Joe Barton: “Mr. Chairman and Members of the House of Representatives, this is a historic debate. We should congratulate the balanced…”

“Mr. Chairman and Members of the House of Representatives, this is a historic debate. We should congratulate the balanced budget leaders, Mr. Stenholm, Mr. Smith, and others, Mr. Tauzin, who helped on my amendment and Mr. Kyl, for their efforts to bring this before the American people. There are a number of balanced budget amendments that will be voted on this evening and tomorrow. They all have merit. I think that the case has probably been made about the need for some sort of balanced budget amendment, but I will add to the case very quickly. As has been pointed out in the chart presented earlier, we have not had a balanced budget in this country at the Federal level since 1969, 25 years ago. I would stipulate that if we do not pass an amendment to the Constitution requiring a balanced budget, we will never ever again in the history of this Nation have a balanced Federal budget. And if we never again balance the Federal budget, we are going to be in serious, serious financial difficulty in the very near future. The national debt is now $4.6 trillion. The good news is that it is not going up as rapidly as it has been. A year ago, Mr. Chairman, it was going up approximately a billion dollars a day. It is now going up at only half a billion dollars a day.”