Herb Kohl: “this is a red letter day for me and for the Congress. We have two votes on constitutional amendments requiring a…”

“this is a red letter day for me and for the Congress. We have two votes on constitutional amendments requiring a balanced budget today. And I will have the honor of voting for both of them. That this debate is even occurring is progress. When I first came to the Senate, I offered an amendment to recommit the budget resolution because it included numbers that were dishonest and out of balance. I lost. This Congress, we have enacted spending caps to enforce a hard freeze on discretionary spending, we have received from the President a fiscally conservative budget, and we may today pass a Balanced Budget Amendment. That is progress. But it not enough. It is now time to move beyond talking about balancing the budget, and just start doing it. Currently, our national debt exceeds $4.3 trillion, that is $17,495 for every man, woman, and child in the United States. We ought not to kid ourselves, though, that the burden of the debt will be so evenly distributed. It is the children of this country who will pay for our borrowing now. If Government does not change its fiscal policies, future generations will have to pay 87 percent of their income just to clean up the debts we leave them. In other words, our children will owe 87 percent of their income to the Government to pay for services we received. We generously have left them 13 percent of their own income for Government services from which they might benefit.”