Jay Inslee: “I rise to answer the question. Why is it our generation's duty to adopt this amendment now, while its need may not have…”

“I rise to answer the question. Why is it our generation's duty to adopt this amendment now, while its need may not have been as obvious 200 years ago? While reading the words of our Founding Fathers last night, I was struck by one thing: their enduring commitment to freedom, ingrained in the Constitution. Freedom of speech. Freedom of religion. Freedom from unequal treatment. The Founding Fathers knew that to preserve these freedoms it was necessary, wise, and right to cement these values in the Constitution. Now we need to constitutionally protect another endangered freedom. We must guarantee freedom from the Government imposing debt on our children. For this reason, this is a debate as much about freedom as it is about fiscal policy. The Founders knew that there would be huge forces pushing the Congress to infringe upon the freedom of speech. They knew that there would be huge pressures to deny freedom of religion. Now we know something else. We know that when a national government assumes the responsibility to guarantee the financial security of its citizens, there will be huge pressures to pass the associated costs on to future generations. I stress that we now know this. We have finally begun to understand this because of the explosive growth of our entitlement programs. The Constitution should be amended only when a tidal wave of change sweeps across our Nation. We are currently in the middle of such a wave of change in the last half of this century.”