Angie Craig: “The Senator is so accurate about what he says about where the obligation rests. Those of us who have championed the…”

“The Senator is so accurate about what he says about where the obligation rests. Those of us who have championed the cause of a balanced budget amendment and have argued that--and I think all of us currently on the floor have agreed in the text of the current balanced budget amendment. Within the next 48 hours the President of the United States--who stood on the floor of the other body for the State of the Union about a week ago and announced the concept of a balanced budget, and said, ``Show me how to balance it''--will be introducing his new budget. That new budget has $190 billion in deficits as far as the eye can see. This President with a straight face is going to look the American people in the eye and say I am going to put at least another trillion dollars to that $5 trillion debt that our colleague from New Hampshire just spoke about. That is responsibility? No, it is this President's obligation and his party's obligation--or at least those who are advocates of this new amendment that has just been proposed--to come up and say, here is how we get it done under our vision, because if they are committed to trillions of dollars more of debt structure, they are in fact being irresponsible.”