Lincoln Diaz-Balart: “history puts so much in perspective and in context. We are going today to bring forth before this House a constitutional…”

“history puts so much in perspective and in context. We are going today to bring forth before this House a constitutional amendment to require that our Federal budget be balanced. Very prosperous countries in the past, very wealthy countries, even in this hemisphere, for example, Argentina, if we look at the history in the early part of this century, Argentina was among the most prosperous countries in the world. If we look now at the dilemma that we are faced with in Mexico, an economy that is part of NAFTA, and it is a very thriving economy, these instances in our recent history and in the recent history of this hemisphere point to the fact that fiscal irresponsibility can destroy even prosperous, even very growing economies. When we realize that even Keynes, Mr. Speaker, never envisioned permanent deficit spending, we realize that we must put our budget under constraints. We must put ourselves under constraints, as every family in America has to. We must pass this amendment to balance the budget.”