Joe Barton: “I want to conclude very quickly by stating that this is about helping us to get to a balanced budget. The last balanced…”

“I want to conclude very quickly by stating that this is about helping us to get to a balanced budget. The last balanced budget of the U.S. Government was in 1969. My son was born in 1970. He is now about to enter graduate school. He has never lived in a year that we have balanced the Federal budget. There are two ways to balance the budget. You can cut spending or raise taxes. We think, those of us who support this amendment, we should do it by emphasizing spending cuts, not tax increases. Federal revenues have grown every year since 1964. The 10 years that I have been in the Congress, they have grown an average of $59 billion a year, $59 billion a year. The problem is that spending has grown more rapidly than revenues. The tax limitation amendment is simply a mechanism to make it more difficult to raise taxes and, therefore, easier to focus on spending reduction or spending limitation, which is what we should do in order to balance the budget. This House and this Senate sent to the President of the United States a 7-year comprehensive budget that would have balanced in 7 years with no tax increases. The President vetoed the Balanced Budget bill we sent him. If we get a supermajority requirement into our Constitution, future Congresses will be able to work with future Presidents and focus on spending limitation, not on tax increases, as a way to balance the budget.”