Joe Barton: “in order to answer that, it might be illuminatory to explain how the tax limitation balanced budget amendment is…”

“in order to answer that, it might be illuminatory to explain how the tax limitation balanced budget amendment is actually structured. Section 1 says that the President shall submit to the Congress a balanced budget and Congress shall vote on a balanced budget. It requires that the actual expenditures and receipts be less than the estimates, it requires that in order to increase receipts, there shall be a three-fifths' vote in both bodies in order to borrow money in any fiscal year and in order to increase the debt ceiling there shall be a three-fifth's vote in both bodies. There is a section that requires that the Congress shall implement the amendment by the appropriate legislature. There is a section that says the amendment shall become effective in the year 2002, or 2 years after requisite 38 States ratify the amendment. Every effort has been made to close all the loopholes so that in fact the President will be submitting a balanced budget, the Congress shall be voting on a balanced budget, the actual numbers during the fiscal year cannot exceed the estimates so the magic asterisk that OMB Director David Stockman used as a Director of the Office of Management and Budget for President Reagan in the early 1980's, the magic asterisk has gone away. Even the unspecified savings that Director Darman, President Bush's Office of Management and Budget, unspecified, to be determined later-- he had over $300 billion in those types of savings--would go away.”