Providing for Consideration of H.R. 2560, Cut, Cap, and Balance Act of 2011

Floor Speech

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Mr. Speaker, I rise in opposition to the rule and the underlying bill before us.

Mr. Speaker, I support a balanced budget amendment, but what the majority has brought before the House is not even close to a balanced budget amendment. This is a political exercise designed to soothe the feelings of the most radical conservative elements in the House and debase our Constitution and our democracy in the process.

Cut, cap, and balance is simply an attempt to slash, burn, and deny responsibility for the deficit and debt limit crisis and distort the nature of our democratic Republic, reducing the ability of Congress to represent the will of the voters of this country and rendering elections and the public will meaningless.

If we're going to enact a balanced budget amendment, it should be pragmatic. It should be modeled after the type of approach that most States have. States have to balance their budget. Families have to balance their budget. Why shouldn't the United States Congress? Like many people on my side of the aisle, I could support language that would require and enshrine that total outlays do not exceed total receipts. That's what it means to balance a budget, as families and businesses across America know.

Instead, the proposal before the House is a recipe for tying the Nation's budget policy in knots and handing power over the budget process to a minority of the House Members or unelected Federal judges. It would make the entire Congress cease to function as a representative body by locking them into arbitrary percentages that were set without a single hearing or any process in our United States Constitution as a public expenditure share of GNP.

If you require a supermajority for even the smallest possible increase in revenue, you've essentially ensured that all the major pieces of legislation that Congress has passed would never have passed. If this amendment were in place in 1965, Congress never would have passed Medicare. In 1993, we wouldn't have passed President Clinton's deficit reduction plan and balanced the budget, or the 1997 balanced budget agreement under President Bush.

Furthermore, the spending caps that this bill sets for spending are completely arbitrary. They're pulled out of thin air. They bear no relation to our national needs now or in the future.

A balanced budget amendment must treat outlays and revenues equally, not bias one or the other in the Constitution itself, our fundamental governing document.

The majority is not only ignoring the realities of basic math, they're turning their backs on the pledges of an open process. This bill was brought to the floor rapidly through the Rules Committee yesterday, without a markup, without hearings, without witness testimony, and without allowing amendments from Republicans or Democrats.

A bill of this magnitude with such far-reaching consequences for our democracy itself should be treated more seriously than this. The concept of enshrining a particular percentage of public expenditures as a percentage of GDP is contrary to the concept of a democratic republic in which Congress is elected by the people of this country to govern this country.

For these reasons and others, I strongly urge a ``no'' vote on the rule and the bill.

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