Howard Berman: “I rise to express my strenuous opposition to the balanced budget amendment. This debate is about far more than the…”

“I rise to express my strenuous opposition to the balanced budget amendment. This debate is about far more than the critical task of balancing the Federal budget. The amendment strikes me as a dangerous and insidious means of fundamentally altering articles 1, 2, and 3 of the Constitution, upsetting the separation and balance of powers that has served this Nation so well for two centuries. Has our confidence in our ability to make the tough choices ebbed so dramatically that we would cast away for all time the carefully wrought balance among the three branches of Government? At a time when U.S. constitutional law experts have fanned out around the globe, advising brand-new democracies on how to write their constitutions, it is a bitter irony that we find ourselves on the verge of forsaking the very model so many seek to emulate. Many of my colleagues who support this amendment have done so out of reluctance to saddle future generations with the burden of our national debt. I concur. But I am equally loathe to consign our children to relive the terrible constitutional crises of our past: A Supreme Court nullifying acts of Congress designed to pull the United States out of the Depression and to ease the pain of our fellow citizens; and The Congress and the President locked in combat over the President's efforts to impound appropriated funds.”