Orrin Hatch: “I thank the Chair. We are returning to the balanced budget constitutional amendment debate. This is a singularly…”

“I thank the Chair. We are returning to the balanced budget constitutional amendment debate. This is a singularly important debate in our Nation's history. And while I am talking, I am going to constantly refer to just 28 of the unbalanced budgets since 1969--28 of them. We had to find a table strong enough to hold them, and we could not put them on top of each other. As you can see, they are almost as high as I am, stacked in twos and threes. If we put them on top of each other, they would reach almost to the ceiling. These are our unbalanced budgets over the last 28 years, every last one. And yet every time we get into this debate, our friends on the other side of this issue come in and say, 'Oh, let's just have the will to do this. We can do it if we want to, if we just have the will.' And we heard the President the other evening talking about all you have to do is pass it and I will sign it. Give me a break. That is what was said in every one of these instances. And a number of them were listed as balanced budgets during this time. It turned out to be horrendous budgetary deficits rather than balanced budgets. You can just look at this stack--and this is just 28 years. This does not count the other unbalanced budgets for most of the last 60 years. This is just 28 years, these stacks right here.…”