Proposing A Balanced Budget Amendment to the Constitution

Floor Speech

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Mr. BIGGS. Mr. Speaker, I thank the chairman for his work on this bill, bringing it forward, as well as his graciousness for letting me speak today.

Mr. Speaker, I will say that what I am hearing from the other side leaves my head spinning. I hear yammering, but I constantly wonder: Did they bother to read this particular balanced budget amendment?

The struggle I have with this balanced budget amendment is not what they say. They say this is going to go directly to spending reductions.

The issue for me is, when I look at it, I see that we make it easier to raise taxes, that is what we make it easier to do, by a 51 percent vote. When I see it, we make it easier to spend like we did in the omnibus, the bipartisan omnibus bill, because that only requires a three-fifths vote to set aside the balanced budget restraints by this administration. That gives me concern, because 61 percent of the vote in the House would have exceeded that just a couple weeks ago with the omnibus bill. In the Senate, it was by more than 60 percent. So that is a bit problematic for me.

I will make one last point here before I continue on to the previous point, and that is we are going to see 7 years, roughly, for the ratification process and then another 5 years after that before this actually is enacted. That is 12 years. That means that we are going to have probably around a $30 trillion national debt by then.

Now, my friends on the other side who are using scare tactics and saying, ``This is going to cause this cut here and this cut in programs there,'' they don't know that. They are making assertions to do what David Horowitz calls ``inspire through fear,'' and that is what we are seeing here.

I think this bill could be better, significantly better, but I also think that hyperbolic rhetoric does not do this body or the American people good when we are discussing something of this magnitude.

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