John Glenn: “Mr. President, this is a most important debate. As the Senate begins to debate a constitutional amendment to require a…”

“Mr. President, this is a most important debate. As the Senate begins to debate a constitutional amendment to require a balanced budget, I am sure that we are not going to hear many voices in support of increased spending and spiraling deficits. It is very attractive, to vote for a balanced budget and that proposes to take care of our problems. It forces us into doing something that we might not otherwise do. It reflects the fact that all of us here have grown so frustrated over the years with deficit spending, deficit spending that just seems all too intractable. Over the past decade, Democrats and Republicans have pointed fingers at each other. We pointed fingers at the White House, the White House has blamed Congress, the Congress blamed everybody. While everyone argued, the national debt has soared out of control. What led us into this? We had basically a 12-year experiment with supply-side economics, and the answer to the experiment is that it did not work. During that time our national debt quadrupled from $1 trillion to over $4 trillion. It led us into deficits and deficit spending beyond anything that we ever thought possible and into more debt than we ever thought possible for this country.”