First Regular Session

Sixty-second General Assembly

LLS NO. R99-0953.01 Bob Lackner

STATE OF COLORADO

BY REPRESENTATIVE Tool;

also SENATOR Powers.

HOUSE JOINT RESOLUTION 99-1040

CONCERNING THE COLORADO GENERAL ASSEMBLY'S SUPPORT FOR AN AMENDMENT TO THE UNITED STATES CONSTITUTION MANDATING A BALANCED FEDERAL BUDGET.

WHEREAS, The federal budget has been balanced only once since 1969, and the federal public debt now exceeds $5.5 trillion, an amount equaling approximately $20,000 for every man, woman, and child in America; and

WHEREAS, Chronic deficit spending demonstrates an unwillingness or inability on the part of the executive and legislative branches of the federal government to spend no more than the amount of available revenues; and

WHEREAS, Fiscal irresponsibility at the federal level lowers our standard of living, destroys jobs, and endangers economic opportunity now and for those in the next generation; and

WHEREAS, The federal government's unlimited ability to borrow money to finance its deficits raises concerns directed to the fundamental structure and responsibilities of government, making such fiscal policies an appropriate subject for limitation in the United States constitution; and

WHEREAS, The United States constitution vests the ultimate responsibility for changing the terms of that charter with the people, as represented by their elected state legislatures, and opposition by a small minority in the United States Congress has consistently thwarted the will of the people that a balanced budget amendment be submitted to the states for ratification; now, therefore,

Be It Resolved by the House of Representatives of the Sixty-second General Assembly of the State of Colorado, the Senate concurring herein:

That we, members of the Sixty-second General Assembly, request the Congress of the United States to expeditiously pass and submit to the legislatures of the fifty states for their ratification an amendment to the United States constitution requiring that, in the absence of a national emergency, the total of all federal appropriations for any given fiscal year 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 each member of Colorado's delegation to the United States Congress.