Date: 1996-04-15
Speaker: PETE GEREN (democrat)
Chamber: H
State: Texas

I want to thank the gentleman. Mr. BARTON. and commend him. the leadership on this issue. the leadership that he has brought to bear.From the first day he stepped on the floor of the Congress. he has been pushing this. and his dogged determination has brought us to where we are today. I must say it has been with some reluctance that I have come to the conclusion that it is necessary that we pass this resolution that would amend the Constitution to require a supermajority vote of twothirds in order to increase tax revenues. However. I believe that if we ever are to control the growth of Government. limit its insatiable ambitions. then this limitation is necessary. The growth of Government. and with it the increase in taxes and increase in the deficit. have become a constant in this country. Regardless of who is in the White House. regardless of what party controls Congress. Government has remained and will continue to remain a growth industry. In terms of 1983 dollars. from 1969 to much of 1996. the size of Government measured In terms of its spending. it has nearly doubled. These are in constant dollars. The Government has grown from $593 billion in 1969 to $1.1 trillion in 1996. I commend President Clinton for his statement that the era of big Government Is over. I wish that were true. In spite of those words. the size of Government continues to grow and according to all projections. to all projections. it will grow as far as the eye can see and younger generations will bear the brunt and cost of our mushrooming growth in taxes paid and in freedom lost. According to the General Accounting Office. a child born in 1992. to fund Government on its current growth path. a child born in 1992 will pay 82 percent of his or her future earnings in taxes. Eightytwo percent of his or her future earnings in taxes. The Government itself has become the most powerful political force in America. not the people that pay the bills but the people that live off of those who pay the bills. When faced with cuts in spending. Government programs are able to rally their individual constituencies to bring overwhelming pressure to bear on the legislative process. The tax limitation amendment is needed to offset this pressure. I do not think our Founders ever imagined that we would have a Federal Government that would be telling us where to place curb cuts in the step of Cleburne or a Federal Government that is spending over 20 percent of the gross national product. They could not have imagined that when they drafted our Constitution. and I am confident if they had. this limitation amendment would have been put in the original Constitution. This is not a new initiative. It is a tested initiative. It has been tested in the laboratories of our individual States. as our Founders intended. Currently 10 States have supermajority requirements to raise taxes. They include Arkansas. Arizona. California. Colorado. Delaware. Florida. Louisiana. Mississippi. Oklahoma. and South Dakota. geographically spread across the entire Nation. In States with no tax limitation. taxes have climbed 120 percent per capita from 1980 to 1992. while they increased only 102 percent in States with supermajority requirements. Even with the supermajority requirement. the government has found a way to grow. Supermajority States have enjoyed a 43percent growth rate from 1980 to 1992. while other States without this limitation have grown by only 35 percent. Employment growth averaged 26 percent in supermajority States but only 21 percent in States without the supermajority requirement. Using data from 50 States. Dr. Richard Vedder. in a study for the Joint Economic Committee. has concluded and I quote: The economic performance of States is negatively relative to the overall amount of taxation: Higher taxes mean lower growth. lower taxes mean higher growth. This amendment is not artful. It is not pretty. It is not the sort of provision that will ever thrill constitutional scholars. It is a blunt instrument. and it is unfortunate that it is necessary. but it is necessary. As -legislators. we have either been unwilling or unable to put restraints on the growth of government. In the socalled antitax era that we have all lived through in the last 15 years. we have still seen Government grow. The 1980s were famously antigovernment. antitax. yet taxes grew 20 percent during that decade. the size of Government growing in excess of that. There is a bias in our system toward growing Government. It is a bias that grows stronger every day as Government grows more and more and more intrusive in our lives. This amendment is necessary to counteract this bias and force the Government back into a role that respects that the genius and miracle of our experiment in democracy lies not in Washington. DC. but with the people. Mr. Speaker. I thank the gentleman.