Balanced Budget Amendment

Floor Speech

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Mr. PAUL. Madam President, the balanced budget amendment is interesting when you look at polls and ask the American public: Do you approve of what Congress is doing? Do you approve of congressional action? Do you think they are doing a good job? It is actually 14 percent to 15 percent of the American public who think we are doing a good job. The other side of that equation is, you ask the American public: Do you think a balanced budget amendment would help Congress do a better job? It is 75 percent to 80 percent of the American public who think we would do a better job if we had a balanced budget amendment.

I don't think this is a partisan issue. I would ask the Senator from Utah--and perhaps an opinion from the Senator from Texas--do you think this should be a partisan issue or do you think this goes beyond partisanship, and can we get the Democrats to understand this isn't a Republican-Democratic issue but really an issue for the good of the country?

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Mr. PAUL. And I think what is interesting, if you look at this and you really look at polling data and say: Who is for the balanced budget amendment, it goes across all party lines. If you look at Independents, Democrats, if you look at Republicans, it is in the high sixties to the midseventies in the percentage of the public who would like to see this. And I think it goes hand in hand that they don't think we are doing a good enough job here and that we need more backbone, and the Constitution is supposed to be our backbone. The Constitution helps us to do a good job, to help restrain the size and growth of government.

I can't see an argument against this, and I really don't understand how a vast majority of the public can be for this and yet this body still refuses to act.

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Mr. PAUL. I think one of the alarming things we see is that on the course we are taking now, if we do nothing dramatic to reform the process--if we don't pass the balanced budget amendment--within about a decade, the budget will be entirely consumed by entitlements and interest. This is being driven by something beyond the control of Republicans, beyond the control of Democrats, and out of everyone's hands. It has to do with the fact that we are living longer and there are fewer young people and more old people because a lot of babies were born after World War II.

These are demographic facts we can't escape. When we look at some of the charts about what goes on with this, we see what happens if we do nothing. We see the projected debt way out here. Most of this debt problem is entitlements. We have to come together as parties. The balanced budget amendment will help us do this, but then we need to acknowledge that these problems exist and we need to come together--both parties--to figure out solutions.

I think the balanced budget amendment may well be what forces us to have a discussion. To be good legislators, we need to decide priorities instead of just adding on new program after new program. We have 80 different Federal programs that are work programs. We need to think about consolidating and minimizing government. I think the balanced budget amendment would allow us to have a discussion in this body on where we can cut spending.

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Mr. PAUL. From that same article, it is interesting that he talks about what happens if interest rates rise. For every point of an interest rate rising, it adds $140 billion. So he talks about getting back to the historic average of 5.4 percent, that over 10 years it would add $4.9 trillion to our debt problem. But here is the rub. We are having discussions where people are saying we are going to cut $2.5 trillion over 10 years. Senator Hatch points out we cannot bind future Congresses. Senator Lee said the same thing. So when they promise us that they are going to cut $2.5 trillion, compare that to what happens if interest rates rise. One, we can't bind future Congresses, but if interest rates rise, all of a sudden we have $5 trillion in extra expenses.

We must bind future Congresses and we must bind ourselves by amending the Constitution.

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