Proposing a Balanced Budget Amendment to the Constitution

Floor Speech

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Ms. MOORE. Mr. Speaker, I rise in strong opposition to H.J. Res. 2, the so-called--so-called--balanced budget amendment.

I also rise, Mr. Speaker, to point out the nefarious, cynical intergenerational warfare that has been raised as an argument for passing this misguided so-called balanced budget amendment, to say that we want to extract $2 trillion over the next decade from programs that benefit seniors, like Social Security and Medicare, and say we're doing it to keep from imposing a burden on our children and grandchildren, as if this balanced budget amendment benefited those children.

Mr. Speaker, this program will devastate public education. It will devastate the Federal Government's current mandatory spending in Pell Grants, a program that's designed to help us meet the global challenges of the future by educating our assets--our children.

It's a program that in the next decade will take a half trillion dollars out of the Children's Health Insurance Program. It's a program that will exacerbate hunger that children face right now through WIC and our SNAP program, our food stamp program, and the earned income tax credit. We have now one in five children today that are going to bed hungry.

So when we say we want to balance the budget, we are balancing it on the backs of our children. And those children that we are trying to save--or we say that we are trying to save--must be the children of those heirs, those 1 percent that we are now enriching.

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