Westmoreland: “The Time for a Balanced Budget Amendment is Now”

 “Minority Whip Steny Hoyer stated this week that ‘now is not the time’ for a balanced budget amendment” stated Westmoreland.  “Well I’d like to ask him, exactly when does he think will be the time?  This week, our national debt reached an unbelievable $15 trillion.  To put that in perspective, the U.S. economy is the largest economy in the history of the world.  It is about three times the size of the second and third largest economies in the world currently – Japan and China.  And our national debt is now one trillion dollars larger than our entire economy.  If we were to attempt to pay that debt off, every man, woman, and child in this country would have to fork over almost $48,000 to the federal government.  And that number grows at an almost inconceivable rate each day.  In fact, our debt has become so large that the interest we pay on our debt is the fourth largest expenditure in our country.  I’m sorry Mr. Hoyer, but with numbers like this, clearly the time for a balanced budget amendment is now.”

 In addition to adding a balanced budget amendment to the U.S. Constitution, H.J.Res. 2 would have also required a three-fifths majority vote in both the House and the Senate to increase the debt limit in the future, would require the president to submit a balanced budget each fiscal year to Congress, and would have required a majority vote of Congress to increase taxes.  The balanced budget amendment could have been waived for any fiscal year in which a declaration of war is in effect or in any year that the U.S. is “engaged in military conflict which causes an imminent and serious military threat to national security and is so declared by a joint resolution…which becomes law.”

 “Since President Obama took power in January 2009, we have seen our national debt increase $4.4 trillion – and that was while Congressional Democrats were imposing their so-called ‘pay-go’ rule,” stated Westmoreland.  “Clearly, Congress cannot spend within its means.  We have seen time and time again promises made by one Congress to cut spending broken two years later by a subsequent Congress.  Enough is enough.  We absolutely must get our spending under control before we drive this country into bankruptcy, leaving our children and grandchildren with crushing debt they could never hope to pay off.  I am so disappointed that many of my colleagues on the other side of the aisle cast a vote against fiscal responsibility today.”

 According a recent CNN poll, 74 percent of Americans favor a Constitutional Amendment to require a balanced budget.  Currently, 49 states have some form of a balanced budget requirement.  A balanced budget amendment has been proposed many times since 1936.  It achieved the necessary two-thirds majority in the House in 1995, but failed by a single vote in the Senate.