Washington, D.C. – U.S. Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell made the following statement on the Senate Floor Wednesday regarding the need for the Senate to pass a balanced budget amendment to the U.S. Constitution:

“Yesterday and today my Republican colleagues here in the Senate have been coming to the floor one after another to deliver a simple, urgent message, one that I hear every time I’m home in Kentucky: Washington must change course. The spending spree must end. We must put our nation’s fiscal house in order, before it’s too late.

“This isn’t a partisan message. Everyone recognizes that both parties played a role in getting us to this point. But let’s be clear: Republicans are the only ones in Congress right now who are attempting to do something meaningful about fiscal restraint. And the only way we’ll actually achieve it is by acting together on serious legislation like the Balanced Budget Amendment Republicans are voting on today — not through thinly-veiled cover votes like the one Democrats plan to hold alongside it this morning.

“For nearly three years now, Republicans have stood up to the fiscal recklessness of this administration and pleaded with the President and Democrats in Congress to stop the spending spree and to work with us on a serious plan that would put our nation’s fiscal house in order. And for nearly three years, we’ve met nothing but resistance.

“I even read this week that some Democrats in Congress actually view our insistence on fiscal responsibility as a good political issue for them. They say Americans have moved on, that they don’t want to hear about fiscal restraint anymore. Apparently these Democrats are content to just let this crisis continue to build until it pops up in the polls again.

“Well, what Republicans have been saying this week is that we don’t have that luxury. We can’t wait for a European-style calamity to happen here to finally do something about our fiscal problems. Nor should we want to. After all, we weren’t elected to get re-elected. We were elected to recognize the nation’s problems and face up to them with foresight and courage.

“And that’s why Republicans have kept up our call for a serious and effective Balanced Budget Amendment.

“We’ve all seen the statistics — that Congress now borrows more than 40 cents for every dollar it spends; that interest payments on the debt alone will soon crowd out spending on things like education and defense; that annual deficits under this President now routinely double and triple the previous record. And we know where it’s gotten us. Under this President, the national debt has rocketed from $10.1 trillion to $15.1— more than 40 percent — in less than three-years, a run of fiscal mismanagement only matched in its recklessness by his total unwillingness to correct it.
 
“The President’s most recent budget was so irresponsible not a single member of the Senate voted for it. What about the first-ever downgrade of U.S. debt? Did that prompt action? Not in this White House. It prompted a round of shoot-the messenger instead. This President’s entire approach to our nation’s fiscal problems has been to sit back and blame somebody else, even as he continues to make them worse.

“There was a time when President Obama claimed to believe in the importance of paying our debts. As a senator, he stood on this very floor and chastised his predecessor for even asking Congress to raise the nation’s debt limit. He called it a failure of leadership.

“Yet earlier this year, as President, he demanded that Congress approve the single largest debt limit increase ever requested by a U.S. president — without any plan to cover the cost. It was just this kind of fiscal recklessness that roused Republicans to recommit ourselves to the idea that if we’re going to preserve the American Dream for our children, Congress has to stop spending more than it takes in, and it was the Democrat’s resistance to that idea that convinced us the only way to make sure it happens is through a constitutional amendment that requires it.

“For too long, the politics of the moment or of the next election has been put ahead of Congress’ responsibility to balance the books. Too many promises have been made that can’t possibly be kept. And now, the time for serious action has come. We must prevent what’s happening in Europe from happening here. And that’s just what our Balanced Budget Amendment would do.

“By permanently limiting Congressional spending to the historical norm of 18 percent of gross national product and through a new three-fifths supermajority of both houses of Congress to raise the debt limit, the Balanced Budget Amendment Republicans are proposing today would go a long way in preventing that day of fiscal reckoning from happening here. Every Senator should support it.
 
“Democrats here in Washington know the American people want Congress to get its fiscal house in order. That’s why they’ve proposed a Balanced Budget Amendment of their own. Unfortunately, they have no real intention of passing it. If they did, they’d join us in supporting a bill that we know would lead to the kind of fiscal restraint the American people are asking for.

“So I would ask my friends on the other side to join us. It’s not too late. We’re only going to solve this problem together. Republicans are doing our part. We need them to do theirs. The American people are asking us to act. Let’s do it. If this President won’t take America’s fiscal problems seriously, Congress should do it for him.”