On the recordMarch 1, 2011
This amendment calls upon the Senate to get the sense of the Senate that we need a balanced budget amendment to the U.S. Constitution. As I prepared for this day, I reviewed the maiden speeches of a number of Senators who served in this august body, and I have seen a consistent theme in the speeches that have been given over the course of the last 50 or 60 years. Over and over, they address spending. These issues have spilled over, Congress after Congress, until the point we have reached today, the point at which our national debt stands at an astounding figure, close to $15 trillion. As I like to say, $15 trillion is a lot of money. A lot of people do not make $15 trillion in a whole year. Even when you divide $15 trillion by 300 million Americans, you are left with a figure of about $50,000 a head. This is not an inconsequential number. This is not a problem any of us created. It is a problem each of us inherited. Yet it is a problem I think none of us wants to leave to our successors. It is a problem that requires us to do something different than we have done in the past, and by this I mean I think we need procedural, structural, and indeed constitutional reform.
