First Regular Session
Sixty-first General Assembly
LLS NO. R97@0570.01 DLC
STATE OF COLORADO
BY REPRESENTATIVE Owen;
also SENATOR Rizzuto.
HOUSE JOINT RESOLUTION 97-1011
WHEREAS, The annual federal budget has not been balanced
since 1969, and the federal public debt is now more than $5 trillion,
an amount equaling approximately $20,000 for every man, woman,
and child in America; and
WHEREAS, Continued deficit spending demonstrates
an unwillingness or inability of both the federal executive and
legislative branches to spend no more than available revenues;
and
WHEREAS, Fiscal irresponsibility at the federal level
is lowering our standard of living, destroying jobs, and endangering
economic opportunity now and for the next generation; and
WHEREAS, The federal government's unlimited ability
to borrow raises questions about fundamental principles and responsibilities
of government, with potentially profound consequences for the
nation and its People, making it an appropriate subject for limitation
by the Constitution of the United States; and
WHEREAS, The Constitution of the United States vests
the ultimate responsibility to approve or disapprove constitutional
amendments with the People, as represented by their elected state
legislatures, and opposition by a small minority in the United
States Congress repeatedly has thwarted the will of the People
that a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution should be
submitted to the states for ratification; now, therefore,
Be It Resolved by the House of Representatives
of the Sixtyfirst General Assembly of the State of Colorado,
the Senate concurring herein:
That the General Assembly requests the United States
Congress to expeditiously pass, and propose to the legislatures
of the several states for ratification, an amendment to the Constitution
of the United States requiring that, in the absence of a national
emergency, the total of all federal appropriations made by the
Congress for any fiscal year may not exceed the total of all estimated
federal revenues for that fiscal year.
Be It Further Resolved, That
copies of this Joint Resolution be sent to all members of the
United States Senate and House of Representatives, and to the
Secretary of State, and the presiding officers of both houses
of the legislatures of each of the other states.