Cord Byrd: “So what they are saying is, ``Roll it over, roll it over to the next year, that is OK.'' That is not what the American…”

“So what they are saying is, ``Roll it over, roll it over to the next year, that is OK.'' That is not what the American people out there are expecting from those who are the proponents of this balanced budget amendment. The proponents are saying, ``Let's have a constitutional amendment to balance the budget. Let's do it like you do, Mr. and Mrs. America, you and your families, you do it every year. We ought to have to do it.'' That is saying we ought to do it like the States have to do it. They have constitutional amendments to balance their budget. Well, I will talk more about those pretenses at some other point. But this is what you are being told; the American people are being told that if there is an excess in the deficit one year, it can be rolled over to the next. Senators ought to read this constitutional amendment. They ought to read the committee report by the Judiciary Committee in the Senate which accompanied the resolution when it was reported to the floor. They ought to read it. It will not work. The Judiciary Committee knows it will not work. One only needs to read the report to understand that the Judiciary Committee saw there were going to be problems with it. You will not hear the proponents telling the public that the Congress will just stand up and declare the deficit ``negligible,'' and so we are not going to deal with it.”