On the recordJuly 19, 2011
Mr. Speaker, I am one of the original sponsors of the tax limitation/balanced budget amendment under the Contract with America back in 1995. I have got one of the most conservative voting records in the House over the last 25 years. Common sense tells you that our budget problem today is a spending problem. It is not a revenue problem. And as the first law of ditch-digging says, When you are digging a hole, in order to fill it, you've got to stop digging it deeper. President Obama's budget that he submitted to the Congress earlier this year does not have a budget deficit of less than $500 billion over a 10-year period. Cut, Cap, and Balance may have some technical issues with it, but the basic premise is sound: We need to spend less money short term, this year; we need to spend less money in the next 5 years; and we need a constitutional amendment that locks into place that we, over time, have to balance our budget every year unless there is some act of war or national emergency going on that takes a two-thirds vote to override. Vote for this bill later this evening.
