Cord Byrd: “And to reduce the deficits, but I do not think we ought to go about it by way of a constitutional amendment. But the…”

“And to reduce the deficits, but I do not think we ought to go about it by way of a constitutional amendment. But the Senator from Utah continues to talk about the present system, the weaknesses of the present system. Section 6 is in the constitutional amendment. That is the present system. That continues the present system of working with estimates of outlays and receipts. So there is nothing different, except the Constitution of the United States will be trivialized. There will be nothing different in what we are talking about balancing the budget for real after the Constitution has been amended than from what the situation at present is. Reading section 6: The Congress shall enforce and implement this article by appropriate legislation, which may rely on estimates of outlays and receipts. Now, I have been talking all afternoon, or for almost 1 hour, about estimates of outlays and receipts and the fact that they are never, never accurate. I hope the Senator from Utah, when he refers to the present system, he scores, he excoriates, and I do not blame him for that, the 'present system'--the 'present system.' He wants to get away from the present system. Well, he is not doing it in section 6, because under section 6 we are told, this is the Houdini section, the section that tells Congress it can do it, it can balance the budget, it can carry out the mandate under the constitutional amendment by relying on estimates of outlays and receipts.”