Political Quotes

“yesterday when I spoke on the subject of a balanced budget amendment, a vitally important subject which, without doubt, will occupy the next many days of debate in this U.S. Senate, I observed that Members' views on this subject fell into what seemed to be three categories. One category, it seemed to me, consisted of those Senators on the liberal side of the political divide who were essentially uninterested in a balanced budget, who were defenders of the status quo, whose observation was that their priorities had, by and large, been met by Congress operating the way it does without the constraints of a constitutional amendment inhibiting unbalanced budgets, and that they would forthrightly defend the status quo as being far superior to a constitutional amendment on a balanced budget because such a budget was essentially undesirable in the United States. The second category, which was really relatively small given our history, consisted of those Members who were genuinely interested in fiscal responsibility and in a balanced budget, but who felt it was wrong to lock constraints against an unbalanced budget into the Constitution of the United States.”