Byron Dorgan: “Yesterday, of course, we voted on a major proposed constitutional amendment to balance the budget. That was a vote that…”

“Yesterday, of course, we voted on a major proposed constitutional amendment to balance the budget. That was a vote that was difficult for a number of Members of the Senate. Most understood it was a very significant, serious issue, and a great deal of emotion existed on both sides. It was not an easy vote, I expect, for virtually anyone. And I suppose there are some ruptured feelings and relationships, at least momentarily, about some of these issues. But I was thinking about it last evening. In the middle of the debate that we had for some weeks over the question of whether we should amend the Constitution, a news item appeared one morning about America's trade deficit. That news item disclosed that in the last year, when figures for December were released and we had a full year's picture of America's trade deficit, that we had the largest merchandise trade deficit in the history of the world. The United States was running the largest trade deficit in the history of humankind. We had gone, in a few years--15 years--from being the largest creditor or the biggest banker as a country to now the largest debtor in the world. I thought about that in the context of the fractious debate on the issue of balancing the budget by a constitutional amendment. Because, with respect to international trade and the question of how we as a country do, we are a team, all of us. The entire country's future is at stake.”