Bob Wise: “I rise obviously in opposition to the Kyl amendment. A lot of points have been made already, but I want to quickly…”

“I rise obviously in opposition to the Kyl amendment. A lot of points have been made already, but I want to quickly summarize some that have not. First of all, I am concerned about the Kyl amendment, because with the limitation of 19 percent written into the Constitution of the United States with a 60-percent vote required to waive that provision, it makes it very difficult for the Government in times of emergency, exigency, urgency, whatever, to respond to sudden situations. I am also concerned, because as we discussed the role of Government in a recession, what we did not talk about but which we need to consider is that in a recession, an economy by definition is contracting. It is growing smaller, not bigger. The Kyl amendment triggers its 19 percent to the GDP, the gross domestic product, so as the economy gets smaller, the Kyl amendment would say that you are going to have to cut resources that you would ordinarily use to fight that recession.”