Mike Conaway: “It's already been said tonight that 15 years ago we came within a chigger's whisker of passing a balanced budget…”

“It's already been said tonight that 15 years ago we came within a chigger's whisker of passing a balanced budget amendment and sending it to the States. Imagine how different today's conversations would be had the folks in charge then done that. We'd still be fussing and fighting about what ought to be done, but the argument would be, how do we solve today's problems using today's resources? Instead, we've stacked up another $9 trillion of future generations of Americans' resources in our quest to solve these problems. Well, think about what 2026 will look like, 15 years from now. The folks in charge then will be able to take out the projections that we have in place today and compare those to what is actually going on then--if we pass this balanced budget amendment--and say, wow, look how much better off this country is. They'll still be fussing and fighting, but it will be using their resources to fix their problems instead of the model that we've put in place collectively, on both sides of the aisle. There's plenty of blame to go around. The decisions that will have to be made to balance our budget are no different with or without the balanced budget amendment. They are hard. They are difficult. And I've got $15 trillion worth of evidence that we're not making those tough decisions without the balanced budget amendment. Technically, we could get it done, but we're not getting it done--and we are on absolutely no path to get that done.…”