Mr. President, it is certainly my honor, under the previous order, to continue debating an amendment that I have offered on behalf of myself, Senator Leahy, and several other Senators, which essentially would say that should the balanced budget amendment become part of the Constitution, in addition to a waiver for a declaration of war, where you would no longer have to have 60 votes to go out of balance but a majority vote, that you would add to that exception a federally declared, Presidentially declared, congressionally declared, natural disaster--an emergency.<p>
I think it is very important because if you really look around the country, you can see that we really live in a country where we are at risk. If you look here on the chart, here are the earthquake risks. We can see them not just in the West, by the way, but here and all the way across. The tornado risks are centered here, some of these quite extreme in the smaller circle. The hurricane risks are here; some are noted over here and, of course, closer to the coast is a tremendous risk of hurricanes. On the entire west coast here, as well as the islands, the risk of tsunami, which is a terrible, overpowering wave that occurs because of an earthquake in the ocean floor.<p>
So as we look at our Nation--the most beautiful Nation on Earth, the most prosperous Nation on Earth, the most wonderful Nation on Earth--we do have times when we have disasters, and if ever there was a time to pull together as one, it certainly would be during those times.<p>
In the course of the debate this morning, there were those who said: Senator Boxer, you are totally right, we do have these problems, but there has not really been any time when the Nation has not responded and the Senate has not responded overwhelmingly, as well as the House. The truth is that there have been occasions where we have not received 60 votes to move ahead when there was earthquake rebuilding or, frankly, recovery from flood. I have documented that on at least two occasions in the Senate where we did not get 60 votes. We got 52 on one occasion and 54 on another occasion. Today I read into the Record excerpts of something from House Speaker Newt Gingrich and the leadership of the House which says very clearly that they are not interested in funding these emergencies off budget. In fact, they will not even consider funding them until they are offset.<p>
What does this mean? It means that if there is a horrible disaster anywhere in our Nation--and it could occur anywhere--and if the view of the new Republican Speaker of the House prevails --and he seems to have the votes over there on everything he has done--there would have to be offsets, and you could not, in fact, take care of an emergency the way we have done it in the past.<p>
I want to make it clear that in the past, under every single Budget Act we have had, we have always exempted emergencies. I think this is a very important point to make at this time in the debate.<p>
The Republican-controlled Office of Management and Budget in 1990 said, in the budget summit agreement of 1990, that `for a Presidentially declared emergency request for supplementals or regular appropriations bills, the across-the-board offset would not apply to the extent the fund requested by the President * * *.'<p>
In other words, that is bureaucratic language to say that when a supplemental appropriation does come down to the Senate floor because we have run out of money for an emergency, it will not have to be offset, as everything else would have to be. In other words, if, in the middle of the budget year, a Senator comes down to the floor with a great new idea on how to teach our children and has a great grant program that he or she wants to put forward, that would have to be offset with spending cuts.</body>
