On the recordJuly 29, 2011
It's been quite an eventful day here on the House floor, a lot of scurrying, a lot of things going on in committee rooms, different meeting rooms around the Capitol today. And actually, last night, when I finished talking and meeting with folks around midnight or so, it appeared that Republicans would start today with basically not much change to the bill we had yesterday. But we had a conference this morning, the Republican Members of Congress, and added to the Boehner bill was the requirement that before the President would get the full tranche of the debt ceiling being lifted there had to be a balanced budget amendment passed from the House--with two-thirds vote, of course--and from the Senate with two- thirds vote and be sent to the States by the Archivist of the Capitol for their ratification. Now, it's a shame that a balanced budget amendment is needed, but if there could have been a piece of legislation that were prepared and passed that were tight enough to require always that a balanced approach be taken--no more money spent than money coming in--then we wouldn't have had to worry about a balanced budget amendment. But what we've seen over the last 100 years or so in this country has been runaway spending. And I think of the line Jim Carey had in one of his movies, ``Somebody stop me,'' and Congress needed somebody to stop Congress.…
