John Sarbanes: “I agree absolutely with that. We at the moment have the best unemployment situation in 20 years; the best performance on…”

“I agree absolutely with that. We at the moment have the best unemployment situation in 20 years; the best performance on inflation in 30 years. We have now brought the deficit down as a percent of the gross national product to the best ratio in 25 years. We are making progress on all of these fronts. We have the strongest economy in the world. People come in with this radical notion of amending the Constitution of the United States. All we need to do is continue to make the hard decisions that are made with respect to the budget. It is one thing to balance the budget. Those are the tough decisions. Those are the ones we ought to make and not put an amendment into the Constitution of the United States which is going to deny us the ability to deal with economic downturns and recessions when they occur. The amendment they are talking about putting into the Constitution of the United States does not abolish the business cycle. It does not eliminate economic ups and downs. Yet with this amendment, we run the risk of going back to economic cycles with very deep downturns when our people are really suffering through depression. We have not had that since World War II. And I for one don't want to go back to it.”