WASHINGTON – U.S. Senators Chris Coons (D-Del.) and Mark Kirk (R-Ill.) spoke on the Senate floor on Wednesday to debate a balanced budget amendment to the U.S. Constitution. 

- As Delivered on December 14, 2011 – 

SENATOR KIRK: Mr. President, too often we have a set-piece speeches in the Senate, without any resort to the traditional debate where two sides are equally dividing time, without a set script on a critical issue before our country. And so I'd like to restart the true Senate tradition of debate with a debate with my colleague from Delaware. And I yield to him right now.

SENATOR COONS:  Thank you, Senator Kirk. I am grateful for your inviting me to join you in a real debate on the floor today on an issue on which we disagree and about, which we have cast opposing votes earlier today. An issue of real import for our country, something that's been debated in the past and will be debated again in the future, but essentially a question of whether or not we should have a balanced budget amendment. Senator Kirk.

SENATOR KIRK:  What I’d like to do is a chess clock style, is to take ten minutes with unanimous consent to be equally divided between me and the senator from Delaware on the subject of the balanced budget amendment.

THE PRESIDING OFFICER: Without objection for ten minutes the senator from Illinois and the senator from Delaware may engage in a colloquy and the parliamentarian will keep track of each's time to the best of our capability.

SENATOR KIRK: Mr. President, the United States needs to adopt a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution. It was a good idea when Thomas Jefferson backed it, and it's an even more important idea today. What we're seeing in Europe is a collapse of government finance, because they have spent too much, taxed too much, and borrowed too much. Not only do they have a crisis of their government debt, but they have higher taxes and lower economic performance because of that philosophy.

We cannot repeat that mistake.

And that's why the Senate should have adopted a balanced budget amendment. I will speak in bipartisan fashion. Any of the balanced budget amendments we considered today would have been better. Rather than to subject our country to a rising tide of debt and an economic model which is already, we're seeing, failing in Europe.

SENATOR COONS: I couldn't agree more, Senator, that we need to be responsible, that the United States and this Senate needs to face our serious and crippling national deficits and debt. It was a good idea when Thomas Jefferson recognized that a balanced budget amendment was a bad idea. Thomas Jefferson actually several years later after supporting a balanced budget amendment acted as president in ways that demonstrated that he understood that real opportunities required extraordinary capabilities by the federal government.

I was a county executive. Others in this chamber who were mayors or governors lived with balanced budget requirements and it imposed great restrictions on us. It forced us to make tough decisions on annual time lines. So I understand why it's tempting to consider passing one of the balanced budget amendments that we’re before this chamber today. But there is a difference, between the federal government and the state and local governments. Thomas Jefferson acted decisively to make the Louisiana Purchase possible, to finance the War of 1812, and during the current economic downturn, if the federal government hadn't been able to borrow and invest in restoring growth to this country, we wouldn't have had a ‘great recession,’ we would have had a second Depression.

I'm convinced of it and one of the reasons had the balanced budget amendment been in place, we would have been in even greater trouble than we've been over the last few years. Senator?

SENATOR KIRK: What we now see today is we're awash in $15 trillion in debt, that since the creation of the AAA credit rating by Standard & Poor's, the United States has now lost that rating.

That when a young American is born today, they already owe the federal government $40,000, and so they will have a lower income and a higher tax burden throughout their working lives because of the debts put on them. The biggest reason for a balanced budget amendment, though, is we have a structural inability to represent young Americans. They can't vote until they're age 18. And yet the representatives of their parents can transfer tremendous burdens onto that young generation of Americans.

The essence of the American Dream is that our children's lives will be better than our own. But given the weight of the debt we are now transferring onto the backs of the next generation that may no longer be possible. We have absolutely got to have a structural way to prevent one generation from transferring new spending and new debt to the new generation. So that the American ideal is preserved and so that they have a fighting chance to have a better life than their parents.

SENATOR COONS: This Senate can, should, and has shown the ability to reach balanced budgets. No, in fact surpluses – within living memory. When Mr. Clinton was the President, this Senate and the House acted together. They adopted budgetary self-restraint. Why amend the Constitution of the United States, our most foundational document, when we have within our own power, recently demonstrated in the late 1990s, the capacity to control ourselves?

The senator and I agree we are leaving to our children an enormous, crushing legacy of a national debt that has exceeded safe boundaries. But why amend the Constitution in order to force the Senate to do our job?

Instead, I think we should embrace some of the tough, big, bold, bipartisan proposals that have been put on the table. Whether the Bowles-Simpson Commission or others. The framework of a broad deal that requires sacrifices from all, changes to the spiral federal spending and changes to the direction of the country, is on the table before us. Why take a detour into amending America’s foundational document rather than simply stepping up and doing the job that's before us?

SENATOR KIRK:  The job of each generation is to make sure that the Constitution deals with critical problems facing the country. So we amended the Constitution so that we could prohibit slavery. We amended the Constitution so that we could grant women the right to vote. And we should amend the Constitution to prevent one generation from encumbering the next generation.

America is the greatest experiment in self-government, and more importantly, the underlying value of self-control, ever designed. But we have seen in recent days that self-control disappear. We work here in the United States Senate, now well onto I think, 900 days without a budget. Is the most successful corporation, the most successful enterprise on earth representing the real aspirations for human dignity and freedom, and yet that is in danger if we become indebted to China and other countries in ways that no previous generation of Americans have done.

This country has regularly amended the Constitution to fix inequities in our society. And the growing inequity we see today is debt and deficits, especially to other countries. Therefore, we should amend the Constitution to protect those who cannot yet vote from an economic fate that would otherwise befall them.

SENATOR COONS: Mr. President, how much time remains?

THE PRESIDING OFFICER: On your side 2 minutes and 20 seconds, on the Senator from Illinois’ side, a minute and 15.

SENATOR COONS: Thank you. As the good senator from Illinois suggests, we are encumbering future generations with a debt that has risen above $40,000 per American. This is a central challenge of our time, one which our national security leader cited as critical to ensuring our security and our liberty going forward. But in my view, the balanced budget amendment that was advanced through Senate Joint Resolution 10 earlier today would compel exactly the sort of intergenerational burdens that my good colleague from Illinois suggests he seeks to avoid.

Let me be clear. The requirements of that balanced budget amendment, a spending cap, a supermajority requirement to raise the national debt, a two-thirds requirement for any increase in federal revenue, those in combination would compel drastic, immediate, and substantial reductions in a wide range of programs: Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, veterans benefits. That if imposed, would have not just a short term very negative impact on our current economy but a significant restructuring of the long-standing relationships between individual citizens and generation.

Yes, leaving a legacy of debt to the next generation is a terrible thing for us to do. But leaning on the crutch of the Constitution and the fig leaf of a Constitutional amendment to avoid doing our responsibility, a job which the Senate is fully capable of doing, avoids that responsibility to the next generation.

I close with this question: As we say in the law, Mr. President, if there is a right, what's the remedy? If we were to pass this Constitutional amendment, how would it be enforced if the Senate in the future were to fail to balance the budget? Would lifetime federal judges around the country be imposing choices in terms of budget cuts, spending cuts, revenue changes? I think that would be no better - in fact, far worse than the Senate simply doing its job.

Today I voted against this balanced budget amendment because I think we have it within our power to show self-control and to secure the future for the next generation of Americans.

SENATOR KIRK:  And I would close by saying the Senator and I agree, I think, that the Simpson-Bowles plan is the right way to go. And my hope would be that on a bipartisan basis we would join together to reduce expected federal borrowing by $4 trillion along the lines of that bipartisan presidential commission. But, unfortunately, the Simpson-Bowles plan right now is gathering dust.

That the super committee that was given procedural powers to possibly put that forward also collapsed. We have not been able to do our job. And we are now encumbering the next generation with even greater amounts of debt, historic amounts.

I think the founding fathers did not contemplate the ability to borrow as much from other countries as we now have. And with the United States as the center of freedom and democracy around the world, there's a lot riding on the credit of the United States.

My colleague from Delaware talks about the future, a very vital future, especially for people like my own mother, of Social Security and Medicare. But I think she understands that a bankrupt country cannot support Social Security and Medicare that we have to defend the credit of the United States. And, therefore, I think a balanced budget amendment is essential to the long-term future of the United States.

And with that, I thank my colleague.

Mr. President, we just finished this. I hope we do return to a tradition of actual debate. I want to thank my colleague for the chance to carry on this debate.

###