Proposing a Balanced Budget Amendment to the Constitution

Floor Speech

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mrs. McMORRIS RODGERS. I appreciate the gentleman yielding.

James Madison said that the trickiest question the Constitutional Convention confronted was how to oblige a government to control itself. History records not a single nation that spent, borrowed, and taxed its way to prosperity, but it offers us many, many examples of nations that spent, borrowed, and taxed their way to economic ruin and bankruptcy.

And history is screaming to us a warning that nations that bankrupt themselves aren't around very long because before you can provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty, you have to be able to pay for it.

Today I rise in strong support of the balanced budget amendment. This past weekend, I re-read the 1995 House Judiciary Committee report that accompanied the resolution that passed at that time. Incredibly, the same justifications put forward against the balanced budget amendment in 1995 are the same ones that we hear today.

First, the report highlights a $4.7 trillion debt in 1995 and discusses the implications of a $200 billion interest payment. I only wish those were the debt levels that we are responding to today. What this comparison means is that we haven't corrected the government's spending problem on our own.

Our debt has more than tripled and interest payments more than doubled in the last two decades. All we have to show over that time is that we have a spending problem; in fact, we have an addiction. And I don't see that addiction going away unless we pass H.J. Res. 2.

Where would we be today if the balanced budget amendment had passed the Senate in 1997 and it had been sent to the States? I guarantee we would not be facing a total debt of $15 trillion or a $450 billion interest payment. And so we must ask ourselves where will we be 5 to 10 years from now without a balanced budget amendment.

I urge my colleagues to stop the cycle of overspending. Support this amendment.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Source