Jeb Hensarling: “I thank the gentleman for yielding, and I thank him for his leadership on the balanced budget amendment. Mr. Speaker…”

“I thank the gentleman for yielding, and I thank him for his leadership on the balanced budget amendment. Mr. Speaker, since the President was elected, our Nation has now seen its first trillion-dollar deficit, its second trillion-dollar deficit, and its third trillion-dollar deficit. The President and the previous Congress have been on a spending spree the likes of which this Nation has never seen before. And yesterday, Americans were greeted with the news that our national debt has now topped $15 trillion--$128,000 for every household. We are borrowing almost 40 cents on the dollar, much of it from the Chinese, and sending the bill to our children and grandchildren. In short, there is a debt crisis. The debt is not just unsustainable, it is immoral. And the American people know that it's because Washington spends too much, not because they are undertaxed. The problem is on the spending side. Now, taxes are temporarily down due to the economy, but they're going to come back. It is spending that is exploding from 20 percent of our economy to 40 percent over the course of the next generation. If that's solved on the taxing side, we'd be the most highly taxed industrialized nation in the world. Now, the crisis should be solved on the spending side of the equation. I wish we were debating a spending limit amendment to the Constitution. We're not. We had no takers. I know of no takers on the other side of the aisle.…”