John Chafee: “I must say, I find this rather amusing, because just some 10 days ago on the floor of the Senate, we were debating the…”

“I must say, I find this rather amusing, because just some 10 days ago on the floor of the Senate, we were debating the question of a constitutional amendment. I heard some stirring oratory on the other side of the aisle that, ``What this Senate needs is some courage, the courage to stop this spending. We don't need a Constitutional amendment.'' Let me quote from one distinguished Democratic Senator. It does not take a constitutional amendment to reduce the Federal deficit or balance the Federal budget. All it takes is enough courage by Congress and the administration to make the tough decisions we were elected to make. Now, hard on the heels of that--and the constitutional amendment was defeated with overwhelming rejection on the other side of the aisle-- now we come to an era when perhaps there are some tough decisions. And, as I understand it, there are programs, some money available in the defense budget, so the first thing, as I understand it, is to spend it, to spend it on a new program or enlargement of programs, some of which currently exist, and to not only increase them by some $800 million this year, and next year even more, am I correct; that next year the idea is to have even more than what they are proposing for this budget for the fiscal year 1995?”