[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 157 (2011), Part 14]
[Senate]
[Pages 20131-20132]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                       BALANCED BUDGET AMENDMENT

  Mr. KIRK. Mr. President, too often we have set-piece speeches in the 
Senate without any resort to the traditional debate, where two sides 
are equally dividing time without a set script on a critical issue 
before our country. I would like to restart the true Senate tradition 
of debate with a debate with my colleague from Delaware.
  I will yield to him right now.
  Mr. COONS. I thank Senator Kirk. I am grateful for the Senator 
inviting me to join him in a real debate on the floor on an issue about 
which we disagree and about which we cast opposing votes earlier today. 
It is an issue of real import to our country. It is something that has 
been debated in the past and will be in the future but essentially 
whether we should have a balanced budget amendment.
  Mr. KIRK. What I would like to do now, in sort of a chess clock 
style, is take 10 minutes, with unanimous consent, to be equally 
divided between me and the Senator from Delaware on the subject of the 
balanced budget amendment.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Whitehouse). Without objection, it is so 
ordered. For 10 minutes, the Senator from Illinois and the Senator from 
Delaware may engage in a colloquy. The Parliamentarian will keep track 
of the time of each, to the best of our capability.
  Mr. KIRK. Mr. President, the United States needs to adopt a balanced 
budget amendment to the Constitution. It was a good idea when Thomas 
Jefferson backed it and it is an even more important idea today. What 
we are seeing in Europe is a collapse of government finance because 
they have spent too much, taxed too much, and borrowed too much. Not 
only do they have a crisis of their government debt, but they have 
higher taxes and lower economic performance because of that philosophy.
  We cannot repeat that mistake. That is why the Senate should have 
adopted a balanced budget amendment. I will speak in bipartisan 
fashion--any of the balanced budget amendments we considered today 
would have been better, rather than to subject our country to a rising 
tide of debt and an economic model which is already, we are seeing, 
failing in Europe.
  Mr. COONS. I could not agree more that we need to be responsible; 
that the United States and this Senate need to face our serious and 
crippling national deficits and debt.
  It was a good idea when Thomas Jefferson recognized that a balanced 
budget amendment was a bad idea. Thomas Jefferson actually, several 
years later, after supporting a balanced budget amendment, acted as 
President in ways that demonstrated he understood that real 
opportunities required extraordinary capabilities by the Federal 
Government.
  I was a county executive. Others in this Chamber who were mayors or 
Governors lived with balanced budget requirements and it imposed great 
restrictions on us. It forced us to make tough decisions on annual 
timelines, so I understand why it is tempting to consider passing one 
of the balanced budget amendments that were before this Chamber today.
  But there is a difference between the Federal Government and the 
State and local governments. Thomas Jefferson acted decisively to make 
the Louisiana Purchase possible and to finance the War of 1812. During 
the current economic downturn, if the Federal Government had not been 
able to borrow and invest in restoring growth to this country, we would 
not have had a great recession, we would have had a second depression. 
I am convinced of it, and it is one of the reasons I think, had the 
balanced budget amendment been in place, we would have been in even 
greater trouble than we have been over the last few years.
  Mr. KIRK. What we see now, today, though, is that we are awash in $15 
trillion in debt and that since the creation of the triple A credit 
rating by Standard & Poor's, the United States has now lost that 
rating.
  When young Americans are born today, they already owe the Federal 
Government $40,000. So they will have a lower income and a higher tax 
burden throughout their working lives because of the debts put on them.
  The biggest reason for a balanced budget amendment, though, is we 
have a structural inability to represent young Americans. They cannot 
vote until they are age 18. Yet the representatives of their parents 
can transfer tremendous burdens onto that young generation of 
Americans. The essence of the American dream is that our children's 
lives will be better than our own. But given the weight of the debt we 
are now transferring onto the backs of the next generation, that may no 
longer be possible.
  We absolutely have to have a structural way to prevent one generation 
from transferring new spending and new debt to the new generation so 
the American ideal is preserved and so they have a fighting chance to 
have a better life than their parents.
  Mr. COONS. This Senate can, should, and has shown the ability to 
reach balanced budgets--no, in fact, surpluses--within living memory. 
In fact, when President Clinton was the President, this Senate and the 
House acted together. They adopted budgetary self-restraint.
  Why amend the Constitution of the United States, our most 
foundational document, when we have within our own power, recently 
demonstrated in the late 1990s, the capacity to control ourselves?
  The Senator and I agree we are leaving to our children an enormous, 
crushing legacy of a national debt that has exceeded safe boundaries. 
But why amend the Constitution in order to force the Senate to do our 
job? Instead, I think we should embrace some of the tough, big, bold, 
bipartisan proposals that have been put on the table--whether the 
Bowles-Simpson Commission or others. The framework of a broad deal that 
requires sacrifice from all, changes to the spiraling Federal spending, 
and changes in the direction of the country is on the table before us. 
Why take a detour into amending America's foundational document rather 
than simply stepping up and doing the job that is before us?
  Mr. KIRK. The job of each generation is to make sure the Constitution 
deals with critical problems facing the country, so we amended the 
Constitution so we could prohibit slavery. We amended the Constitution 
so we could grant women the right to vote. We should amend the 
Constitution to prevent one generation from encumbering the next 
generation.
  America is the greatest experiment in self-government and, more 
important, the underlying value of self-rule ever designed. But we have 
seen in recent days that self-control disappear. We work in the Senate, 
now well onto I think 900 days, without a budget. This is the most 
successful corporation, the most successful enterprise on Earth, 
representing the real aspiration for human dignity and freedom. Yet 
that is in danger if we become indebted to China and other countries in 
ways that no previous generation of Americans have done. This country 
has regularly amended the Constitution to fix inequities in our 
society, and the growing inequity we see today is debt and deficits, 
especially to other countries. Therefore, we should amend the 
Constitution to protect those who cannot yet vote from an economic fate 
that would otherwise befall them.

[[Page 20132]]


  Mr. COONS. Mr. President, how much time remains?
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. On the Senator's side, 2 minutes 20 seconds; 
on the side of the Senator from Illinois, 1 minute 16 seconds.
  Mr. COONS. Mr. President, as the good Senator from Illinois suggests, 
we are, indeed, encumbering future generations with a debt that has 
risen above $40,000 per American. This is a central challenge of our 
time, one in which our national security leadership has cited as 
critical to ensuring our security and our liberty going forward. But, 
in my view, the balanced budget amendment that was advanced through 
S.J. Res. 10 earlier today would compel exactly the sort of 
intergenerational burdens that my good friend from Illinois suggests he 
seeks to avoid.
  Let me be clear. The requirements of that balanced budget amendment 
include a spending cap, a supermajority requirement to raise the 
national debt, and a two-thirds requirement for any increase in Federal 
revenue. Those in combination would compel drastic, immediate, and 
substantial reductions in a wide range of programs--such as Social 
Security, Medicare, Medicaid, veterans benefits--that if imposed would 
have not just a short-term, very negative impact on our current economy 
but a significant restructuring of the longstanding relationships 
between individual citizens and generations.
  Yes, leaving a legacy of debt to the next generation is a terrible 
thing for us to do, but leaning on the crutch of the Constitution and 
the fig leaf of a constitutional amendment to avoid doing our 
responsibility--a job which the Senate is fully capable of doing--
avoids that responsibility to the next generation.
  I close with this question: As we say in the law, if there is a 
right, what is the remedy? If we were to pass this constitutional 
amendment, how would it be enforced if the Senate in the future were to 
fail to balance the budget? Would lifetime Federal judges around the 
country be imposing choices in terms of budget cuts, spending cuts, 
revenue changes? I think that would be no better--in fact, far worse--
than the Senate simply doing its job.
  Today I voted against this balanced budget amendment because I think 
we have it within our power to show self-control and to secure the 
future for the next generation of Americans.
  Mr. KIRK. I would close by saying the Senator and I agree. I think 
the Simpson-Bowles plan is the right way to go, and my hope is that we 
join together on a bipartisan basis to reduce expected Federal 
borrowing by $4 trillion along the lines of that bipartisan 
Presidential commission. But, unfortunately, the Simpson-Bowles plan is 
gathering dust. The supercommittee that was given procedural powers to 
possibly put that forward also collapsed. We have not been able to do 
our job, and we are now encumbering the next generation with even 
greater amounts of debt--historic amounts.
  I think the Founding Fathers did not contemplate the ability to 
borrow as much from other countries as we now have, and with the United 
States as the center of freedom and democracy around the world there is 
a lot riding on the credit of the United States.
  My colleague from Delaware talks about a very vital future--
especially for people like my own mother--of Social Security and 
Medicare, but I think she understands that a bankrupt country cannot 
support Social Security and Medicare. We have to defend the credit of 
the United States, and therefore I think a balanced budget amendment is 
essential to the long-term future of the United States.
  With that, I thank my colleague.
  Mr. President, we have just finished. I hope we do return to a 
tradition of actual debate, and I thank my colleague for the chance to 
carry out this debate.
  Mr. COONS. I thank the Senator.
  I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The assistant bill clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Louisiana.
  Ms. LANDRIEU. 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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