David Thomas: “But, you know, you really come down to the bottom line. And the bottom line is this year, for the first time in 25…”

“But, you know, you really come down to the bottom line. And the bottom line is this year, for the first time in 25 years, the Congress sent to the President a balanced budget. The President promptly vetoed it. So I think you have to ask yourself, is it morally and fiscally responsible to balance the budget? Do we have a responsibility as representatives of our constituency to say, ``Look, we're not going to spend more than we take in except in an emergency?'' I think that is reasonable. I know the Senator would agree to that. But that has not happened. So we go into all these reasons and all these excuses why we cannot do that. First of all, all we are doing is we are sending a constitutional amendment to the States. The folks will have another chance to look at this, which I think makes some sense. But I feel very strongly that we have tried the other things. Some say, ``Well, you shouldn't tamper with the Constitution. The Framers didn't put that in there.'' I do not think the Framers also expected that you would have the largest line item in the budget being interest on a debt that has been built up because we do not balance the budget.”