Proposing An Amendment to the Constitution of the United States Requiring A Balanced Budget for the Federal Government

Floor Speech

I rise to oppose H.J. Res. 139, a feeble attempt by the President's budget-busting, blank-check enablers in Congress to distract America from their own staggering and historic fiscal irresponsibility.

Everyone knows they control the House. They control the Senate. They control the White House, and they have used their total power over our Federal Government to drive our country into a deep ditch of deficits, debt, illegal tariffs, undeclared wars, and economic destruction.

After adding $4 trillion to our national debt with their tax breaks for the super rich, every Republican in the Chamber but Representatives Massie and Davidson voted to allow President Trump to keep spending between 1 and $2 billion every day, not of his own money but of our money, on his unauthorized and unconstitutional war in Iran, without so much as a single vote or a single honest debate on the floor of the House.

This war of choice and aggression, which is spiraling out of control now in the Middle East, and which President Trump now calls this ``little excursion,'' has already cost 13 American servicemembers their lives and wounded over 200 Americans in uniform, while killing more than a thousand Iranian civilians, including 170 children at a girls' school that was bombed in the first week of Donald Trump's war.

But still our colleagues sit there passive, invertebrate, and complicit in the face of this brazen usurpation of congressional war powers, rising from their constitutional stupor only to vote ``no'' on our War Powers Resolution, which every self-respecting Member of the Article I branch should have voted for.

The administration reports that the first 6 days of this war cost the taxpayers $11.3 billion, or $1.9 billion a day.

Have Republicans come to the floor to explain why this war was necessary or to offer evidence of an imminent threat posed to the American people?

Have they asked for a special Iran war tax to demonstrate their fiscal responsibility?

No. They just put Trump's little excursion, as he calls it, on the national credit card like an impulse trip to Disney World.

But our constituents are paying through the nose for this historic folly right now, not just as taxpayers but as consumers. We have already been buffeted by Donald Trump's illegal tariffs and imbecilic trade wars against the rest of the world and the soaring cost of living under his corrupt economic policies. Now, we also have to contend with skyrocketing gasoline prices thanks to their foolish disruption of the global oil supply. Gas prices have shot up more than 25 percent since the lawless mullah theocrats of Iran shut down the Strait of Hormuz after the lawless MAGA theocrats of America bombed Iran.

Now, our Republican colleagues present a doomed proposal to deface our Constitution with the same kind of witless, self-incriminating graffiti someone recently scrawled on the exterior front wall of the Kennedy Center, which they call the Trump-Kennedy Center.

This proposed constitutional amendment pretends to address a problem that the Republicans created and that Republicans have refused to address legislatively, even though they have all the political control and all the legislative tools they need at their disposal to address it.

We don't need a balanced budget constitutional amendment. We just need a balanced budget. If you believe in a balanced budget, bring us one. Show it to us. You control the Congress. But don't start a fiscal wildfire with your out-of-control spending and then throw the Constitution into the flames, too.

If this proposed amendment were in effect today, the GOP-controlled Congress would be forced to pay for Trump's war by further cutting critical programs for America's working families.

If we gain the majority and try to repeal the trillion-dollar tax cut that they handed to the wealthiest 1 percent of Americans, we would have to get a two-thirds vote in the House and a two-thirds vote in the Senate in order to engage in an act of fiscal responsibility. But if they wanted to pass another trillion-dollar tax cut for Elon Musk and the richest Americans, they would only need to get a majority vote in the House and the Senate.

Mr. Speaker, even Republicans are denouncing the gigantic, runaway deficits that result from out-of-control Republican spending and stupendously reckless Republican tax cuts for billionaires and giant corporations.

One of our GOP colleagues, Representative Chip Roy, described their One Big Beautiful Bill Act as garbage prior to the House vote, saying: ``If we're going to do the tax policy, at least do the spending policy. Have the courage and the fortitude to do what you campaign on when you're talking about balancing the dang budget.''

Representative Roy's outrage makes sense. Republicans control the House. They control the Senate, and they control the White House. Yet they have not once balanced the Federal budget or even tried to present a balanced budget to Congress.

Their obscene, ugly, profligate law added a jaw-dropping $4 trillion to the national debt because of their massive giveaways to billionaires and corporations, which is the true political mission on their side of the aisle.

They paid for a fraction of their profligacy by stripping health insurance and food assistance from tens of millions of working-class Americans who are now living with these Marie Antoinette policies concocted by billionaires and cyber barons throwing Great Gatsby parties at Mar-a-Lago and bulldozing the White House to build themselves one more gilded ballroom.

Now, rather than showing some discipline and hard work and reversing some of their terrible fiscal blunders from the past to propose an actual balanced budget, no, they waste their time to keep the party going by inviting us to spend the day finger painting on the Constitution of the United States.

To observe the semiquincentennial of the country, they want us to use our Constitution to make them do what they claim they want to do but refuse to do at a time when they possess all the power they need to do it.

With the same foresight and expert planning, the White House has used in their chaotic, forever war in Iran, they will put our government into a fiscal straitjacket forever to cover up for their gilded incompetence and misplaced priorities.

It would mean, for example, that a responsible leader, like Franklin D. Roosevelt or Bill Clinton, would no longer have the flexibility to deal with economic crises created by Republicans like Herbert Hoover or Calvin Coolidge or George W. Bush.

The simple truth is that we don't need a constitutional amendment to balance the budget or have responsible fiscal policies.

They have got one-party control of every branch of government. They have never stopped talking about balanced budgets.

Why don't they just bring us one? That is all we need to do.

However, billionaire rip-off artists like Elon Musk or Peter Thiel don't get rich off balanced budgets. They get rich when the GOP opens the spigots of taxpayer money in Federal Government contracts and giveaways for billionaires and the high-flying, rent-seeking corporate class.

Republicans have run up historic corrupt deficits in this Congress and have never once submitted a single balanced budget. We don't need a constitutional amendment to force the majority to do the right thing. We need a new majority. Republicans may as well introduce a constitutional amendment saying that Federal agents shouldn't shoot American citizens in the face for exercising their First or Second Amendment rights, or a constitutional amendment saying Federal agents shouldn't shoot someone 10 times for lawfully carrying a firearm in Minneapolis.

Mr. Speaker, you don't need a constitutional amendment to respect the law, and you don't need a constitutional amendment to do the right thing for the American people. You just need a new majority, and, Mr. Speaker, it is coming.

Mr. Speaker, I am glad that the gentleman from Arizona has conceded that the last time we had a balanced budget was under President Bill Clinton, the elected Democratic President for two terms who turned over a surplus of hundreds of billions of dollars to his successor in office. Compare that to President Trump who has been President for a total of around 5\1/2\ years and has added one-quarter of the national debt from George Washington all the way to today. One-quarter of that has come from Donald Trump himself. Mr. Speaker, look not at what they say but at what they do. That is because it is the Democrats who have always been the party of fiscal responsibility. Like they are doing in their Iran war right now, they are spending us into oblivion without even coming to Congress to get the war declared. It is unauthorized-- much less telling us how they are going to pay for it other than putting it on a credit card for our children and our children's children to pay for many generations into the future.

Yes, it is unchecked Federal spending by President Trump, who is spending up to $2 billion a day on an undeclared, unauthorized, and unconstitutional war in Iran.

Our colleagues won't utter a peep about it, and they won't bring us a balanced budget, but they will bring us a balanced budget constitutional amendment.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for that refreshing intervention in the debate, but I think, as the President Clinton example demonstrates, we can have and we have had the political will at different points to balance the budget.

It is not politically impossible, but it does start with some people taking some courageous votes.

For example, let's vote on whether or not we should be at war in Iran, costing the American people $1 billion to $2 billion a day. If you can't even have the courage to decide that we will exercise our warmaking powers and our power to declare war under Article I, Section 8, and our spending power to do it, then nothing will save you, I am sorry.

You can pass a constitutional amendment saying don't shoot people in the face, but still, you have to tell ICE not to shoot people in the face. You have to demonstrate your commitment to actually making that policy real.

Mr. Speaker, I am charmed by the story that the gentleman from Pennsylvania just told us about having gone to the White House to talk to the President and telling the President he is spending too much. I am just recording the story as it was presented to us.

He said to the President: You are spending too much.

That is the understatement of the 21st century. He is spending $1 billion to $2 billion a day on an undeclared, unauthorized, unconstitutional war in Iran. He has given us one-quarter of all the debt that has been created in the United States from George Washington until today. That is under the Trump administration.

The gentleman represents that he spoke to the President and said: You are spending too much.

The President's response was: I know we are, but I can't get them to stop spending more.

Who is ``them''? Was that an implied critique of the Democrats? They control the House. They control the Senate. They control the White House. Who is President Trump in that vignette referring to? Is he referring to the Republicans? He must be because they are the ones who are controlling the Chamber, as they are proud to tell us. At least until the end of this year, they are the ones doing it.

If Republicans think they support a balanced budget amendment, why don't they start with a balanced budget? Just bring us one balanced budget. That is all that we need from them.

Mr. Speaker, they have taken what is a math problem and tried to turn it into a constitutional problem. Every family in America knows they have got to make their expenses come within their means and within their resources. Every family does that. Republicans don't want to do that. They want to turn what is a simple math problem or an economic problem into a constitutional problem.

To celebrate America's semiquincentennial, 250th anniversary, for the first time they want to say that what we need to do is to amend our Constitution to make us do what we want to do but we can't do. We don't have the will and political courage to do it.

It was offered by the majority itself. We have got the will on our side to do it. President Clinton did it, and we will fight to try to make our resources match up with our expenses.

We have already heard that their side of the aisle is looking for a military budget of $1.5 trillion for next year. They are looking for $1.5 trillion for the war budget, for Secretary of War Hegseth. They want $1.5 trillion. That is where they are headed: endless wars in the Middle East, undeclared wars of choice, wars of aggression, not authorized by Congress.

None of them will even utter a peep about it today. That is where we are hemorrhaging money in America. Instead, they want to talk about a hypothetical pie-in-the-sky constitutional amendment that no other generation of Americans has ever needed before in order to do the right thing.

What is their loyalty and fidelity to the Constitution? Let's say they got their amendment. Right now, Article I, Section 8 says that Congress must declare war. It is not the President, not Donald Trump, not JD Vance, not Tulsi Gabbard, or somebody in their chat group. Congress must declare war.

What do they do? They do nothing. They just let the President go ahead and enter into his wars of whim and caprice, vanity, conceit, imperial ambition, whatever. They do nothing. They won't even have a vote to support it or oppose it. They won't have an honest debate about it.

That is the war power, which Madison said was one of the essential powers Congress must have, because the kings were always plunging their countries into wars of conceit and vanity, imperial plunder and corruption. So it had to be vested in the Representatives of the people, but they won't follow that.

Mr. Speaker, how about the spending power? Exclusively Congress has the power to spend money. It has to arise here in the House of Representatives. We have the power to spend, and we have the power to tax. The administration has been struck down dozens of times for abusing our spending power, and they won't say a word about it.

What about the taxing power? Donald Trump became the first President in American history to unilaterally impose tariffs, which is a huge tax on our people. It is not on other countries and not on China. It is on us. We told him it was unconstitutional. They wouldn't do anything, with the exception of Representative Massie from Kentucky, who is the conscience of the Republican Conference--although I don't mean to damn him with faint praise--maybe a handful of others opposed the tariffs. They all went along for the ride, even though we have the power to impose tariffs. It has always been Congress that has established the framework for tariffs, not the President. We can't make it up as we go along, but that is what he did.

Of course, he was struck down even by the Supreme Court that has been sliced and diced and gerrymandered to his advantage. Even that Supreme Court struck it down on a 6-3 vote, but we hear nothing from our colleagues about it.

What about the First Amendment? There shall be no law abridging the freedom of speech. Yet, this is the most anti-free speech administration the United States has ever seen. Donald Trump's chairman of the FCC the other day said that broadcast licensees, television stations, better watch out what they say about the war.

I can't think of a more naked violation of the First Amendment than the government threatening to revoke broadcast licenses of media entities who disagree with the President's policy, especially about something as important to the American people as war.

They don't utter a single word about it. That is their demonstrated fidelity to the Constitution. They are now saying: Yes, we are not balancing the budget. We haven't presented a single balanced budget. If we are made to do it through the Constitution, we will follow the Constitution.

Fool me once, well, blame on you. Fool me twice, blame on me. We are not falling for that.

Mr. Speaker, I thank my distinguished colleague from Arizona for a spirited discussion of this important issue.

Mr. Speaker, I will take the example offered by the gentleman from Arizona (Mr. Biggs) of President Clinton. We could take many historical episodes, but we have time only for one.

President Clinton was determined to balance the budget, and he returned hundreds of billions of dollars in a surplus to his successor in office. He worked with the Republican-controlled Congress and led them along to eliminate the deficit.

The government ran a huge surplus without the aid of a contrived balanced budget constitutional amendment. Clinton bequeathed to his successor, George W. Bush, famously a budget surplus of $236 billion, which Bush and the GOP Congress quickly squandered on tax cuts for the richest people in the country and then the staggeringly costly forever wars in Iraq and Afghanistan

Mr. Speaker, what do you know? History repeats itself. If it doesn't repeat itself exactly, it certainly rhymes. What do we have now? They have added $4 trillion to our debt with their massive giveaways to the richest people in the country and the richest corporations.

What are we in now despite all of Donald Trump's campaign promises? We are in another undeclared, unauthorized, forever war of regime change, although it is not really a regime change war because the President obviously doesn't care about democracy or human rights in Iran any more than he cares about democracy or human rights in America. In any event, we are there. We are in that war, spending $1 billion to $2 billion a day.

What do our colleagues do to try to deal with this fiscal catastrophe? They offer a balanced budget constitutional amendment, saying this is a bipartisan problem we are in. It is a pox on everybody's house. Let's just amend the Constitution to make us do what we really want to do but we can't do because we don't have the political resolve and the courage to do it.

At the same time, they don't have the political resolve and courage to exercise Congress' powers over war. They don't have the resolve and courage to exercise Congress' power over spending or over taxes or over our ability to regulate commerce domestically or nationally. They have given it all away to the President of the United States, when we are the Article I branch. We have the power. We can do it if we are willing to exercise it.

What is the President's power? It is very simple: to take care that the laws are faithfully executed.

If we pass a balanced budget, the President will have to remain within it. If we are going to say that we are going to have a debate about that war, that he can't just run off to war and start plundering the public fisc and spending billions of dollars of the people's money, he can't do it. Yet, our colleagues in the majority will not exercise any kind of discipline or institutional self-respect.

Mr. Speaker, the Framers of the Constitution thought that people in Congress would stand up for congressional power, just like the President would stand up for Presidential power and would always try to aggrandize the power of the executive branch, and the Supreme Court would stand up for the power of judicial review and what the courts do.

Yet, they thought that, as Madison put it in Federalist 10, ambition would counteract ambition. We would stand up for ourselves.

Our colleagues in the majority will not stand up for congressional powers under the Constitution of the United States, so they want to finger paint some more on the Constitution by adding their balanced budget constitutional amendment.

We don't need a balanced budget constitutional amendment, which will be a fiscal straitjacket in times like COVID-19 or times of war, where Congress needs the flexibility. All we need is for the majority to bring us a balanced budget, show some fiscal discipline, and show some fiscal resolve. Then, we can take it seriously.

Otherwise, it just seems like a massive, fantastical distraction from what is actually taking place in America today and on Earth, which is we have a President who is bulldozing everything from the White House itself to the Bill of Rights to the separation of powers.

What do we have on the other side of the aisle? It is nothing but legislative accomplices in all of this fiscal and constitutional irresponsibility. They want to take a simple math problem and displace everybody's attention by trying to turn it into a constitutional issue.

Mr. Speaker, that wasn't the handiwork of James Madison. That wasn't the handiwork of Alexander Hamilton, who took balanced budgets very seriously. They didn't think that America needed it.

If the political leadership is not rising to the task, then we need new political leadership. If this congressional majority can't do it, let's elect a new congressional majority, but let's not throw the Constitution into the fire with all of the other constitutional principles that have been set ablaze by this administration.

Madam Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

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Mr. RASKIN. Madam Speaker, on that I demand the yeas and nays.

The yeas and nays were ordered.

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