[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 157 (2011), Part 12]
[House]
[Page 17310]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                             DEBTOR NATION

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from 
Nebraska (Mr. Terry) for 5 minutes.
  Mr. TERRY. ``It is the debtor that is ruined by hard times.'' That 
was said by our 19th President, Rutherford B. Hayes. It is a timely and 
insightful comment.
  The United States now is the debtor. We are $15 trillion in debt, 
rising at a yearly clip of $1.5 trillion with really no institutional 
control to stop that.
  Yes, we're in hard times--9 percent-plus unemployment for 3 years 
straight. A report the other day said the real unemployment rate from 
those that have just given up is probably closer to 15 percent--16 
million to 20 million Americans. Our savings, decreasing, mostly 
because of the dollars that are going towards buying bonds or selling 
bonds to China.
  Now, before us this week, though, is probably one of the most 
important votes that this Congress will take this year, and that is to 
pass an amendment to our Constitution forcing this body to balance its 
budget. Now I know it's stunning to many people that our Constitution 
didn't have that. There were lots of fail-safes built into our 
Constitution, and I think that our Founding Fathers never thought that 
deficit spending other than at a time of war would ever occur in our 
country, but it has, and it's become the norm.
  Why has it become the norm in Congress? Simply answered, because you 
can. There's nothing to stop it. The easiest way, the most political 
way so you never have to say ``no'' is to deficit spend. My friends, 
that has to end. It has to end this congressional session.
  Now, the balanced budget amendment is a simple one. It says, 
basically, we cannot spend more than our revenues. That's what most 
State constitutions have, that's what the Nebraska constitution has, 
and that's what the city charter for Omaha has. I spent 8 years on the 
Omaha city council. We had to have a balanced budget. You have to make 
tough decisions. I've been there when people have come and said, we 
need new water parks or we need something else. We on the city council, 
because we had to live by a balanced budget, had to make a decision of 
raising taxes, cutting somewhere else, or saying ``no.'' Those are your 
only three options.
  Well the time has come that Congress needs the institutional barriers 
to spending, and it's the balanced budget amendment. It will be the 
institutionalized discipline that has been lacking here for decades. 
The time has come to pass it.
  I want to leave this one general point, both disappointing and 
hopeful. There was an article in USA Today, November 4 or so, 11, 12 
days ago, where it quoted the Democratic leadership saying to their own 
people, kill the balanced budget amendment. They want to preserve the 
right to deficit spend our future away at $1.5 trillion per year. 
Fortunately, as we have heard from one Democratic Member, he's not 
following the Democratic leadership's orders here. I hope that we will 
get enough of our Democratic friends who believe in fiscal discipline 
to join us. It takes two-thirds of both the House and the Senate to do 
that. It will be a close vote. So on something as simple as saying that 
our expenditures can't exceed our revenues, I ask for all of my 
colleagues' support.

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