Chuck Grassley: “I want to support House Joint Resolution 1. The significance of the No. 1 is very important. If Members go out and talk…”

“I want to support House Joint Resolution 1. The significance of the No. 1 is very important. If Members go out and talk to people at the grassroots, they think, to have a balanced budget, there is a need for a constitutional amendment. They think this amendment is the first order of business of any Congress. I think the last election said that it ought to be the first order for this Congress. It is very simple, particularly for middle-class people in America, and the small entrepreneurs and to the farmers of America, that Federal spending must be controlled, the deficit eliminated, and the national debt brought down. There are very important economic reasons to balance the budget, but more essentially, there are moral reasons to balance the budget. The moral issues, in fact, now, are more important than the economic reasons. Early on, I think we could justify the amendment on economic reasons, but now the immorality of our generation living high on the hog and leaving the bill to our children and grandchildren to pay makes it much less an economic issue. We are borrowing the future of our children and grandchildren through the bad fiscal policies. We must end this practice. Because every other means has failed to produce a balanced budget, we must enact an amendment to the Constitution. Every other means has failed. Gramm-Rudman I and II.…”