[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 157 (2011), Part 8]
[House]
[Pages 10754-10755]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                       BALANCED BUDGET AMENDMENT

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from 
Oklahoma (Mr. Lankford) for 5 minutes.
  Mr. LANKFORD. Nineteen years ago, when my wife and I married, I was 
still in school, I was working as much as I could, and she was also 
working, but we were barely making it. But we made the decision we were 
not going to run up credit card debt and live beyond our means. We paid 
our school loans, we tithed to our church, we ate a lot of peanut 
butter, and we lived simply. As Dave Ramsey says, ``We determined to 
act our wage.''
  It is a biblical principle for myself and my family. Proverbs 22:7 
states: ``The borrower is slave to the lender.'' Proverbs 22 applies to 
families, and Proverbs 22 applies to nations. If we were living within 
our means as a Nation, almost all the debate in the last 6 months in 
this Chamber would have been different.
  We've tried every method in the Fed's bag of tricks to protect our 
interest rate, because if the rate goes up at all, the house of cards 
falls. We work to manipulate banks, mortgage lending and manufacturing 
because we must keep revenue up. We carefully manage every relationship 
worldwide because we need the borrowing liquidity. We pour billions of 
dollars into the economy that we borrow from future generations because 
we're afraid this generation will have to make hard choices if we do 
not keep up the borrow pace. Our economy struggles, which leads 
Washington regulators to overmanage every sector, which causes even 
more economic uncertainty.
  Our focus has shifted from families to corporate bailouts because 
we're living beyond our means, and we're trying everything we can to 
make it work. It's not sustainable. We have to get back in balance.
  Capital investment in business and industry is slower because so much 
of the money that would go toward starting new businesses is actually 
financing our national debt obligation. There's only a limited amount 
of money in the world economy at any one moment to subsidize our debt 
and the debt of other nations around the world. When we consume that 
money for our debt payments, we remove it from the market.
  America is the world leader. Unfortunately, we have led the world in 
debt and deficit spending, and now it's time we lead the world in how 
to solve a debt crisis.
  You see, I believe we have a debt crisis, not a debt ceiling vote 
crisis. If we increase the debt ceiling without beginning to solve the 
debt problem, we did not avert the economic disaster; we accelerated 
the disaster. I understand we're painted into a corner, and we cannot 
balance our budget instantly without completely collapsing this fragile 
economy. I get it. But I also get that we were sent here to make adult 
choices.
  This is a bipartisan problem. We all point fingers at each other, but 
we all know both parties made promises with no plan to pay for it. So 
since we know that, why don't we also agree to a bipartisan solution? 
I've heard a hundred times since I've been here, we need a balanced 
approach to solving this problem. Well, let me tell you I agree. We do 
need a balanced approach--a balanced budget amendment approach. That is 
the first big step to forcing us to get into balance permanently.
  The Constitution is not a Republican or a Democrat document. A 
balanced budget amendment is not a Republican or a Democrat issue. You 
see, you can't make changes to the Constitution without both parties 
engaged. But if both parties actually worked together, we can solve 
this debt crisis for our children and grandchildren.
  The last time this body dealt seriously with a balanced budget 
amendment was 1996. It passed this House with overwhelming bipartisan 
support, and it failed in the Senate by a single vote. Can you imagine 
for a moment what our financial condition would be like right now if 
we'd started balancing our budget during the good economic times of the 
1990s and kept that discipline to this present day?
  If you want to know the true consequences of that failed balanced 
budget amendment vote in 1996, point to the financial collapse of 2008, 
because I believe the financial collapse of 2008 would not have 
occurred if we had balanced the budget when we did. Even if we did, we 
would be in a position to better respond to it. We can either learn 
from that lesson or repeat it. The balanced budget amendment passed the 
Senate in the 1980s and failed in the House. Then it passed in the 
nineties in the House and failed in the Senate. This is the moment we 
will either doom the next generation of Americans to more financial 
uncertainty or we will solve the problem.
  A balanced budget amendment solves the S&P and Moody's rating 
question because it settles the issue forever that we will live within 
our means. While this body should be able to make tough choices, we all 
know full well this body will make the tough choices only when it has 
to. It has always been that way; it always will be that way. A balanced 
budget amendment gives future Congresses the gift of a moment each year 
when they must make tough choices. Let's bring up the amendment.
  Let's send it to the States for a vote. It is the ultimate ``allow 
the people to speak'' moment. I think Americans get this more than 
Washington gets this. Forty-nine of our 50 States have a structure in 
place right now for a balanced budget every single year. They make it 
work every year. We can too. The only fear from Washington is the 
inability to spend more money at will and to control the States with 
our preferences and money.
  At the end of this labor, if we birth a balanced budget amendment, 
all the pain of this process will have been worth it. Let's show the 
Nation we can work together. Let's solve the debt problem. Let's take 
up and pass a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution, and then 
let's get to work in solving our debt crisis.

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