Balanced Budget Amendment

Floor Speech

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Mr. HOEVEN. I thank Senator Johanns. It is an honor to be here with him, and also with the good Senator from Tennessee, Lamar Alexander. It is great to be here with them as well as Senator Risch from Idaho. We have a common shared experience as Governors. It is wonderful to draw on that.

I also have to mention that the Presiding Officer in the Senate today, Senator Shaheen, is a former Governor as well. So we have that common, shared experience, actually, here today on both sides of the aisle. It is an honor and it is a pleasure to be here with you and talk about this matter that is so very important, particularly as we face the need to do something on the debt ceiling.

This issue of dealing with a balanced budget is paramount for our entire country and your lead-in is exactly right. We served together as Governors. As a matter of fact, the truth is, I would call the Senator--because he was elected Governor before I was--for advice and ask him about some of the things he was working on in Nebraska. Our States share many things in common; one the Senator mentioned, a low unemployment rate. The unemployment rate in our State is 3.3 percent. Again, I attribute that to the ability of building a probusiness, progrowth, projobs environment that stimulates private investments, stimulates jobs. The Senator mentioned so very accurately that jobs are created by the private sector, not by government. We have to create an environment that stimulates and encourages and helps create a forum for that private investment. That is how we create jobs and get this economy going.

On one side, we have to have a growing economy, which we don't have at the national level right now, and on the other side we have to live within our means. We have to control our spending, and the Federal Government has a responsibility to control its spending just as the States do, just as businesses do, just as families do. We have to not only balance this budget, we have to live within our means on an ongoing basis. We have 49 of the 50 States with either a constitutional or a statutory requirement that they balance their budget every year. Every single Governor with us today had to balance their budget every single year. It was recently reported that 46 States are already on track to make sure their budget is balanced by the end of their fiscal year. The Federal Government needs to do the same thing.

Look at our situation right now. The Federal Government takes in $2.2 trillion in revenues. We take in $2.2 trillion in revenues, but we spend $3.7 trillion. That is a $1.5-plus trillion deficit every year, and that is rolling up to a debt that is now closing in on $14.5 trillion. We have to address this. This is not something we can hand off to future generations. So our message to the administration is, you are making it worse. We have to start living within our means. We cannot keep spending and then borrowing and then raising taxes and expect to have an economy that grows and a government that lives within its means, and that is exactly why we are here today talking about the need for this balanced budget amendment.

If one thinks about it, the balanced budget amendment gets everyone involved both now and for the future because it has to be passed by both Houses of Congress with a two-thirds majority. That has to be done on a bipartisan basis and then it goes out to the States and three-fourths of the States have to ratify it for it to become part of the Constitution. That gets everybody involved in doing exactly what we need to do; that is, getting on top of this deficit and this debt, both now and for future generations.

Again, I wish to thank the good Senator from Nebraska for holding this colloquy and for inviting me to be part of it with my fellow Governors. I appreciate it very much.

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