Paul Sarbanes

Mr. SARBANES

Mr. SARBANES. No, I am going to reclaim my time. I am not going to let the Senator----

Mr. SARBANES. No, that is not the case.

Mr. SARBANES. The Senator told me on a vote of 50 to 50, in which the Vice President sought to cast the tie-breaking vote, would not qualify under your proposal.

Mr. SARBANES. You would have a quorum and you would not pass it. The more you probe into this, the more of a Rube Goldberg contraption it is. Actually what happens is, the more we debate this section, the more you come to understand and a appreciate the perceptions and the wisdom of the drafters of the Constitution. It is incredible that we are out here playing games with a document that has withstood 206 years of scrutiny and was put together by a group of men whom Gladstone, the great British Prime Minister, regarded as the greatest assemblage of statesmen in the history of the world. That was his comment about them in framing the Constitution of the United States. Yet, we are playing games with it all throughout here. You have a three-fifths of the whole number requirement, you have a majority of the whole number requirement, you have a waiver requirement. You are negating the tie-breaking vote given to the Vice President of the United States, as I understand it, under another provision of the Constitution.

Mr. SARBANES. It would not pass; right?

Mr. SARBANES. If you had 51 present so you had a quorum and the vote was say 48 to 3.

Mr. SARBANES. Or it could be the three-fifths where you have ---

Mr. SARBANES. They are not required to be here to make a difference. Because the standard is not between to get so many affirmative votes; is that correct?

Mr. SARBANES. But the people that are against do not have to vote; right?

Mr. SARBANES. Suppose you had a vote 50 to nothing, just to draw the most extreme hypothetical, 50 are for, zero against. The rest are all absent. That does not carry; is that correct?

Mr. SARBANES. Now the way the Constitution is written, if a matter is put to a vote, let us say four or five Members are missing, they may be ill, they may be in the hospital, they may be sick, they may have gone to a family funeral, so they cannot be here. It is not unheard of. In fact, it has happened on occasion. You take a vote amongst those that are here. It passes 47 to 46, and that is that. Under your provision you need 51 votes.

Mr. SARBANES. The people who are against it do not even have to show up; is that correct?

Mr. SARBANES. Will the Senator yield for a question?

Mr. SARBANES. That is your understanding of the meaning of that?

Mr. SARBANES. What is your interpretation? What does it mean? Section 4 says, ``No bill to increase revenue shall become law unless approved by a majority of the whole number of each House by a rollcall vote.'' Take the situation you just described. It is a 50-50 split. The Vice President is entitled to cast his vote. Would this negate the vote- casting power of the Vice President?

Mr. SARBANES. Is that your reading of section 4 of this balanced budget amendment?

Mr. SARBANES. Will the Senator yield?

Mr. SARBANES. The point I want to get across to my colleague is that there is the assumption that issues of national security will not be a matter of controversy. In other words, he is saying clearly, if there is a problem, we are going to get these supermajorities in order to do what needs to be done. I am demonstrating that we had an instance in which there was clearly a national security question and you are not commanding the supermajority.

Mr. SARBANES. I wanted to have that on the record.

Mr. SARBANES. Which the Senator from New Hampshire was making reference to.

Mr. SARBANES. No, you would not have had the three-fifths----

Mr. SARBANES. Let us assume that. Let us assume in 1941 in the House of Representatives that everyone who walked would have voted for the measure. It is a big assumption. Let us assume that. Everyone who did not vote would have voted for it.

Mr. SARBANES. Assuming you had a quorum. You have escalated the number, and you have done it in such a way as to negatively effect very critical decisions, as I have indicated by the history of World War II. A measure that was before the body that I would argue very strenuously was needed to provide for the national security of our Nation would have failed, not because a majority of those present and voting did not support it--they did support it--but because you have introduced supermajority requirements. And these votes would not have met your supermajority requirements.

Mr. SARBANES. The whole number would be 49 in that circumstance. Is that correct?

Mr. SARBANES. The whole number. Let me go back. There were only 48 States then. So there were 96 Senators.