John Shaw: “on this day, April 15, I am most reluctant to get up and speak against an amendment which, on its face, appears to be…”

“on this day, April 15, I am most reluctant to get up and speak against an amendment which, on its face, appears to be something that we all should support. However, I think it is an amendment that we should not be putting into the Constitution of the United States. The bill before us today does not in any way give the American people any tax relief. What it simply would do is to institutionalize into the U.S. Constitution a provision, an antidemocrat provision, and I do not mean Democrat party, I mean one having to do with democracy; a provision that would say that the minority can run this House. Think about it for a moment. Under this constitutional amendment, 7 percent of the population, through a vote in the Senate, could run the business of the legislative body of this great country of ours. When this came to the floor last time, I voted for it. Since then, I have been giving it a great deal of thought, and that thought has been somewhat around my support of the constitutional amendment that would require us to balance our budget. Mr. Speaker, we should think for a moment when we have a situation where we are putting into the Constitution a provision where 7 percent of the population of this great country can stop legislation.”