Angie Craig: “last night I offered an amendment called the Surplus Protection Amendment for myself and several other colleagues here…”

“last night I offered an amendment called the Surplus Protection Amendment for myself and several other colleagues here in the Senate: Senator Allard, Senator Coverdell, Senator Grams, Senator Helms, Senator Hutchinson, Senator Inhofe, Senator Sessions, and Senator Thomas. My amendment is a fundamentally simple amendment which sets forth very clearly a new approach toward how we handle mandatory spending. Pay-as-you-go budget enforcement rules were established to help put Washington's fiscal house in order. Since fiscal year 1994, the Senate has had a point of order requiring 60 votes to waive against any legislation that would increase the deficit. However, mandatory spending in Washington is Washington's version of a fiscal autopilot. Once enacted, it requires no further congressional action to operate. Rather than a perpetual motion machine, what we have found out with mandatory spending, of course, is that it is a perpetual spending machine. It is, if you will, the Energizer Bunny of budgeting and has kept growing and growing and growing. What all this means--and I think it concerns us all greatly--is an increase in mandatory spending must be paid for with a tax increase. Any tax cut must be paid for by a mandatory spending cut. As anyone can tell, pay-go, in its present form, is very insufficient to control mandatory spending. Mandatory spending has increased dramatically and will continue to increase dramatically over the next few years.…”