Floor Speech2026-03-18

PROPOSING AN AMENDMENT TO THE CONSTITUTION OF THE UNITED STATES REQUIRING A BALANCED BUDGET FOR THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT

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Congressional Record, Volume 172 Issue 49 (Wednesday, March 18, 2026) [Congressional Record Volume 172, Number 49 (Wednesday, March 18, 2026)] [House] [Pages H2560-H2568] From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [ www.gpo.gov ] PROPOSING AN AMENDMENT TO THE CONSTITUTION OF THE UNITED STATES REQUIRING A BALANCED BUDGET FOR THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT Mr. BIGGS of Arizona. Mr. Speaker, I move to suspend the rules and pass the joint resolution (H.J. Res. 139) proposing an amendment to the Constitution of the United States requiring a balanced budget for the Federal Government. The Clerk read the title of the joint resolution. The text of the joint resolution is as follows: H.J. Res. 139 Resolved by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in [[Page H2561]] Congress assembled (two-thirds of each House concurring therein), That the following article is proposed as an amendment to the Constitution of the United States, which shall be valid to all intents and purposes as part of the Constitution when ratified by the legislatures of three- fourths of the several States: ``Article -- ``Section 1. Total expenditures for a year shall not exceed the average annual receipts collected in the three prior years, adjusted in proportion to the changes in the population of citizens of the United States and inflation. Total expenditures shall include all expenditures of the United States except those for payment of debt, and receipts shall include all receipts of the United States except those derived from borrowing. ``Section 2. Congress may by a roll call vote of two-thirds of each House provide by law for specific expenditures in excess of the limit in section 1. ``Section 3. Congress may by a roll call vote provide by law for specific expenditures in excess of the limit in section 1 for any year in which a declaration of war is in effect. ``Section 4. Any bill to levy a new tax or to increase the rate of any tax shall not become law unless approved by two- thirds of the whole number of each House of Congress by a roll call vote. ``Section 5. Congress shall enforce and implement this article by appropriate legislation. ``Section 6. This article shall take effect with the fifth year beginning after ratification.''. The SPEAKER pro tempore. Pursuant to the rule, the gentleman from Arizona (Mr. Biggs) and the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Raskin) each will control 30 minutes. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from Arizona. General Leave Mr. BIGGS of Arizona. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members may have 5 legislative days in which to revise and extend their remarks and to insert extraneous material on H.J. Res. 139. The SPEAKER pro tempore. Is there objection to the request of the gentleman from Arizona? There was no objection. Mr. BIGGS of Arizona. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Speaker, today our national debt exceeds $38 trillion and grows second by second. On a per-person basis, the national debt amounts to $113,000 for every person living in the United States. For generations, Congress has chosen to max out our national credit card and leave the bill to the next generation instead of having hard conversations about spending. Families across our Nation have had these hard conversations, and they balance their budgets. The leaders of this Nation should do the same. Americans know that debt comes with strings attached. Every dollar we spend beyond our means today is a dollar and change we must repay tomorrow. It is no different for government. The more America borrows, the more expensive every next borrowed dollar becomes. Indeed, annual Federal spending on interest is now one of the largest line items we have. We spend more on interest than we do on Medicare. We spend more on interest than we do on national defense. Republicans and Democrats may have different policy ideas and priorities, but surely we can all agree that a budget hamstrung by huge interest payments benefits nobody. Our fiscal trajectory is alarming and unsustainable. Higher-than- expected interest rates or other challenges could trigger a debt spiral. It has happened to other countries throughout history. Without changes, it will happen to us. The day of reckoning will come, and it will not be big and beautiful. It will be big and ugly. There are two choices: spend a lot less on the future or spend a little less starting today. I choose the second option. That is why I support the balanced budget amendment. It is the only way to cement our commitment to long-term fiscal stability. A 5-year path to balance will allow us to make prudent spending choices to gradually balance the budget and wean us from our reliance on deficit spending. It is simple. The balanced budget amendment will restore fiscal sanity and take us off the path to an economic calamity. But the balanced budget amendment will not merely beat back a future fiscal crisis. It will also reduce the cost of living here and now. The enormous Federal debt is currently driving up borrowing costs for all Americans. Mortgages, car payments, and student loans are all more expensive because of Congress' profligacy and irresponsibility. We saw the disastrous effects of budget-busting deficit spending during the catastrophic 4 years of Biden-Harris rule. With the eager support of Democrats in Congress, the Biden-Harris administration approved $4.7 trillion in new deficit spending, ultimately racking up $8.5 trillion in new debt. What did the average American get? The worst inflation in 40 years. When Biden-Harris took over in January of 2021, inflation was just at 1.4 percent per annum. By the middle of the term, it exceeded 9 percent per annum. Inflation is a tax on everyone, but we all know who it hurts the most: the poor, the working class, seniors on fixed incomes, and American families, who saw their expenses explode and their salaries stay flat. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time. Mr. RASKIN. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. I rise to oppose H.J. Res. 139, a feeble attempt by the President's budget-busting, blank-check enablers in Congress to distract America from their own staggering and historic fiscal irresponsibility. Everyone knows they control the House. They control the Senate. They control the White House, and they have used their total power over our Federal Government to drive our country into a deep ditch of deficits, debt, illegal tariffs, undeclared wars, and economic destruction. After adding $4 trillion to our national debt with their tax breaks for the super rich, every Republican in the Chamber but Representatives Massie and Davidson voted to allow President Trump to keep spending between 1 and $2 billion every day, not of his own money but of our money, on his unauthorized and unconstitutional war in Iran, without so much as a single vote or a single honest debate on the floor of the House. This war of choice and aggression, which is spiraling out of control now in the Middle East, and which President Trump now calls this ``little excursion,'' has already cost 13 American servicemembers their lives and wounded over 200 Americans in uniform, while killing more than a thousand Iranian civilians, including 170 children at a girls' school that was bombed in the first week of Donald Trump's war. But still our colleagues sit there passive, invertebrate, and complicit in the face of this brazen usurpation of congressional war powers, rising from their constitutional stupor only to vote ``no'' on our War Powers Resolution, which every self-respecting Member of the Article I branch should have voted for. The administration reports that the first 6 days of this war cost the taxpayers $11.3 billion, or $1.9 billion a day. Have Republicans come to the floor to explain why this war was necessary or to offer evidence of an imminent threat posed to the American people? Have they asked for a special Iran war tax to demonstrate their fiscal responsibility? No. They just put Trump's little excursion, as he calls it, on the national credit card like an impulse trip to Disney World. But our constituents are paying through the nose for this historic folly right now, not just as taxpayers but as consumers. We have already been buffeted by Donald Trump's illegal tariffs and imbecilic trade wars against the rest of the world and the soaring cost of living under his corrupt economic policies. Now, we also have to contend with skyrocketing gasoline prices thanks to their foolish disruption of the global oil supply. Gas prices have shot up more than 25 percent since the lawless mullah theocrats of Iran shut down the Strait of Hormuz after the lawless MAGA theocrats of America bombed Iran. Now, our Republican colleagues present a doomed proposal to deface our Constitution with the same kind of witless, self-incriminating graffiti someone recently scrawled on the exterior front wall of the Kennedy Center, which they call the Trump-Kennedy Center. [[Page H2562]] This proposed constitutional amendment pretends to address a problem that the Republicans created and that Republicans have refused to address legislatively, even though they have all the political control and all the legislative tools they need at their disposal to address it. We don't need a balanced budget constitutional amendment. We just need a balanced budget. If you believe in a balanced budget, bring us one. Show it to us. You control the Congress. But don't start a fiscal wildfire with your out-of-control spending and then throw the Constitution into the flames, too. If this proposed amendment were in effect today, the GOP-controlled Congress would be forced to pay for Trump's war by further cutting critical programs for America's working families. If we gain the majority and try to repeal the trillion-dollar tax cut that they handed to the wealthiest 1 percent of Americans, we would have to get a two-thirds

Referenced legislation: HJRES139, HJRES139

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