Proposing A Balanced Budget Amendment to the Constitution

Floor Speech

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Mr. JORDAN. Mr. Speaker, everyone knows this is a joke. It is all pretend and never going to become law. It is never going to happen. People are going to support it because voting for a balanced budget amendment is like voting for motherhood and apple pie. But everybody on this floor knows this is all pretend.

The time to deal with spending was 3 weeks ago. Three weeks ago was the time for political courage and some discipline. Some political will was 3 weeks ago, when we got a 2,232-page bill that we had 15 hours to look at. That was when we needed to deal with spending.

Fifteen hours to look at a $1.3 trillion spending package, the second largest spending package in American history, and we had 15 hours to look at it?

Oh, and guess what. Do you know how long we got to debate it? One hour. On a 3-page bill that is never going to happen, do you know how long we are debating this? Four hours.

The time for political courage was 3 weeks ago. The last vote we took before the Easter recess, $1.3 trillion of spending, funding things we as Republicans said we would never fund, not funding things we told the voters we were going to fund, and then we go home and we come back, and the first thing we do with 4 hours of debate--not 1, like we had on that bill--is a bill that is never going to happen.

It is no wonder Americans hate this place. It is no wonder they are cynical. I don't blame them. This ticks me off. There is just no other way to say it. More importantly, it ticks off the American people, and it should.

For the last 24 hours, everyone in this town has been focused on who is going to be the next Speaker. Let me tell you something, a much more important question than who is going to be the next Speaker, who is going to be the Speaker next year, is what are Republicans going to do this year? Are we going to get back to doing what the American people elected us to do on November 8, 2016? Are we going to get back to doing what we told them we were going to do, the mandate of that election, or are we going to keep doing pretend things like this?

Let's do what we said. We make this so hard. Let's just do what we said we would do. That will be good politics, and, more importantly, that would be good policy for the hardworking families of this great country.

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