Orrin Hatch: “The fact of the matter is, you cannot budget without putting everything on budget and you cannot handle it right. And…”

“The fact of the matter is, you cannot budget without putting everything on budget and you cannot handle it right. And the President is doing what the Secretary of Treasury said he should do, and that is keep all items on budget. There are 31 trust accounts, at least in the Federal Government. Are we going to take them all off because somebody makes the unfounded allegation that we are ripping off the trust funds? The fact is, the only way not to rip them off is to keep everything on budget. And that is a pretty important point. I do not see how you can argue to take it off budget. It just makes sense that we face all the music here, not just part of it, and that we do not make any exceptions so that we have to make priority choices if we are going to have a balanced budget amendment. The Senator is right on one thing and that is this amendment does not require a balanced budget. We can choose not to balance the budget. All we need to do is get a supermajority. This is not a pure democracy in this country. This is a representative democracy, and the Senate is a perfect illustration of how we do not always have a majority vote. The fact of the matter is, each State has two Senators, regardless of population, and that gives a disproportionate amount of voting power to some States over others. The House of Representatives is a purer democratic body, and our Founding Fathers in their wisdom understood this.”