. Some economists 
prefer to evaluate the national debt as a percentage of tax revenue; 
that is, comparing what we owe to what we earn. The national debt has 
risen from approximately 350 percent of Federal revenue when President 
Obama took office to 600 percent of Federal revenue today. But even 
that does not tell the whole story.
  During the last several years of skyrocketing national debt, the 
interest rate on that debt has been nearly zero. If interest rates had 
been at the historical average, annual interest costs would be more 
than twice what they are today and on their way to consuming more than 
half of all Federal revenue. And now interest rates are starting to 
creep up. The Concord Coalition and the Committee for a Responsible 
Federal Budget both anticipate that over the next decade interest 
payments on the national debt alone will approach $1 trillion per year. 
That is interest against the national debt. By any of these measures, 
the national debt crisis is not only serious, it is worse than ever and 
much worse than when this President took office.
  The Congressional Budget Office has a new budget, an economic outlook 
that projects the national debt rising by nearly $10 trillion over the 
next decade. Looking beyond the next decade, CBO says that under 
current law, the national debt will explode to more than 150 percent of 
GDP, the highest level in American history. CBO also says that interest 
on the national debt is one of the engines driving the debt even 
higher. A national debt of this magnitude undercuts the economic growth 
necessary to minimize borrowing to fund the government. Rising interest 
costs for such a monstrous debt add to the debt on which more interest 
must then be paid.
  In this new report, CBO again outlined some of the serious negative 
consequences of this national debt for the budget and the Nation. In 
addition to substantially higher interest payments, these include lower 
productivity and wages, less flexibility by lawmakers to respond to 
fiscal challenges, and an increased likelihood of a fiscal crisis. In 
addition to those problems, former Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman 
Michael Mullen and experts from the Heritage Foundation to the 
Brookings Institution warned that the national debt crisis is a serious 
threat to national security. It is no wonder that more than two-thirds 
of Americans say that their concern over the national debt is growing, 
and more than three-quarters of Americans say that the national debt 
should be among Congress's top three priorities.
  The national debt was once a top priority. In fact, America's 
Founders were so determined to avoid debt that their commitment to 
fiscal balance was often called our unwritten fiscal constitution. 
President George Washington, for example, told Congress that the 
regular redemption of the public debt was the most urgent fiscal 
priority. That commitment is long gone. The Federal budget has been 
balanced in only a dozen of the last 80 years, and as I said earlier, 
we are in the longest period of American history with a debt above 90 
percent of the GDP.
  As its willpower failed, Congress has also tried to address the debt 
crisis by legislation. The first bill requiring a balanced budget was 
introduced in 1934, when the national debt was 40 percent of GDP, 
compared to today. Fifty years later, Congress enacted the Balanced 
Budget and Emergency Deficit Control Act. Since then, we have enacted 
multiple budget control acts and budget enforcement acts as the 
national debt climbed from 42 percent of GDP in 1985 to more than 100 
percent of GDP today.
  Good intentions will not balance the Nation's checkbook. Statutes 
that Congress can change or ignore will not keep our fiscal house in 
order. Neither willpower nor legislation will tackle this national debt 
crisis. Pretending otherwise is the fiscal equivalent of fiddling while 
Rome burns. In no other way, except by an amendment to the 
Constitution, can Congress be compelled to balance its budget in 
peacetime. Let me say that again. In no other way, except by an 
amendment to the Constitution, can Congress be compelled to balance its 
budget in peacetime. While I claim that as my firm conviction, I cannot 
claim authorship of those words. The Appropriations Committee expressed 
that principle in 1947 about a balanced budget amendment introduced by 
Senator Millard Tydings, a Democrat from Maryland. Everything that has 
happened since then has proved the truth of those words.
  Year after year, decade after decade, we slide deeper in debt until 
today our economy is being suffocated. One definition of insanity is 
doing the same thing but expecting different results. If we keep doing 
what we have done, we will get more of what we have been getting. This 
would be a very different country, a freer and more productive country, 
if Congress had already proposed the only solution that exists--a 
constitutional amendment that requires fiscal responsibility. The first 
balanced budget amendment was introduced in the House in 1936.
  I introduced my first balanced budget amendment in June of 1979 
during my first term in the U.S. Senate. Adjusted for inflation, the 
national debt then was $2.6 trillion, or 32 percent of GDP. That share 
of GDP doubled by 1997, when the Senate came within one vote--one 
solitary vote--of passing a balanced budget amendment that I 
introduced. It rose to 95 percent when the Senate last voted on a 
balanced budget amendment in 2011 and is 105 percent of GDP today.
  Since this crisis is already so grave and getting worse, and since 
the only way to tackle it is through the Constitution, we should 
propose a balanced budget amendment and let the American people decide 
to take this step. Congress, after all, cannot amend the Constitution. 
A requirement that Congress keep its fiscal house in order does not 
become part of the Constitution until it is approved by three-quarters 
of the States, or 38 States.
  Article V of the Constitution also allows the States to apply for a 
convention to propose constitutional amendments. Concerned citizens 
have been working since the mid-1970s to reach the two-thirds threshold 
for calling such a convention to propose a balanced budget amendment. 
Since Congress has never called an article V convention, many questions 
remain unresolved, and theories remain untested regarding that method 
of proposing an amendment. I can assure my colleagues, however, that 
Congress's continued failure to propose a balanced budget amendment 
guarantees that our fellow citizens will continue working to force that 
course upon us.
  I looked at dozens of polls conducted by major polling firms and 
national news organizations since I was first elected to the Senate. 
Three-quarters of Americans supported a balanced budget amendment in 
1976, and three-quarters support it now. They believe even more 
strongly today what the Appropriations Committee said in 1947--that in 
no other way, except by a constitutional amendment, can Congress be 
compelled to balance its budget in peacetime. It will do no good to 
pretend that the national debt is not a fiscal Tsunami. It is. It will 
do no good to pretend that this ocean of debt is not already taking a 
serious toll on our country. It is. It will do no good to repeat the 
mantra that Congress can tackle the national debt crisis by itself. No 
one believes that anymore--not anyone. That emperor has no clothes. 
Perhaps some of my colleagues believe that all the polls over the last 
40 years are wrong, that the American people are content watching the 
national debt swallow the economy.
  Perhaps our fellow citizens are actually OK with slower economic 
growth, a rising threat to national security, the greater likelihood of 
a fiscal crisis, and an unsustainable path to fiscal disaster. If that 
is what the American

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people actually believe, then they will decline to ratify a balanced 
budget amendment. So why not give it a chance?
  Perhaps some of my colleagues believe that the Congressional Budget 
Office is wrong in its disturbing projections and dire warnings or that 
the Government Accountability Office is mistaken and the fiscal path we 
are on is sustainable after all or that the Concord Coalition and the 
Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget are wrong about how national 
debt interest payments will continue to grow and add to the debt or 
that economists are wrong to warn about the impact of a sustained 
national debt of this magnitude. If my colleagues are convinced that 
everyone else is wrong and that our fiscal future is just fine and 
hunky-dory after all, then I still urge them to let the American 
decide. The Constitution belongs to the American people--not to the 
people here, although we are part of the American people.
  President Obama once said that a $4 trillion increase in the national 
debt is irresponsible and unpatriotic. This week he submitted a budget 
for fiscal year 2017 that reflects the same recycled misguided policies 
that have both added to the debt and have failed in Congress. On all of 
the budgets he submitted, there was only one vote for his budget. There 
was a bipartisan rejection in each case.
  President Obama wants to expand a broken Medicaid system rather than 
reform it. He wants to impose higher taxes to prop up more government 
spending. He continues to turn a blind eye to the Nation's 
unsustainable entitlement programs that are propelling the national 
debt to unprecedented levels.
  We all know the facts and the dangers about the national debt crisis. 
We all know that the American people are, if anything, more alarmed 
about this crisis than we are--certainly with the exception of myself. 
The only reason that Members of Congress have refused to give our 
fellow citizens a choice about adding a balanced budget amendment to 
the Constitution is that they know what that choice will be. I say with 
respect, but as strongly as I can, that this is not a legitimate basis 
for refusing to propose a balanced budget amendment. In our system of 
government, as Founder James Wilson once put it, the people are the 
masters of government. Only they have authority to set the rules for 
government. This choice must be theirs, not ours.
  Here is the heart of the matter. First, the national debt crisis 
poses a significant and growing threat to the economic and national 
security of this country. In fact, we have never been in such an 
extended, perilous period than we are right now. Second, Congress has 
tried and failed to address this crisis by either willpower or 
legislation and will do so only if the Constitution requires it. Third, 
the decision of whether to use the Constitution to require fiscal 
responsibility belongs to the American people, not to Congress. A 
balanced budget amendment would allow the American people to make that 
choice.
  What are we afraid of? Are we afraid that we can't keep going on 
spending like this or that the American people might pass a balanced 
budget amendment to the Constitution? Yes, I think we are afraid of 
that, but we shouldn't be. We should be glad to have it in the 
Constitution itself. We could either take the responsibility we were 
elected for and propose a balanced budget amendment or the American 
people may do it for us.
  The key to me is to pass a balanced budget constitutional amendment. 
I filed it, and it has a great number. It was filed right after we got 
into the Congress. It is an amendment that literally every one of us 
should support.

  Let's get real about this national debt. Let's get real about helping 
our American people survive. Let's get real about having the greatest 
Nation on Earth continue to fight for liberty and freedom and 
independence and religious rights all over the world and all over this 
country. Let's get real about the future of our young people. Let's get 
real about being in the U.S. Senate and having an opportunity to form a 
real, solid approach to this, which would make all the difference in 
the world.
  Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The bill clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Ms. KLOBUCHAR. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

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