Timothy Penny: “I simply want to add my words of support for the Stenholm version of the balanced budget amendment. Clearly, we need to…”

“I simply want to add my words of support for the Stenholm version of the balanced budget amendment. Clearly, we need to change the rules here at the national level. Presently, there is no expectation that a budget should ever be balanced. That is one of the reasons that we seldom see presented to the Congress any proposals that seriously address the deficit issue. We did, however, have one opportunity last week, a budget alternative presented by the gentleman from New York [Mr. Solomon] would have challenged us to cut upwards of $660 billion over the next 5 years in order to attain a balanced budget by the time this constitutional amendment, if passed, would take effect. Sadly, far too few legislators chose to cast their votes in support of a real balanced budget initiative. Nonetheless, today we are called upon to vote for a policy change and to place this basic budgeting principle right in the Constitution of our land. It is my hope that in the future, if this amendment is adopted, that we will no longer debate whether we should balance the budget but, rather, how we ought to go about balancing the Nation's budget.”