David Cay Johnston: “I rise to oppose this balanced budget amendment, recognizing that some of the people in this Chamber, for whom I have…”

“I rise to oppose this balanced budget amendment, recognizing that some of the people in this Chamber, for whom I have the most respect, are for it. But I oppose it to a large extent because of what I call the dilemma of enforceability. My colleagues will recall that when this amendment was up earlier in this Congress, we had tremendous amounts of debates on whether the courts ought to be able to enforce this amendment. I made speeches against the difficulties that courts would have, the constitutional crisis that it would put this country in, and how terrible it would be in a democracy to have nonelected, appointed-for-life judges who are not available to the public making decisions about increasing taxes or cutting Social Security or cutting Medicare or cutting programs across the board, judges who have no feel for these programs, who have no background in the programs, no staff to understand the programs coming in and making an order and saying, ``We're going to increase your income tax,'' or ``We're going to cut your Social Security,'' or cut your Medicare programs, or name a thousand other different Federal programs. I think it would be terrible, Mr. President. I think it would just be terrible.…”