Gilbert Gutknecht: “Members, I have been listening to this debate, and I would like to distill as best I can the arguments against this bill…”

“Members, I have been listening to this debate, and I would like to distill as best I can the arguments against this bill that we are debating today. The first one seems to be that it is not tough enough, that it does not include the ability for immediate tax increases. And if that is your reason, that is fine. Go ahead and vote against this. The other one I think is much more complicated. I want to talk about that for a moment, and that is the separation-of-powers argument in the Constitution. Members, nothing in this bill today changes the constitutional powers that we in the Congress and the executive branch have. The President of the United States would still have the power to veto any appropriation bill or the budget bill. It simply brings the President and the Congress, both bodies in the Congress, together earlier so that we work on a common blueprint. Imagine, if you will, just for a moment in this great structure, if we had the masons using one blueprint, and we had the carpenters using another blueprint, and the iron workers using a third blueprint. We would not wind up with this building. What we are saying is we think everybody ought to be in there making the same blueprint from the beginning. That makes sense to every one of our constituents. Members, look at what has happened over the last several years. From 1995 to 2000, Federal spending grew at an average rate of 3.2 percent.…”