Tuesday, December 13, 2011

U.S. Senator Johnny Isakson (R-GA)
Floor Statement on the Balanced Budget Amendment

Mr. President, I appreciate the time.

I first thank Senator Hatch from Utah for 16 continuous years of work on the balanced budget amendment. It was his fight in 1995 that brought that amendment to the floor within one vote of passing in the Senate, and it is his fight today to bring it back for another vote.

I have listened to a substantial number of the speeches, and I come back to three points.

Facts are stubborn, and there are three facts: First, we are spending too much; second fact, we are promising too much to our people; and third fact, we are borrowing too much.

I ran a real estate company for 22 years. Real estate is all about borrowing and leverage, but you learn a lesson in real estate and you learn it very painfully. There is such a thing as good leverage and there is such a thing as too much leverage, and our country is at the breaking point on leverage.

We have a process problem in the Senate and the House. We can't deal with our financial fiscal affairs, our promises to our people or our borrowing, and it is time we change the paradigm.

I support a balanced budget amendment because if it is ratified by three-fourths of the States and becomes a part of the Constitution, it forces the Congress to just say no on spending when we are spending too much, it forces the Congress to look at entitlements and recognize that we can only promise that which we can afford, and it forces us to look at debt and recognize when we are in too much debt and we have become overleveraged.

I want to put in a plug for something Senator Shaheen and I have been working on for a long time, and it is a fundamental process change called a biennial budget where you appropriate in odd-numbered years for 2 years, not 1, and you spend that even-numbered year, the election year, overseeing your expenditures and your programs to find savings, to find waste, and to try to balance your budget. If we changed our process and forced ourselves to do something like that, we wouldn't be facing the catastrophic consequences we are today.

I thank the Senator from New Hampshire for being on the floor and recognize her for her leadership on the issue, also, as one from a State that does biennial budgeting, as do 20 of the 50 States in the United States of America.

I will tell you an interesting story about biennial budgeting. The nation of Israel got in financial difficulty 4 years ago. They were borrowing too much, they were spending too much, and they were going in debt too much. Israel asked around the world: What should we do to change our fundamental process? And they changed to a biennial budget. Two years later, their GDP was better, their deficit ratio was down, and GDP had gone up about 7.5 percent in 2 years, all because they got their fiscal house in order.

So while some will argue that you can't do a balanced budget because it won't work, some will say 18 percent is too much, some will say you just can't do this and you just can't do that, there is one thing we can't do anymore; that is, spend beyond our means, borrow beyond what is good for our children and grandchildren, and promise to our seniors and those in poverty that we can deliver more than we can deliver.

If we face the day of reckoning now and we reprioritize our entitlements, if we put our Tax Code on the table and reform it and we cut spending where we can, we can come up with a trifecta that will take this debate to ancient history, and we will begin getting the United States of America back in good fiscal soundness. That is what a balanced budget amendment starts, and I hope the end of it is that process and a biennial budget as well.