On the recordNovember 17, 2011
The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Mike Mullen, said that our worst enemy was not any foreign power or al Qaeda--rather, that it's our own national debt. That's right. It's official now. Congress has become basically America's worst enemy. I wish we would take it upon ourselves to cut spending and to balance budgets. We are failing in doing that, and we have failed repeatedly. I wish the supercommittee would come up with a super solution. That does not look likely. I regret that we are at the stage now where we need a balanced budget amendment, and I regret that we're at the stage of partisanship when, just 10 years ago, 72 Democrats voted for this, including two out of the three top members of our leadership. We've got to live within our means. The Nation's future is at stake. It's sad that we have become so lame that we need this crutch, but we need it. America's overspending--our obesity in this body--is so great that we have become America's greatest obesity problem. The balanced budget amendment is the right diet.
