Cliff Stearns: “I thank my distinguished colleague. You know, I say to my colleagues on the Democrat side, we can sit here and blame…”

“I thank my distinguished colleague. You know, I say to my colleagues on the Democrat side, we can sit here and blame Bush; we can sit here, on our side we could blame President Obama; and we can have this high rhetoric talking about this issue but now is the time to get serious. But we are in a very precarious situation. This is all different with a debt to GDP ratio at 100 percent. When you look at the statistics and you say, well, look, what's going to happen in this country in 10 years, in 10 years 95 percent of all Federal tax revenues will be consumed by payments of interest on the national debt and mandatory programs like Social Security. I think you would agree with that. Medicare and Medicaid are also there. This will leave just about 5 percent of our annual tax revenue available for funding national defense and other essential functions of the government. So this is an attempt here today, a very sober attempt, to control federal budgets and do this through a balanced budget amendment. Now, you make a valid argument about the difference of these 49 States having an operational balanced budget, which is they don't have a capital outlay balanced budget. I understand that argument. But also, with this constitutional amendment, we are projecting an attempt to have a rainy-day fund, where we set aside money for these emergencies we all worry about.…”