[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 157 (2011), Part 6]
[House]
[Page 8433]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                       BALANCED BUDGET AMENDMENT

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from 
Oregon (Mr. DeFazio) for 5 minutes.
  Mr. DeFAZIO. Well, yesterday the House resoundingly rejected a so-
called ``clean'' increase in the debt limit, as it should have. But 
different people are going to draw different conclusions from this 
vote. The Republicans will say this means unlimited spending cuts, 
that's how we'll balance the budget. And on my side of the aisle, there 
will be those who say this puts revenues back into play. Actually, both 
should be right.
  There is no way, no way to deal with a $1.7 trillion deficit--I guess 
we're down to $1.4 trillion this year; money is coming in a little 
better than expected--to deal with that without dealing with both sides 
of the equation, that is, revenues and cuts in spending.
  Now, unfortunately, around here it seems that coming together for the 
problems of the Nation is somewhat quaint and old fashioned. I've been 
here long enough to remember when we used to do those things, when we 
had the surtax on millionaires back when Bush I was President and 
brought back some fiscal sanity, before my time when Ronald Reagan 
raised taxes three times because he realized that supply-side economics 
didn't work. Well, we're now back to supply-side economics over here. 
It doesn't work. And more tax cuts, they're proposing more tax cuts in 
the face of deficit. Absurd.
  So how are we going to force that discussion? I believe we need a 
balanced budget amendment to the Constitution. We actually passed one 
when I was here in 1995. I voted for it. It failed by one vote in the 
Senate. Now, just think, had that been in place when, in the last 2 
years of the Clinton Presidency, we not only balanced the budget, we 
began to pay down debt for the first time since 1969. Then came Bush 
II, and he said we're going to give that money back to the people. And 
even when we went into deficit, he said, well, we need more tax cuts. 
That's what we need is more tax cuts, because we're running a deficit 
now and that's how you deal with deficits is to cut taxes because then 
people will--whatever. Somehow that creates more money. If we had had 
the balanced budget amendment to the Constitution in place, Bush 
couldn't have gotten away with that. He couldn't have launched an 
unnecessary war in Iraq and cut taxes at the same time; the first time 
our Nation has gone to war while cutting taxes. And he managed to 
double the debt in 8 short years, ending with the spectacular crash on 
Wall Street and the TARP bailout, which many forget was the Bush TARP 
bailout--I voted against that, too--not the Obama bailout; although 
Obama continued those same Wall Street friendly policies, to his 
discredit.
  And then the Obama stimulus. Forty percent of that was Bush tax cuts. 
What is it? What is it we don't get that cutting taxes in the way that 
George Bush wanted to do and did do with trickle-down economics and 
piling up more debt does not put people back to work? It's not 
investment. It doesn't generate economic activity and jobs.
  The theory is, oh, the rich people have so much money, they'll invest 
it in meaningful ways. Corporations are sitting on $2 trillion in cash. 
Wall Street billionaire hedge fund managers pay a 15 percent rate of 
tax, half that of an Army captain. Are they investing in a meaningful 
way to put people back to work? No. They're speculating and driving up 
the price of gas and screwing the American people and depressing the 
economy.
  It's time to get real around here. I believe a balanced budget 
amendment would focus the minds and deal with this deficit and debt in 
a way that is serious, both with dealing with revenues and dealing with 
spending cuts. I voted against extending all the Bush cuts in 
December--not just the ones on the rich people, all of them, a little 
bit of shared sacrifice. That would have cut the deficit in half--by $5 
trillion--over 10 years. Then we wouldn't have been screaming in 
January after everybody--many people on that side of the aisle--voted 
for extending the Bush tax cuts. They were shocked, shocked, shocked 
that we had a record deficit this year. Huh? You just voted to reduce 
revenues by $400 billion and you're shocked that that increased the 
deficit? And has it been putting people back to work? Not much that 
I've seen in my district, I'll tell you that.
  Then comes the Ryan budget. A serious budget. Destroys Medicare. Ends 
Medicare as we know it. Cuts Medicaid. Most people just think that's 
for poor people. Well, actually, most of the money goes to either kids 
or seniors in nursing homes. So that's going to be kind of a tough one. 
So, huge, devastating cuts. More tax cuts. More of the joke economic 
policies. Let's cut taxes and that will help us deal with the deficit. 
More tax cuts for rich people and big corporations. And he doesn't 
balance the budget--even under his rosy scenario written by the 
Heritage Foundation--until 2040. That's a serious attempt at dealing 
with our debt and deficit? That's the Ryan budget. The Obama budget is 
even worse. I don't know if it gets there by 2050.
  Neither side is dealing seriously with these issues. We need to focus 
people's minds, and a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution is 
the best way to do that.

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