Political Quotes

“I first want to thank the chairman of the Judiciary Committee, Mr. Goodlatte, for leading on this constitutional amendment for a balanced budget. We have fought this out in past years and brought this to the floor a couple of times that I can remember here. But I would like to dial back your memory, Mr. Speaker, to 1998, when the House of Representatives did pass a balanced budget amendment to our United States Constitution and sent it over to the United States Senate. And late in the year of 1998, after a hard-fought whip team pulled the votes together, they put together the two-thirds votes necessary in the Senate to pass that constitutional amendment for a balanced budget off to the States for ratification in three-quarters of the States. They had the votes, and at the last minute, one Senator walked down and, in dramatic fashion, voted ``no'' when he was on the whip card expected to vote ``yes.'' And that is what blocked a balanced budget amendment in 1998, within one vote, because I think all of us here are confident that the States would have ratified a balanced budget amendment, and then we would be living under the balanced budget amendment from sometime, probably pretty near the turn of the millennium, around the year 2000. Think what a difference it would be today.…”