Melvin Watt: “We even offered to take that out of the bill. You would think that people who were seriously interested in passing a…”

“We even offered to take that out of the bill. You would think that people who were seriously interested in passing a constitutional amendment that limited the ability to raise taxes would have jumped at that, they would have said, ``Yeah, that's absolutely consistent with what we are trying to do.'' But they have not demonstrated any degree of seriousness about this issue. Everybody has talked about the gentleman from Texas' two-thirds and three-fourths, his equations. I want everybody to stay with me now, because when you require a two-thirds majority vote to do something, what you are saying is, if one-third objects, you cannot do it. So everybody has talked about this powerful supermajority. What my colleagues need to understand is that we are setting up, not a powerful supermajority, what we are doing is setting up a powerful superminority which will control the process. It will be one-third of the people in this House who will be in control of it. It will not be the two-thirds. It will not even be the majority rule. And if that is not countermajoritarian, if that is not counterdemocratic, I do not know what is. We do not require a two-thirds majority to declare war.”