[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 157 (2011), Part 12]
[House]
[Pages 17693-17694]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                       BALANCED BUDGET AMENDMENT

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentlewoman from 
Missouri (Mrs. Hartzler) for 5 minutes.
  Mrs. HARTZLER. Washington has a problem. It spends more than it 
brings in, and it has been doing that for a long time. That's why we 
are over $15 trillion in debt. That's over $46,000 of debt for every 
American man, woman, and child. Washington is currently borrowing 36 
cents out of every dollar it spends, and under President Obama, our 
national debt has increased 34 percent. That's the fastest increase in 
the debt under any U.S. President in history.
  Our government is digging a hole it might never get out of. We don't 
have the money, yet Big Government hasn't been able to restrain itself 
and keeps putting more and more of its spending on a credit card--our 
children's credit card.
  Our national debt-to-GDP ratio rivals that of countries like Ireland, 
Portugal, and Greece, which are facing sovereign debt crises. Soon our 
Nation's Federal debt will equal our GDP. It is a losing proposition. 
It's like someone's total credit card debt equalling the total amount 
of income that they bring in each year.
  And so what do people do? If they do that at home, unfortunately a 
lot of people go and get another credit card and they borrow money from 
that to pay the minimum on the first credit

[[Page 17694]]

card. But then they have to go and get another credit card to pay the 
minimum on that one to pay the minimum on that one. It doesn't work. It 
spirals down and down until finally it ends in bankruptcy. It's 
unsustainable.
  Most American families understand that. They live within their means. 
Washington should, too.
  I grew up watching my mom and my dad wrestle with balancing the 
budget on our family farm. They would sit down around the kitchen table 
at the start of the year and develop a cash flow projection for the 
upcoming year listing the expenses that would be necessary to put in 
the crops and projecting the anticipated yields and prices to see how 
we were going to fare and to ensure that we didn't go over budget.
  Then my parents would monitor it throughout the year to see how it 
was doing. My mother would spend hours with her pencil erasing and 
adjusting the budget as conditions changed either up or down. They used 
to make my sister and me sit down and participate in the process with 
them. And I can tell you, as a child, we weren't that thrilled with 
this tedious task because sometimes it would take hours. But now I'm 
thankful that they did, and they had the foresight to teach us the 
importance of balancing a budget.
  I conveyed that importance to my students when I used to teach 
personal family finance as a home economics teacher. I told the 
students that when you budget, the expenses shouldn't be more than the 
income. They got it. Washington should, too.
  Now we have the opportunity this week to bring the common sense and 
the business sense of American families and American small businesses 
to Washington to force it to live within its means by passing the 
balanced budget amendment. I firmly believe that this constitutional 
amendment is the best way to restrain the out-of-control Federal 
spending of Big Government. Forty-nine States have some form of a 
balanced budget requirement, and it works for them. I know it works for 
Missouri, and I believe it will work in our Nation's capital, too.
  When I was a Missouri State representative, we budgeted according to 
the revenue projection given us and designed our budget to match the 
income. If we didn't have the money, we didn't spend it. Because of 
that, Missouri is on sound financial footing. Clearly, Washington is 
not because it has failed to balance its budget.
  Passing the balanced budget amendment will force Washington to cut up 
these credit cards and to start living within its means. Families are 
tightening their belts at home to make ends meet. Our Federal 
Government needs to do likewise.
  President Ronald Reagan understood the importance of the balanced 
budget amendment. He said, ``Only a constitutional amendment will do 
the job. We've tried the carrot, and it failed. With the stick of a 
balanced budget amendment, we can stop government squandering, 
overtaxing ways, and save our economy.''

                              {time}  1050

  That's why I am excited about this historic vote that we're going to 
take tomorrow, and I urge all of my colleagues, Republicans and 
Democrats, to get behind this commonsense provision that will set us 
back on the path to a strong financial footing. Now is the time to stop 
the reckless course that we are on and get things right. I look forward 
to applying the cash-flow knowledge I learned around the kitchen table 
as a child to our Federal budget. It worked at home. It's time to make 
it work in Washington.

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