On the recordJuly 22, 2011
I thank the Chair. After 40 years, the evidence is in. The Congress is broken, and unless you change the system fundamentally, we are going to run our Nation into the ground. So I support a balanced budget amendment. Here is the way it works: You have to get two-thirds in the Senate and the House and three-fourths of the States have to ratify the balanced budget amendment. Give the people of America a chance to have their say. Let's pass a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution before we take the country and put it in a situation beyond redemption. The only thing that is ever going to change this body, I am sad to say, is some discipline imposed by the Constitution itself. I promise my colleagues to work with you where I can. But for the rest of my time in the Senate--and I don't know how long it is going to be--I am going to push a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution, because I don't trust the Congress to do the hard work on its own. And when I say that, I mean Republicans too.
