The Public Record
John Peter Spyros Sarbanes is an American politician serving as a member of the United States House of Representatives from Maryland's 3rd congressional district since 2007. A member of the Democratic Party, Sarbanes has focused on issues such as campaign finance reform, healthcare, and education during his tenure in Congress. He has been an advocate for transparency in government and has worked to strengthen the Voting Rights Act.
I wish to underscore one point because I think it tends to get overlooked. There is a tendency to think of this in terms of the Federal employees who are not working. That is a very important aspect of it. But by not working, they are not…
I commend the Senator from Virginia for that statement. I know how hard he has been working at this issue. I think it is very important that we pass a clean continuing resolution. People should be put back to work and they should be paid…
Very quickly. The Washington Post in a recent editorial said, and I quote them, ``Can you imagine a Fortune 500 company operating like this, if they had a dispute between their board of directors and their President and they sent everybody…
First of all, I am very responsive to the Senator's personal plea. It strikes me this may be in the way of being an autopsy in order to find out why these bills are corpses, and that is the process we are engaged in, trying to discover…
The Senator told me on a vote of 50 to 50, in which the Vice President sought to cast the tie-breaking vote, would not qualify under your proposal.
Now the way the Constitution is written, if a matter is put to a vote, let us say four or five Members are missing, they may be ill, they may be in the hospital, they may be sick, they may have gone to a family funeral, so they cannot be…
That is right. You are saying if this amendment were passed, the August vote would have been negated.
What is your interpretation? What does it mean? Section 4 says, ``No bill to increase revenue shall become law unless approved by a majority of the whole number of each House by a rollcall vote.'' Take the situation you just described. It…
The point I want to get across to my colleague is that there is the assumption that issues of national security will not be a matter of controversy. In other words, he is saying clearly, if there is a problem, we are going to get these…
If I could say to my dear friend from Utah, the Founders specifically discussed this. They debated whether the quorum should be more than a majority of the body and they rejected the notion that it should be more than a majority. They said…
I must say those were the days when there was a degree of civility that prevailed in the workings of the Congress. With the President out of town meeting secretly in New Foundland with British Prime Minister Winston Churchill to frame the…
That underscores my point even more. If the Senator's answer to me is you can waive it on a three-fifths vote, then in neither of these instances in the Senate or the House for the extension of the draft did they come anywhere close to the…
This requirement requires the supermajority in the sense that it required that it be adopted by a majority of the whole number of each House. You see, this is very important, and I am glad we are having this discussion because it is…
I am focusing on the section 5 provision, and its supermajority requirement of the majority of the whole number of each House.
Fully funded; in other words, you can violate the requirements of the balanced budget amendment.
I am addressing a situation in which we are not actually engaged in military conflict, but we want to take actions to forestall a military conflict.
I ask the Senator. It says, if engaged in military conflict, you may waive it. Suppose you are not engaged in military conflict but you need to prepare for a possible engagement in military conflict; you need to take actions which will…
But what you are doing when you show me those charts is you are assuming no action. Just as in 1992, if you assumed no action, you would have shown a chart of great concern. We took action and, therefore, the situation was improved. Now I…
In part. What I would say to my distinguished colleague is you could have shown me a chart far worse than that one if you had done it before August 1993 and the adoption of the deficit reduction package.
If I could interject, I think the impact of this would not be on fine-tuning. It would be on rough-tuning. In other words, I do not even think you would be able to do rough-tuning, let alone fine-tuning.
No. I think we have a problem, but I think we have made progress and I hope we can continue to make progress. I do not think the recourse, as the GAO indicated, is this amendment to the Constitution.
A budget balance over the business cycle would have more rationality to it. It still does not address the capital budget point.
You have to look at what these votes are. Morocco, on important votes, was 54.5 percent; on overall votes, it was 21 percent. Cyprus was 22 percent on overall votes; on important votes, it was 58 percent. So there is a big gap between…
I want to address what seems to be a central premise of the argument he makes here on the floor, because I disagree with it very sharply. He said that with the end of the cold war, the purposes of the National Endowment for Democracy no…
Reform of U.S. foreign aid programs is indeed a vitally important undertaking, involving a number of complex issues that need to be addressed. I know there is a great deal of interest in the aid-for-trade issue in particular, and I would…
Politicians like John Sarbanes
