Orrin Hatch: “I think we will be able to win on this, to the extent we have the votes to win it. Furthermore, on this disproportionate…”

“I think we will be able to win on this, to the extent we have the votes to win it. Furthermore, on this disproportionate business, how do we decide which programs affect children? Do we do it on the basis of program title, or by surveying recipients to see the actual use of the money? Is that how we do it? Madam President, it is pretty clear that if you put something like this in the Constitution, you create more problems than you solve. It's pretty clear that if you start advocating for any one select part of the budget to be outside the budget, because you want that protected from budgetary restraint, that you are hurting everybody. It's pretty clear if you prefer one group over another, you're going to have a lot of conflict among groups. If you do that, you darn well better do it within a balanced budget constraint, so the people know what is going on, and not just think the money is going to come from somewhere, which is about the attitude we have had around here for the last 60 years, and certainly for the last 28 years, every year we had an unbalanced budget. And in current years, where we said this is a balanced budget for the first time--give me a break, not one of them has been and nobody has thought any would be. I have to tell you, I think it is going to be a budget charade this year as well.…”