Mike Enzi: “I have now been in the Senate almost 4 years. Some of the days have been extremely long, but the years have been…”

“I have now been in the Senate almost 4 years. Some of the days have been extremely long, but the years have been extremely short. We work through a process here that I am sure, as people watch, seems extremely slow and cumbersome. That is probably because it is. It was designed that way by our forefathers. They intended that legislation that affects this Nation would be carefully considered in two separate bodies and then submitted to the executive branch for the possibility of a veto. That takes a long time. The bodies have grown in size as a number of States came into the Nation, and that makes it more difficult. But it is a system that works better than that in any other country in the world, and it is working now. It is difficult, very difficult; long days, tough issues, tough choices. When I first came to the Senate, the first issue I got to talk about was the balanced budget amendment. At that time, it was just a dream that at some point we could get the discipline to balance a budget. It had been years since a budget had been balanced around here. As we went through that debate, people said: Oh, this doesn't give us enough leeway. What if we would have a war? Technically, I guess, we have had a couple since that time, and we have still balanced the budget. Not only that, the economy has increased, and many will attribute that to the budget being balanced.”