Balancing the Budget
Floor Speech
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Mr. ROKITA. I want to thank the gentleman from Virginia for yielding me this time and for your leadership here in the Congress year after year over the years to see that we've come to this point where we again can have a vote in these Chambers about the condition of our country and about living within our means.
As I talk about the balanced budget amendment, I want to also address what happened here on the House floor and what was said here on the House floor in the last hour. They used the term ``foolish'' several times. I want to describe how foolish what they said is.
Not enough dollars exist in the top 1 percent of taxpayers in this country to possibly address the debt situation we face, to possibly address our economy. There are not enough baseball players. There are not enough football coaches. There are not enough Oprah Winfreys. There are not even enough Warren Buffetts. Even if you taxed 100 percent of everything they made and assume two things, that they wouldn't leave the country and that they would continue to produce, there aren't enough of them to solve this country's fiscal problems.
So when people come here to the House floor or talk anywhere else in this Nation about how the rich aren't paying their fair share, by definition, they are going to come after the middle class. They are going to come after your property, those of us who live in the middle class. Our property being our dollars, which aren't theirs, which aren't the government's. They're ours. And that's what they're angling for; make no mistake about it.
As you may know, I happen to be a member of the House Education and Workforce Committee. A lot of talk was made here today about how we don't spend enough on our education; we have to spend more on our teachers. Let me just say this: The increase in our Federal budget for education has been well over 300 percent since the early 1970s, yet we haven't seen one bit of an improvement in our scholastic scores since the Federal Government has been involved in the education business.
I just find it humorous when they stand here and talk about how we need to now spend money on infrastructure, now spend money on other things that might marginally give us some more jobs. Where were they during the first stimulus when only 6 percent, almost a trillion dollars, went for infrastructure and the rest went for handouts like food stamps, unemployment insurance and other things that won't possibly grow the economy? Not to say that people didn't need help, not to say they still don't need help. But it's a falsehood to think that by giving more handouts you're going to improve the prosperity of this Nation.
You cannot tax, you cannot spend, you cannot lay debt on our kids and grandkids and expect this Nation to get stronger, expect this Nation to be better off. It doesn't work. World history is littered with examples where Nations have tried to do this very same thing; and all it has resulted in is tyranny and the opposite of prosperity.
With that, thank you again for letting me speak about the balanced budget amendment. I opposed the Budget Control Act when we had that vote at the end of July because it wasn't a solution to our debt problem; it was another Washington deal. But as I've said and will continue to admit, there was a silver lining, and that silver lining was the requirement that both Houses at least take a vote on the exact same balanced budget amendment language, and they do it by December 31 of this year.
Our Constitution is the blueprint for our system of government. Our Constitution has only been amended 27 times, and for very good reason. It's not to change with the times. It's not to change with the political winds. It's a blueprint, a document that has outlined a process, contained in it negative rights, that has given us the best system for raising the condition of all men that the world has ever seen. And so it shouldn't be amended that often or that lightheartedly, but it should be amended in this case.
This Chamber, this House, this Federal Government in general, administrations both Republican and Democratic before us, have failed in their job to have us as a Federal Government live within our means. We need a constitutional amendment to do that now. Thomas Jefferson himself even said it: ``I wish it were possible to attain a single amendment to our Constitution, I mean an additional article taking from the government the power of borrowing.''
Given our $15 trillion debt and what's coming, the red menace, the tidal wave of debt that's coming in the near future, there is a clear need for a balanced budget amendment.
Now, there are several different ones to consider. Which one should we take up? I would love to have a balanced budget amendment that contained a supermajority vote for us to even consider raising taxes in order to balance the budget. I would love a balanced budget amendment with language that contained an indication that the Federal Government cannot exceed 20 percent of GDP. That would be spectacular. In this season of football, I'd call that a touchdown pass that wins the game. But there are other plays as well. And I'll take a 50-yard pass; I'll take a 75-yard pass that gets us so far down the field on this debt issue that it puts us in a position to win the day, ``winning'' meaning we save the Republic, we keep the Republic like Franklin suggested. So I would support a clean balanced budget amendment. Clean meaning a statement that simply says we will not spend more than we take in. Our expenditures will equal or be less than the revenues we take in.
Now, some of my very good conservative colleagues would say, well, you're setting us up for one day raising taxes. That may be true. But in all honesty, that's a different fight. We can have that tax fight later. Liberals love to raise taxes because their solution to everything is a bigger government, and the only way to have a bigger government is to have a more expensive government. That will never change. So let's not have the perfect be the enemy of the good. Let's have that fight. And if once in awhile they win, we know that the people who win that fight won't be here for long. And in the meantime, we have an amendment in our Constitution that declares each one of us, as we take the oath to uphold the Constitution, ensures that we will live within our means.
I thank the gentleman from Virginia.
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Mr. ROKITA. Just a quick note to the gentleman from Virginia.
As we're talking about ``why this hill''--and I think you mentioned the hill being so high and so hard to climb--there might be people at home watching right now, maybe even some in this Chamber right now, who are wondering: Why would this be so difficult? We had others come up and say they had a telephone town hall where over 80 percent of their constituents were in favor of this. Why is this so hard?
We have to think of it this way:
There are two groups of constituents, and we can't appease both sets all the time. There is a constituency that's the here and now that will ensure that, if we do things they want, they'll give us another election; they'll let us serve longer. Yet there is another constituency that doesn't even exist yet. No matter what we do, we won't be around for them to reward us. I would just suggest that everyone here in this House of Representatives serve that latter constituency: our kids, our grandkids, those who don't even exist yet. Vote for them to make sure that we keep the Republic.
For those of you who are watching, make sure you tell your Representatives, Hey, I want you to vote, not for me, not so that I can have more on my plate now; I want you to vote for our future.
If the people of this country demand that of their Representatives and their Senators, we will keep the Republic as Franklin demanded.
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