David Skaggs: “Mr. Chairman, we are engaged in particularly serious business this evening. In the 206 years of the Republic we have…”

“Mr. Chairman, we are engaged in particularly serious business this evening. In the 206 years of the Republic we have amended the Constitution some 27 times. There have been over 11,000 proposals. Yes, indeed, we need to bring the Federal budget, the operating budget of the Federal Government, into balance. It is not a question of whether we do it, but how we do it. We need to do it through a sensible process, not through an amendment to the Constitution that I believe will prove unworkable and detrimental to the national interests. And let me explain why I think the proposals that have been brought to the floor will run into those kinds of problems. First, those proposals with supermajority requirements: The reason we have a Constitution is that the Articles of Confederation required supermajorities for spending and taxing decisions, and they proved unworkable and brought the early version of this Nation into gridlock. We should not repeat that mistake by passing an amendment that would give 41 Senators, theoretically representing only 12 percent of the people of this country, the power to bring Government to a grinding halt. Second, the enforcement problem: The amendments that are before us are silent on how we deal with living up to the promise that we are making.”