Cord Byrd: “He is correct about it. But he still has not answered my question as to why the committee and the proponents of the…”

“He is correct about it. But he still has not answered my question as to why the committee and the proponents of the amendment felt after saying in section 1 that total outlays shall not exceed total receipts in any fiscal year, which is pretty straightforward language, which says that the budget has to be balanced every year, it says that the budget has to be balanced every year, why do we take an approach which says, on the one hand, the budget must be balanced--and that is what I have been hearing from the speakers who are proponents of this legislation--why did they say in the first section that the budget will have to be balanced every year and then in section 6 say, as it were, 'Well, you do not really have to believe that first section? We are not going to hold you to it. We know it will be difficult, if not impossible some years, to hold you to that. So we are not going to require you to equal the outlays with the receipts. But what we are going to do is this. We are going to let you get by by just balancing the estimates.' Who makes the estimates? Cannot the estimates be cooked? The administration cooked the numbers when they were sending up budgets in the early part of the Reagan administration. They cooked the numbers. These numbers can be cooked once this constitutional amendment becomes a part of the Constitution. They can be cooked. The estimates can be cooked. When can the American people believe us and believe that we mean what we say?”