Russ Feingold: “I want to offer a few comments on the recently negotiated bipartisan budget agreement. The past few months have been…”

“I want to offer a few comments on the recently negotiated bipartisan budget agreement. The past few months have been truly historic. We have seen both parties come to the table in good faith and negotiate a budget agreement that puts us on the track toward a balanced unified budget. And all of that has been done without a constitutional amendment to balance the budget. Indeed, as I have noted before, I am convinced the presence of such an amendment would only have delayed such an agreement, perhaps by a decade or more. Mr. President, balancing our budget has been my highest priority as a Member of this body. I ran on that issue in 1992, and I am pleased that we will enact a budget package that puts us on track to achieve that goal. As we congratulate ourselves on fashioning this agreement, however, we should recall that this agreement would not have been possible without the President's deficit reduction package enacted in 1993, a package some now estimate will achieve approximately $2 trillion in deficit reduction between 1993 and 2002.”