Political Quotes

“What is remarkable about that is when I first got here, there was a vote in the Senate in 1997. We didn't have the opportunity to vote on it in the House of Representatives, although I think we could have passed it with a two-thirds majority there at the time. It failed in the Senate by one vote. It got 66 votes in the Senate and it needed 67. I can't help but think how different things would be today had we passed the balance budget amendment then and sent it to the States. I presume, as does the Senator--and New Hampshire is not unlike South Dakota--that we would certainly have ratified it. The 38 States would have ratified it, and it would have put us on a path that is fiscally sustainable. Ironically, at that time the debt was about $5 trillion. We are talking about $14 trillion today. Back then, it was $5 trillion. So that is a $9 trillion increase. If we had passed a balanced budget amendment, we wouldn't have run up this debt. Now, it is interesting because--and I will point this out to my colleague from New Hampshire too--if you go back 29 years ago this week, President Reagan led a rally of people--thousands of people on the Capitol--calling for a balanced budget amendment. He said: Crisis is a much abused word, but can we deny that we face a crisis? I would say to my colleague from New Hampshire that the Federal debt at that time was $1 trillion, and President Reagan thought that was a crisis at that time.…”