Proposing a Balanced Budget Amendment to the Constitution

Floor Speech

Mr. GARAMENDI. I suspect we're about to enter into a west coast debate here. My good friend from Oregon brings a perspective a little north of California, and I would like to bring to this discussion a perspective of California.

For more than 30 years, California has lived under a constitutional amendment much like this constitutional amendment--a constitutional amendment that in the State of California requires a supermajority vote for raising taxes and for the budget itself. It's very similar to what is required here. The only difference is, in California, it was two-thirds; here it's 60 percent.

One only need look at the extraordinary dysfunction that California has endured in the intervening 30 years since that constitutional amendment went into effect. It has become a situation in California where we went from the very best--the very, very best--education system in this Nation, both K-12 and higher education; the best infrastructure in this Nation; and the most robust economy in this Nation to one in which we've had perpetual political gridlock because of the supermajority requirement.

So I bring to this House my own 35 years of experience with a constitution that does impose a supermajority but that has simply not worked to the benefit of the State of California. To visit such a thing upon the United States, in my view, in my experience of 35 years in public life in California, would be a great disaster for the United States, one in which we would have perpetual gridlock.

Already in this House this year, my Republican colleagues are very upset about the United States Senate not being able to do anything because of the 60-vote requirement. The Republicans keep talking about the 19 jobs bills that are over there that are tied up. It's the 60-vote requirement that has tied them up in the Senate. Last year it was the Democrats who were complaining about the Senate not being able to move because of the 60-vote requirement in the Senate.

Do we want that also here in the House? I would hope not.

I would ask us to back away from what is politically expedient. We all understand this. We've all been in this a long time. We understand the political expedience about the sound bite, about the way in which it appears. We are taking action to solve the deficit. Please, look at California. Look at what has happened to California over the last 35 years.

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Mr. GARAMENDI. I would also ask you to take a look at the fact that, even with that supermajority vote, California has perpetually run a deficit because it could not bring into balance the revenues and the outlays because the outlays were required by the reality of the economy, by the reality of the people.

This is a very, very important vote, and I bring to this House my experience of what a supermajority vote has meant to the State of California.

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