Dale Bumpers: “several weeks ago I stood at this desk during the debate on the budget resolution and offered an amendment that I…”

“several weeks ago I stood at this desk during the debate on the budget resolution and offered an amendment that I thought was an eminently serious, major, defining amendment on that bill. I have been here 22 rac{1}{2} years and I knew perfectly well that I was not going to prevail on that amendment. But I had pointed out during the course of the debate that in the 22 rac{1}{2} years I have been here, probably the most important goal I had hoped to see achieved during my tenure in the Senate was a balanced budget. I had, on several occasions, voted against a constitutional amendment to balance the budget simply because of my reverence for the Constitution and for my belief that economic policy has no place in the Constitution. I had always argued and will argue until my dying day that balancing the budget is a matter of will by the Members of the U.S. Congress, and to suggest that the only way we can screw up the nerve and stiffen our spines to balance the budget is to put it in the Constitution is demeaning in the extreme. So that is why in 1993 I voted for the reconciliation bill that raised taxes and cut spending.”