Orrin Hatch: “This amendment is carefully crafted. It brings together a wide group of consensus builders. It really will give us a…”

“This amendment is carefully crafted. It brings together a wide group of consensus builders. It really will give us a chance to have some discipline in the process. It certainly is better than any statute we could pass. We have tried statutes in the past. They have not worked. This will work without it being so extreme that we hamper the country. But if we do not do something like this to put some discipline into this process, I guarantee you it is going to be done--when people get so frightened and so mad out there and they see this exponential growth of the deficit and interest against the national debt. When that happens, we are going to have the other side start to take action, and we are going to have a much tougher amendment than this that could hamstring the country. This amendment will work. I want to commend all my colleagues who have worked on it, particularly my friends from Illinois and Idaho.”