Do we need a Balanced Budget Amendment?

Karla - posted on 07/28/2011 ( 1 mom has responded )

I don’t always agree with Barbara Boxer, but this time she hit the nail on the head!
I just found this, and could not be more proud of Boxer.
from the Washington Post web site:

By Washington Post Editors, Published: June 30
Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) floor speech, June 29, 2011

Mrs. BOXER. Mr. President, I have been listening very carefully to the remarks of my friend about what we have to do, what is in front of us. Of course, he is speaking for the Republican Party for a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution.

Let me say this: I want a balanced budget. That is what I want. I don’t need an amendment to the Constitution to get me to vote for a balanced budget. What I want is for all sides to come together--that is what I want--and write a balanced budget. I want us to do it in a way that is responsible and do it in a way that is fair and do it in a way that protects our middle class, protects our kids, and stimulates economic growth by making smart investments and cutting out spending in areas we don’t need it.

So all this yak about a balanced budget amendment--and I call it that, and I apologize if it sounds as though it is a derogatory term--it is just so much talk. Let’s get to it.

I think we ought to go back to the people and the party that was the only party and the only people to balance the budget in 40 years. I hate to break it to my Republican friends, but that is the Democratic Party. We are the ones who did it. We did it when Bill Clinton came into office. We did it after hard work. We did it after painful cuts. We did it with smart investments. We did it with everybody paying their fair share, and we didn’t need a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution to do it. It is a gimmick. We need a balanced budget, not a balanced budget amendment.

Let’s look at what we did the last time this country ever had a balanced budget. Lucky for us, it wasn’t that long ago. Lucky for us, a lot of us are still here who made that fateful vote. We didn’t have one Republican voting for that budget, and when they came to the floor--I have all the quotes, chapter and verse--they said: This is horrible. It will never balance the budget. This is going to lead to a depression. This is the worst thing. But we know what happened. We not only balanced the budget, but we had a surplus. We not only had a surplus, but the debt was going down so fast we thought we would never have to have Treasury bonds again. On top of that, we created 23 million jobs.

So I hope the public understands, when they hear Republican colleague after Republican colleague come to the floor saying we need to stay in all through July--fine with me. I will stay here through August. I will spend the night in the cloakroom, I don’t care. Let’s not talk about a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution. Let’s talk about doing the hard work of balancing the budget. The way we do it, again, is to follow the lead of the plan that was laid out by President Clinton and which worked in the most amazing way beyond our greatest expectations.

What did we do? We looked at this deficit and we said: This is unacceptable. We went after programs that made no sense and we cut them. We either eliminated them or we cut them back. Then we asked: What are some investments we could make that would actually stimulate the growth of the private sector? I thought my friend, Senator Blunt, was right. That is what we need to do. We need to stimulate growth in the private sector. At that time, the investments were on the high-tech side--high tech, biotech. Today, clearly, it is clean energy. That is what the whole world wants. That is where we ought to be leading. That is what our President knows. So we cut out programs that don’t make sense. We invest where it makes sense to create jobs and then guess what we do. We make sure we have enough revenues coming in to pay for the priorities.