Alan Simpson: “I feel this amendment is extremely important to help to establish the greatest credibility for this balanced budget…”

“I feel this amendment is extremely important to help to establish the greatest credibility for this balanced budget resolution. This resolution already represents a tremendous, laudable effort on the part of the Budget Committee chairman. No one does this with greater energy and dedication than Senator Pete Domenici and Senator Exon. They have done so much. This is the work product we will soon vote upon. I believe we can make the effort a bit stronger, a bit more credible, by expressing in this resolution how we intend to make good on the promises that it contains. All of us have heard the directives leveled at the President's budget and on the budgets offered by the Republican majority for deferring too many of the 'tough decisions' until future years, leaving them to future Congresses and future Presidents. We have a great tendency here to want to take credit for setting up a balanced budget path, but not to enact any of the tough choices. We all do it. I do it. We all do it. We will not do the tough choices right now which would give any force or effect to those aims. So we could easily wind up in a situation we could have a balanced budget in the year 2002 but it explodes again into massive deficits afterward.”