On the recordNovember 17, 2011
As the gentleman from Utah correctly noted, it requires the same supermajority of 60 percent to not balance the budget or to raise the debt limit. Quite frankly, if you have a constitutional amendment in place that requires a balanced budget, you're going to generate surpluses most years, and therefore raising the debt limit will occur less and less frequently. But those two requirements are in place in order to have an enforcement mechanism so that Congresses of the future will not do what Congresses of the past have been doing.
