Orrin Hatch: “I would like to respond to certain arguments presented by Senator Kennedy. These include issues involving: First…”

“I would like to respond to certain arguments presented by Senator Kennedy. These include issues involving: First, implementation and enforcement; second, judicial taxation; and third, Presidential impoundment. Mr. President, opponents of the balanced budget amendment, including Senator Kennedy, have over the past decade carefully crafted Machiavellian arguments designed to place opponents of the amendment between, what Abraham Lincoln termed, 'the devil and the deep blue sea.' One of the most pernicious is the contention that on the one hand the balanced budget amendment is a sham because it is unenforceable, and on the other hand that there will be too much enforcement--particularly that courts will themselves balance the budget by ordering the cutting of spending programs, by placing the budgetary process into judicial receivership, or by ordering that taxes be raised. This contention is, of course, so exaggerated, so contradictory, that it almost refutes itself. Yet it has become so pervasive that it gives new life to Shakespeare's aphorism that, 'foolery, sir, does walk about the orb like the sun; it shines everywhere.'”