Cord Byrd: “Democracy is not perfect, but it is the best thing going. The issue here is the Founding Fathers were not infallible. We…”

“Democracy is not perfect, but it is the best thing going. The issue here is the Founding Fathers were not infallible. We are not infallible. There are reasonable decisions that have to be made from time to time. The Dred Scott decision in 1857 when a Supreme Court said a slave was property and therefore could not sue in Federal court. That came in under the Constitution. Is that right? No. But it happened. So we are an infallible people. So my point is, what Senator Hatch was alluding to, if we look at what is happening we are talking about a situation where a national emergency might emerge. The Senator is correct. He made some very good points about what might happen if that national emergency were to come about. The other point is, if we are looking at where the debt is going and how much of the debt is being consumed, how much of the budget is being consumed by interest on the debt, and looking at where it is today, 16 percent roughly of that budget is interest on the debt and 16 percent is national defense.”