Jon Kyl: “Thank you. Mr. President, after listening to the Chaplain's prayer this morning, I was reminded of the old saying…”

“Thank you. Mr. President, after listening to the Chaplain's prayer this morning, I was reminded of the old saying, ``Everybody wants to go to Heaven, but not everybody wants to do what is necessary to get there.'' In his State of the Union Message, the President said he wanted to balance the budget by the year 2002, but he then went on to express opposition to the balanced budget amendment. Without the discipline of a constitutional balanced budget amendment, neither Congress nor the President will ever have the courage to pass one. The President has submitted a budget that is technically in balance by the year 2002. But let us look at it. If you check the fine print, you will find that 75 percent of the savings proposed by the President are postponed until the last 2 years of the 5-year plan, the years after President Clinton's term has ended. That is the problem. Just to cite the statistics, Mr. President, the budget deficit this year is about $107 billion. You would think if you are going to zero in the year 2002, and we are at $107 billion this year, we would reduce it a little each year until we got to zero. But actually the budget deficit goes up in fiscal year 1997, and the President's policies would boost it another $1.1 billion in fiscal year 1998 from where it would otherwise have been. In fact, in the last year--the year that we are supposed to be at zero--the savings required to achieve balance will be $117 billion.…”