Andy Biggs: “I thank the chairman for his work on this bill, bringing it forward, as well as his graciousness for letting me speak…”

“I thank the chairman for his work on this bill, bringing it forward, as well as his graciousness for letting me speak today. Mr. Speaker, I will say that what I am hearing from the other side leaves my head spinning. I hear yammering, but I constantly wonder: Did they bother to read this particular balanced budget amendment? The struggle I have with this balanced budget amendment is not what they say. They say this is going to go directly to spending reductions. The issue for me is, when I look at it, I see that we make it easier to raise taxes, that is what we make it easier to do, by a 51 percent vote. When I see it, we make it easier to spend like we did in the omnibus, the bipartisan omnibus bill, because that only requires a three-fifths vote to set aside the balanced budget restraints by this administration. That gives me concern, because 61 percent of the vote in the House would have exceeded that just a couple weeks ago with the omnibus bill. In the Senate, it was by more than 60 percent. So that is a bit problematic for me. I will make one last point here before I continue on to the previous point, and that is we are going to see 7 years, roughly, for the ratification process and then another 5 years after that before this actually is enacted. That is 12 years. That means that we are going to have probably around a $30 trillion national debt by then.…”