Jim Inhofe: “one of the things about a debate such as this is that I have something I always do, and that is I will sit down and…”

“one of the things about a debate such as this is that I have something I always do, and that is I will sit down and cross off things I was going to say that somebody else has already said. Unfortunately, almost everything has been said, but there are a few things that have not. I wish to put this in a more of a historic perspective. I can remember back in 1968. In 1968 I was elected to the Oklahoma State Senate, and at that time we were all concerned about the deficit spending and the debt in this country. I remember so well a kind old gentleman from Nebraska. He was U.S. Senator Carl Curtis. Carl Curtis contacted me--because I was kind of an aggressive person at that time-- and said, I have an idea. I have been up here trying to pass a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution and I have been trying for years to do it. One of the primary objections they have is they could never get the majority, the three-fourths necessary to ratify the Constitutional Amendment. He said, this is my idea: Let's go ahead and get three-fourths of the States to preratify a budget-balancing amendment to the Constitution. I thought that was an ingenious idea, and so we did. I passed a resolution in the Oklahoma State Senate in 1968 that said we were going to preratify it.…”