On the recordJune 22, 2011
Madam President, in a few minutes, I will offer an amendment, but first I wish to speak about a bill that myself and 26 other Senators have introduced today, and it is called The Enumerated Powers Act. Our Founding Fathers understood the only way to preserve our freedom for future generations was to limit Federal authority. They understood the tendency of government to seize increasing power, and thus they created protections in our Constitution for posterity. Earlier this year, newly elected and returning Members of the Senate took an oath to support and defend the Constitution of the United States. In my case, that oath never mentioned the State of Oklahoma or any other State an individual Senator might represent. Rather, the oath each of us took was to uphold the Constitution for the betterment of the country as a whole. Yet every day, Members of Congress ignore their oath and the protective principles embodied in the Constitution, trampling both the freedom and the prosperity of the American people. This has never been as evident as in the congressional spending spree we have seen over the last 3\1/2\ to 4 years. At the beginning of the 111th Congress, our national debt stood at $10.6 trillion. Today it is over $14.4 trillion, an increase of nearly $4 trillion in the last 3-plus years. How did we get there? How did we get into such deep debt? How did we shackle our children and grandchildren to an increasing deficit and an inevitable decreased standard of living?…





