Political Quotes

“I thank the gentleman from Arizona for leading on this Special Order, and all my colleagues that have come to the floor to raise the issue of the balanced budget amendment. I wanted to just point a few things out as to where this sits. Now, the chairman of the Constitution Committee standing before me, Mr. Franks, has presided over the shaping of a constitutional amendment requiring a balanced budget. And I certainly favor the one that was authored by Bob Goodlatte and marked up in our full Judiciary Committee. It took three full days, and those days spanned over a couple weeks' period of time trying to find the time to get this to work out. And I want to express, Mr. Speaker, that a balanced budget amendment that is written by someone who doesn't believe in a balanced budget amendment probably isn't going to yield the result that we all want from that amendment. And the worst case scenario would be the drafting and the passage of a balanced budget amendment that would be the constitutional equivalent of PAYGO. You could draft a balanced budget amendment that would say, Thou shalt balance the budget, and not put provisions in there, such as a cap on GDP, or a supermajority required to raise taxes, or a supermajority required to raise the debt limit, or of course the cap, as I said.…”