Chairman Arrington Supports Balanced Budget Amendment, Calls for Article V Convention to Restore Fiscal Sanity
WASHINGTON, D.C. – Today, House Budget Committee Chairman Jodey Arrington (R-Texas) delivered remarks on the House floor in support of H.J. Res. 139, a balanced budget amendment. He warned of the nation’s worsening fiscal crisis and called on Congress to take action to restore fiscal discipline through passage of the amendment or by advancing an Article V Convention of the States.
Watch full remarks here
Remarks as delivered:
"Ladies and gentlemen, let's pause for a brief moment of intellectual honesty. Both parties have failed. This institution has failed. We have failed our country. We have jeopardized our economy, our security, our leadership in the world, and worst of all, we have compromised on our children's future and the blessing of their inheritance of freedom and opportunity.
"We have failed.
"That's why we're talking about a constitutional amendment to impose fiscal responsibility on a body politic that has not done that, that has not mustered the political will to do that. We have a national debt per GDP that exceeds World War II levels of debt. We have an annual deficit that is larger than both the defense and non-defense discretionary budget. Fifty cents or greater on every dollar that we borrow of the $2 trillion going to service our interest payment. Half of what we borrow, a trillion dollars, is more than what we spend on defense.
"Then there's this ominous forecast by CBO that even at $39 trillion today, where we're teetering on potential sovereign debt crisis, we will add $180 trillion to the national debt in the 30 years out. If that's not unacceptable to everybody, I don't know what is.
"If we can't concede to the fact that this body politic does not have the political will to address it. To rein in the spending that's driving this unsustainable debt trajectory that will bankrupt our country and our children's future, then we must support this forcing mechanism. Force us to do what the American people have to do. Force us to do what state and local governments do.
"Here's another, stunning and startling for some, but for all a sobering fact: we won't even get a simple majority vote today. So, what shall we do? Well, we should look to Article V of the Constitution, where the sovereign states and We the People can petition their government for another path to amend the Constitution.
"Guess what? They've done that.
"Well, in the late '70s and early '80s, they did that, and they had the requisite applications to have an Article V Convention of the States, to rein in us, the knuckleheads that refused to accept that it's not a Democrat or a Republican problem. It's an institutional problem that persists and will destroy the greatest nation in human history.
"So, let's look to the states, and let's call that convention like we should have done in the '70s and '80s. Let's let them rein us in, restore fiscal sanity in their nation's capital, and reverse the curse that looms large over this country, and with that, I yield back."
