Eleanor Holmes Norton: “I urge that we reject the balanced budget amendment and go no further than the amendment offered by the gentleman from…”

“I urge that we reject the balanced budget amendment and go no further than the amendment offered by the gentleman from West Virginia. Mr. Chairman, there have been 10,938 amendments to the Constitution introduced since our founding as a nation. Only 27 of them have become amendments. Ten of these were added by the Founders, and only two-tenths of 1 percent, or 17, by those of us who have followed the Founders. One of these was a repealer. We see in this small number the wisdom of the Founders, the wisdom of our fellow Americans, and the understanding that we must not trivialize the greatest Constitution ever written by trying to get everyone's pet issue into it. I speak, Mr. Chairman, as a constitutional lawyer with special respect for the Constitution. I respected it as a document even before I was in it, and I must note the irony that we are talking about putting the annual budget, as it were, in the Constitution when half the population isn't in the Constitution yet. I oppose putting in the Constitution even those matters with which I agree.”