Transcripts For CSPAN U.S. Senate Sen. Paul On Budget Cap Increases In 2-Year Budget 20180209

Senate will vote on a bill that will add 1. 5 trillion to the dead over the next 10 years. This is a large amount of money and something we should be very wary of. S is in addition to what this is in addition to the debt that we already have. The bill is nearly 700 pages and was given to us at midnight last night, and i would venture to say, no one has read the bill. Digest thethoroughly bill overnight, and i do think that it does things we really, really ought to talk about, and how we should pay for them. One of the things it does is go back 500 billion in spending over a twoyear period. This bill increases spending 21 . Does that sound a large amount . Anyone at home getting a bonus foreign increasing your paycheck of 21 . Yet your government is going to spend 21 more without having a full debate or amendments. The exchange you watched with me having a 15 minute vote. I have been asking all week for it. We could have had dozens of votes today, but we squabbled because people dont want to be put on the spot. The reason i am here tonight is to put people on the spot. I want people to feel uncomfortable. I want people to have to answer people at home asking why were you against obamas deficits, but for republicans deficits . If you were against president obamas deficits, and for republicans deficits, is in that the very definition of hypocrisy . Aware. Need to be made your senators need to answer this debate. We should have a full debate. My amendment says we should obey obeyuzz it we should the budget caps, limits the place on spending both military and nonmilitary. 2011, and for a year or two, government shock, but no government is taking off in this new stimulus of deficit spending will be as big as president obamas stimulus. Dont you remember when said that obama was spending us into the gutter, into oblivion . And now, republicans are doing the same thing. So whos fault is that . Republicans . Yes. Democrats . Yes, it is both partys fault. This is the secret of washington. Are loudlycans clamor and for more military spending. But they cannot do that unless they give the democrats welfare spending. It is a compromise in the wrong direction. Spending go toward with only what comes in. Yet, this goes on, and on, and on. They will say that the military is hollowed out. We double the amount of money we spent on the military sense 9 11, 2001. I have retired members of the military in my family and i care really deep the about our soldiers. I would bring them home from afghanistan. The war is done. Declare a victory in afghanistan , bring them home, and give them all a raise. But we go on and on finding new wars to fight. We dont know who the good guys are and who the bad guys are. So the war in afghanistan after 16 years cost six. Dollars a year. We are in too many places for too long and have no exact mission of why were there and it is not a military winnable situation in afghanistan. There will never be a victory in afghanistan. There may be a negotiated settlement, but as soon as we leave, they will comeback. Are we there to be there forever are we to be there forever . For the obtained Time Congress is going to exceed their budget caps. Had a pay go. You could only pay as you go, kind of like a family. You either rager income or expense of money. When i try to get that to Pay Attention to their own rules, three or four people will vote to Pay Attention to the rules. We are in a terrible state of the country. Debt is bigger than our entire economy. You wonder why the stock market is jittery . One of the reasons is we dont have the capacity to continue to fund the government like this. We had been funding it with phony Interest Rates, concocted and given to us by the Federal Reserve because they are not real. What if Interest Rates become real again . Anybody remember when Interest Rates or 5 , 10 , 15 . Historically, they had been 5 . You know what happens to the government when our Interest Rate goes to 5 and have to borrow for Social Security and medicare . There would be a catastrophe in this country. Already, Interest Rates are kicking up and the stock market is jittery. Why,u asked the question maybe it has something to do with the irresponsibility of Congress Spending money we dont have. So the bill is going to exceed 296 billion,s by and that is not counting the money they dont count. So these people are really, really clever. Imagine them running their fingers together, saying, how can we hide stuff from the American People . How can the ebay the spending caps how can we be paid the spending caps how can we evade the spending caps . But there is an overseas contingency fund. We are 300 billion for two years over the budget cap, and another 60 billion over the cap. They act as if it does not matter. And then we come to catastrophes. You might say, i have great sympathy for those peoples houses that were flooded in houston and florida. I do. My sisters house was flooded near houston, so i have great compassion. But even for my family, i cannot take the money and borrow it and say, here is a pot of money, so go rebuild your house. We should do it in a responsible fashion. Another 90 billion. Plunking 90st billion down or printing it at the Federal Reserve, or borrowing it, instead of just doing that, why dont we take the 90 billion some summer in the budget that he should not be . People always want something from government. Somethingyou want from government, tell me where to take it from because i will not borrow anymore. We should take it from some other place. When you get the 90 billion from . I had some suggestions. Say, lets not send it to pakistan this year. They burned our flag. They put christians in jail. They put the guy in jail, a doctor, who helped us to find bin laden. We finally got bin laden who had been living high on the hog in the middle of town, and our two from a military academy, and everybody probably knew he was there, and he lived uninterrupted. We finally got him when a doctor gave us information. You know what pakistan did to this dr. . He is in jail for 33 years. Do you know what they did to this christian . Pakistan has are on death row. She went to a small village to draw water. The women of the village began stoning her and beating her with sticks. Watched as she lay on the ground bleeding. She was crying out for help. She thought shed been saved when the police arrived, only to be arrested for being a christian. And yet, we are giving 33 billion we have given 33 billion to pakistan for the past three decades. They just want more of your money to go to pakistan. Anywhere center money and we have a country that needs it here. Instead of nationbuilding abroad, my dont we build our country at home . Why do we do nationbuilding at home . Needve 90 billion that we for emergency relief. Am, weervative as i could probably find that. We are a rich country and we whyd probably rebuild, but dont we quit sending it to pakistan . Lets quit sending it to countries who burn our flag and chant death to america . Why do we keep that money at home . Why do we say to the government at large to spend less . Anybody ever had less money this year than last . Anyone ever had a 1 pay cut . You deal with it. That is what government needs, a 1 pay cut. If you take a 1 pay cut across the board, you have more than enough money to pay for disaster relief, but no one is going to do that because they are fiscally irresponsible. Who are they . Republicans, democrats, the whole party is careless and reckless with your money. So the money will not be offset by cuts anywhere. The money will be added to the debt and there will be a day of reckoning. The day of reckoning may well be the collapse of the stock market. The day of reckoning may be the collapse of the dollar. Tell youomes, i cannot exactly, but it has happened repeatedly in history when countries going there currency their country ruin currency and begin to believe that that does not matter. That is what this bill is about. But heres the confusion. Say, we justill want them to cooperate. If they could just hold hands , everythingbaya will be fine. You saw both sides opposing me because they are classed hand and everyone is getting what they want. Everyone is getting more spending. The military, the left and the right is getting more military spending and you are getting stuck with the bill. It is the next generation being stuck with the bill. Your grandkids are being stuck with the bill. But mark my words, the stock market is jittery. The bond market is jittery. There is an undercurrent of unease against this euphoria you have seen in the stock market. A country cannot go on forever spending money this way. And what you are saying is recklessness trying to be passed off as bipartisanship. So, we have gotten together and they are all holding hands, and there is only one bad guy standing in the way. One guy will keep us here until 3 00 in the morning. But i think the country is worth a debate until 3 00 in the morning, frankly. It is worth it to find out why we should be borrowing 1 million a minute. Saying that it i almost 2 million million was talking to my staff today, saying it is almost 2 million a minute. Alarm you should see, but guess what . You will see these people come home to your state, talking about how earnest they are, and think Government Spending is bad and how to reduce waste. It is dishonest. They are not doing anything about the waste. The waste has been out there for probably half a century or more. Nothing has been done in the last 40 years for one reason, there is the oversight. You realize what they are passing, all of the money in one bill, no one will read the bill, no one knows whats in it, and there is no reform in the bill. That i can say with absolute certainty, no one will read it, no reform, nothing gets better, the debt will grow. When the democrats are in power, republicans appear to be the conservative party. But when republicans are in power, it seems there is no conservative party. You see, opposition seems to bring people together, and they know what they are not for. They decide that we will spend that money, too. The hypotheses hangs in the air and chokes anyone with a sense of decency, or intellectual honesty. Our military is hollowed out, even the military spending has more than doubled since 2001. The left is no better. Thecrats dont oppose military money as long as they can get some for themselves, for their causes. The dirty little secret is, by in large, both parties dont care about the debt. The spending bill is 700 pages and there will be no amendments. Is debate, although it somewhat inside, is over me having a 15 minute debate. Is me, if youwoe get one, everyone will want an amendment. Guess what . That would because a debate, and open process, called concern for your country. But they say, it is thursday, and we like to be on vacation on fridays. So they clamor, but we have been sitting around all day. It is not likely have had 100 amendments all day. We will have zero amendments. Zero, no amendments. So, it is a binary choice. They love that word. A binary choice, take it or leave it. You know what . I am going to leave it. I did not leave my family to travel up. To be a part of something that that they status quo are not leading the country, just following along like a ball rolling down the hill, wrapping up your dollars as the ball rolls downhill gets bigger and bigger and will crush us. But no one has the guts to stand up and say no. Over the past 40 years, only donetimes have we actually 12 individual department of government appropriation bills. You have heard the appropriation committee, this is where the spending is. Have the department of defense, the department of commerce, held and human services. We are supposed to pass each individual bill, and what happens is that they go to a committee, and each committee will look and see that this spending seems to work and we are getting a great result and we want more next year. Be this pending appears to in a closet and lit on fire, so next year, we are not going to give them any money. So people keep putting your money into a closet and lighting it on fire. You have heard about this emergency organization. You have heard of people without food. There was 300 million mills they needed meals they needed for puerto rico. You knew about the contract. A person who had no employees. Now, raise your hand, you are not allowed to actually, but rager hand in a figurative way if you think it is a good idea to get a contract for 350 million meals to someone who has no employees and is not already in this business . They just know how to fill out the forms of the federal government to trick us into giving them a contract. They were short and there are still people waiting in line for a meal. It is idiocy versus more idiocy. 350 million meals. Years, four times we have done the right things. There is no guarantee that every body will be watching the spending. What do we do instead . We glob all of the bills together in one bill, like we have done tonight, republicans and democrats clasping hands and nobody can look at it. No one is going to reform the spending. As a consequence, wasteful spending is riddled throughout your government. Only four times in 40 years have we done the appropriations process the way we are supposed to. , and the audited a part of the pentagon. This partial audit shows that 800 million was misplaced or lost. Just 800 million. But they cannot find it. A while back, they looked at some of the military expenditures and had 29 billion worth of stuff they could not find. Overall, the audit found over 100 billion in waste was found at the pentagon. But the budget is like 700 billion, so we are talking about over a 10 , you know, figuring out the waste, but we do not vote on these things individuals individually. The department of defense, last year, we found this out, spent 45 million on a natural gas gas station in afghanistan. 45 million. 500s projected to cost million. So you are scratching your head and saying natural gas gas station . What is that . We dont have that in my town. We dont have it in my town either. The decided they needed that to produce they decided they needed that to reduce the Carbon Footprint in afghanistan. But i thought the militarys job was to kill the enemy . So they bought a 45 million gas station that serves up natural gas, and guess what they discovered . They kept waiting. There was a guy sitting next to a pump on a stool and waiting for customers, but nobody came. And somebody said, they dont have any cars running on natural gas. Thats like the same situation in my town in kentucky. They live in a primitive state in afghanistan, and you expect them to have natural gas cars . But they are ready spent money on this 45 military gas station, so they figured, they should buy them some cars. Now they are buying them cars with your money, but then the people still would not come in because they did not have any money. So now they have the gas station and the cars, so now they need to credit cars. Credit cards. So now they have credit cards that you paid for to go to natural gas stations in the cars you paid for. When did that become the job of the military . And how does that go on year after year after year . For 17 years, we have been trying to get the pentagon audited. You know what their response has been . We are too big to be audited. How was that for your government . Is it any wonder that are dead is a 20 trillion debt . Ago, a democrat senator, a conservative democrat, began handing out the Golden Police award. This was 50 years ago. The reason i want to point this out is, as you listen, you will find that some of the things we are doing today is just as bad as 50 years ago. So, you say, 50 years . Been through a couple of generations of politicians, and the are still not finding ways of finding this waste . Some of it is a budget process. The process bypassing these enormous bills that no one scrutinizes and that do not reform the spending. But he used to do a Golden Police award. A couple of things he pointed out. This is some of his best. The National Salary foundation spent 84,000 trying to find out people the conclusion was they are not sure. The National Science foundation, which is a recurring theme in wasteful spending, also spent 500,000 to try to determine why rats, monkeys and humans bite and why they clinch their job. Their jaw. ,hen we are running a deficit borrowing the money, maybe some of these things may not be the most worthwhile to borrow money for. 1970s, from the Early Federal Aviation Administration spent 78 million studying the body measurements of what they call airline stewardesses. , for thee trainees purpose of purchasing their safety equipment, but somebody the body00 to measure measurements of airline stewardesses. The federal energy administration, 50 years ago, spent millions of dollars to find out if drunk fish are more aggressive than sober fish. I am not going to take the answer. I will let you ponder that one. Do you think trunk fish are more aggressive than sober fish . This is your government. This is your money. This is the debt that is hanging up from 50 years ago. Now, we will get into some of the things we have been doing more recently. We do a waste report the point some of these things out. Every week, we have a new one. If you want to look at our waste report, we got that up on our facebook and on our this is one of my favorites. You remember when Neil Armstrong landed on the moon . He said one small step for man one giant leap for mankind. Saidpeople think he one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind. There has been heated discussion. Was it one step for man or a man. The preposition a, did he or did he not use the prep sition a . Your government in their infinite wisdom took 700,000 which was supposed to go to autism research, and they decided to study Neil Armstrongs statement. Somebody at some university decided to play the tape over and over. 700,000 later, they couldnt decide. Inquiring minds want to know, but we still dont know. Did he say a man or man . This is the same kind of stuff you have seen with William Proxmire 50 years ago, but this was last year. I think it is the same group, National Science foundation. I think i will probably get some hate mail from them. So this is 850,000, and we call this one the game of waste. This was spent you know, you think when were spending money in afghanistan, surely its to kill the enemy. Sometimes its building bridges. Sometimes its building roads. Stuff that we dont do in our country anymore. This one was 850,000 for the development of a televised Cricket League. You see, selfesteem is important. We want the afghanis to feel important about themselves. We want them to able to watch the National Sport on tv. We spent 850,000 to get it televised. The only thing we didnt reckon, it was like the natural gas cars, they didnt have tvs. I dont know if we are in the process of buying them tvs. We spent 850,000 to get a Cricket League televised in afghanistan. We will do the next one. This is a good one. Everybody likes to take a selfie, right . If you dont do them, your kids or grandkids will do it. This is a study of 500,000 to tell if taking selfies will make you happy, if you look at yourself, does it make you happy . Inquiring minds want to know. If you want to study that, good for you. Go get somebody to voluntarily give you money to study that. I would like you to go around knocking on doors find out if a selfie makes you happy. Why dont we stop it . They will come to you high and mighty, and they will say, but, sir, it is science and you are just a lay person and dont understand how important selfies can be, and youre not qualified to talk about selfies because you dont know about happiness. We have experts who can tell the world we can be happy if we all had selfies. They tell us that somehow were not smart enough to have common sense enough to know what we should be spending money on, but this goes on decade after decade. The school lunch program. P thost buy a school lunch. We have a school lunch program. We discover 158 million, federal money, was given to a Los Angeles School district and it turns out they were which iing they were buying other things than lunches. No one was doing the individual appropriation bills. They were passing continuing resolutions, and when nobody reads it they buy sprinklers, new televisions for the faculty to watch. 158 million not spent on School Lunches but spent on other items. Everybodys heard about Climate Change and theres undertones and overtones about Climate Change. If case you havent heard about Climate Change, the people who want you to hear about Climate Change want you to make sure you spend money. They spent 450,000 on a video game. This is also the National Science foundation. So a generation will be able to play a video game on Climate Change. It is complete with great graphics and we have a great game your kids can play on Climate Change. Its one thing after another. All right. You may have been on this one if youre in washington. This one we call street car named waste. Theres a street car over here a few blocks on h street and they spent 1. 6 million on it. I think they spent more on it before that. It goes a mile from nowhere to nowhere. And you get on and nobodys on it. It costs a fortune. It goes a mile from nowhere to nowhere. And you get on and nobodys on it. It costs a fortune. You could walk from one end to the another in the time it takes to go on this tramway. But, you know, 1. 6 million. When you see this Government Spending, would you give money to this . And i asked this question often when im home. I ask people, if you had 100 to give to help people, would you give to the Salvation Army or the federal government to spend on a street car that no one rides . So i talked about whether or not we should be spending the money somewhere else or here. This is 250,000 that was spent on bringing 24 kids from pakistan to space camp and dolly wood. You can say, we will have good relations with pakistan. Im not against interaction. If this were some kind of privately funded group that wanted to have some money to have interaction between us and pakistan, i would be for it. First, the price tag is scary. 250,000 for 24 kids, but then i also think, i represent a lot of people in kentucky who dont have the money to drive down to huntsville and go to space camp with their kids. Should we not start thinking do we need to take care of ours at home before we ship our money overseas . Do we need to think about can we afford to keep borrowing money for projects like this . This is the department of defense, and think i think we referred to earlier. This was the 29 million worth of heavy equipment that they lost in afghanistan. It is even worse than that. You see, they lost that, but we also made the decision as we were downgrading the war in afghanistan after the last surge we did in afghanistan, that we didnt want the other side to have our stuff, so we blew up billions of dollars of tanks, you name it. When they counted it up, they couldnt find 29 million worth. If you think about it and thinking how could we have more money for both our National Defense and have more money for infrastructure, you hear people talk about infrastructure. People want to build roads. Republicans and democrats want to build roads, but guess what, theres no money. Were 1 trillion short this year because we passed this clash pans, spend whatever you can, both sides spend it like theres no tomorrow. But if you say, how could we change our government . Where would there be money we could actually save . Some of it is in our foreign policy. We dont have enough for our military to be involved in seven wars. We might have enough to be involved in three, two, or one or maybe we shouldnt be involved in any. We said after 9 11 we would go after those who attacked us, those who aided the attackers. They are all dead. We should declare victory in afghanistan. Right now were over there nation building. Why do we have trouble with nation building . Ill give you a story from a navy seal i met a couple of years ago. He had been in 19 years. He was a tough guy, like they all are, and he said, you know what, we can go anywhere, kill any of our enemies, we can do whatever you ask us to do. But the mistake is when the politicians tell us to plant the flag and create a country. Were not very good at it. Most in the military dont want to create countries. They would as soon kill the enemy and come back to their family. But we kill the enemy and then we stay and stay and stay. We build them schools and roads. There have been some schools built four or five times and the taliban blows it up. It is terrible that the taliban would do this, but dont the people that live there have some responsibility after we give them 1 trillion to do something for themselves . Will people do something for themselves if you keep doing it for them . Really there has to come a time when we come home. Spend 50 billion a year in afghanistan. It is money that could be spent on infrastructure if you wanted to do that or maybe not having a trillion dollar deficit next year. Were in a bunch of different places. When the soldiers were killed in niger, not too long ago, a country in africa, many people didnt know where the country was, much less that we had 800 troops there. You say thats not much, but the problem is it becomes 8,000 or 80,000. Because we get in the middle of a civil war and some of our guys get killed and say, gosh, we have to do more, not less. They want to punish the enemy. I dont know who the good people or bad people are in niger, so i think it is unclear who the good guys and bad guys are. We have been involved in the Syrian Civil War for a long and we aided what many up here called the moderate syrian rebels. It turns out they were jihadists often. They hated israel. The only people they hated as bad as israel was us. Many we gave antitank weapons to one group and the leader of the group said we wanted them to fight isis, they said we want to attack assad and when we attack assad, we want to attack israel. These are people we are giving weapons to. We poured hundreds of tons of weapons with qatar, running through the united air emirates. Poured it in there. A lot wound up in the wrong hands. We spent 250 million training ten of them. We trained ten fighters for 250 million. We sent them into battle and they were captured in the first 30 minutes. Guess what happened recently . And i will give President Trump some credit for this. They decided to ally with whoever was fighting the best over there and turned out the kurds were, both the syrian current and the current that live in iraq. And they did fight. Now the question is, oh, no, turkey is unhappy with that, so well throw the kurds under the bus in favor of turkey that has a leader that has no use for us at this point either. Tack the enemy overseas. But the thing is, if we go and say for decade and decade, you know, in iraq they said we didnt stay long enough. How long is long enough . A hundred years, 200 years . Forever . They said theyre going to treat us as liberators. They see u us as occupiers. They didnt like the British Occupying them. They dont like us there. There was a movie with the depiction of the scene not too long ago. They were in a village and freed the village. The general was telling them how youre free, youre free. The elders of the village gathered and said, will you leave now . Because they realized that wasnt the end and that eventually the americans would leave. When me left, the taliban would come back. We just have to rethink are we going to be at war forever . Can we afford it and maybe do we have to think about maybe whether or not we should do some nation building here at home and not always abroad. We have to think about the unintended consequences of what we do as well. And ill give you an example of that. We give we just recently signed a deal for give saudi arabia 50 billion worth of equipment. Saudi arabia is using that equipment to encircle and blockade a country next to them, yemen. Yemen is a very poor country. They import about 80 of their food. Theyre one of the poorest countries on the planet and currently 17 Million People live on the edge of starvation. But people have convinced themselves that, well, theres some shia that are supported by iran. We dont want iran there so we have to support the sunnis. We have to remember who attacked us on 9 11. It was the sunnis. The ones that are trying to get into our country i dont know of any shiite terrorists. Weve had plenty of sunnis. All 16 hijackers were from saudi arabia. We just released documents last year, the missing pages from the saudi arabia investigation with the 9 11 commission that shows that theres a possibility they were complilings sit in those things complicit in those things. Theyre not exactly a free country. Theyre a monarchy thats actually having power consumed and concentrated in one persons hands more and more. So we have to decide what wars do we need to be involved in. Our founders were very clear about this. Our founders didnt like war, by the way. Our founders had seen virtually perpetual war in europe. Everybody was always fighting somebody and went on even after the founding of our country. Cousins were fighting cousins. Fathers fighting brothers. Brothers fiefting brothers. Fighting brothers. Everybody was related. All the royal families of europe were related and always fighting with each other. Of course they didnt do the fighting. They sent the common man to do the fighting. When we got to our country, we said we have these oceans. We want less war. One of the things they included in the constitution was this. They included in the constitution a specific provision that said when we go to war, we have to declare war. It has to be passed by congress. So there was a debate over whether that power should be in congress or should be in the hands of the president. Madison said this. He said that the executive, the president , is the branch most prone to war. Therefore, with studied care, we gave that power to the legislature. So war is supposed to be determined by us and ultimately us as representatives of you. It doesnt happen that way and hasnt happened that way for a long time. Why are we at war in seven different place . S we dont vote on it. We havent voted on anything since the proclamation of the iraq war which i think was a mistake but we at least voted on it in 2002. We voted in 2001 to go into afghanistan. We havent voted on anything. They said the 2001 proclamation gives us the power to go anywhere because these people can somehow tang general yally most people fighting werent even born and had nothing to do with 9 11 and afghanistan. Once again its the process thats broken like the budget. So we have extraordinary waste and your money gets burned and put in a closet and thrown down a waste hole because we dont do the right process of following your money and war is somewhat the same way. We get involved in war in too many places because we dont have a vigorous debate. When we go to war, i tell people, that should be the most important decision we ever make. Most important decision a legislator ever makes. This should be a profound, moral, personal decision as if your kids are going or as if you were going. And it should be a heartfelt debate and everybody should speak out and we should try to figure out whether its right to go to war. Interestingly, when weve been attacked, weve been nearly unanimous. When we were attacked at pearl harbor, they voted. I think one person opposed it in congress and everybody else voted for it. When we were attacked on 9 11, same thing. I would have voted for that response. We should have responded. It was the right thing. We voted. We did the right thing. Since then were at war everywhere in countries most of us havent heard of fighting on one side or the other and we dont know what were fighting for and it costs an extraordinary amount of money but were not voting on it. Maybe if we did the right thing, maybe like appropriations we passed the appropriation bills, maybe like war we voted on it, we wouldnt be in so many places. But theyre all interconnected to the shortness we have in money. The last thing ill get to is something called the debt ceiling. The debt ceiling is something that has been a limitation on how much we spend and we have to vote on it. Its an unpleasant vote. And so they try to either do it for a long period of time or try to stretch it beyond elections. So this bill, the 700page bill that no one read that will continue all the spending and will not reform your government and is irresponsible, the one we will pass later tonight, the 700page bill also allows the debt ceiling to go up. Historically we would let the debt ceiling, our borrowing limit, we would let it go up a dollar amount. Wed say, well, weve got to borrow money. It looks like were going to need a trillion dollars. You know the way they do it now . Its like Everything Else around here. We then break the rules and somehow theres a little bit of deviousness to it. The debt ceiling will go up in unspecified amount. As much as you can borrow between now and november, go for it. Theres no elimination. The debt ceiling becomes not a limitation at all. Theyre still taking a vote. Maybe they dont want to vote on it anymore. They just want it to happen. They say they voted for the spending. I think the more obstacles we have in place the debt ceiling will go up in an unspecified amount. There will be a credit card issued for the United States that has no limits. This is a problem. Everything about this stinks, to tell you the truth. Everything about this process and the media doesnt get it. The media does you such a disservice. They cant understand whats going on sometimes. Theyre like, bipartisanship is broken out. Hallelujah. Republicans and democrats are getting along and in reality they should be telling you look for your wallet. Check your pants to make sure they havent taken your wallet. Because when both parties are happy and both parties are getting together and doing stuff, guess what . Theyre usually looting the treasury. And thats what this bill does. Its going to loot the treasury. It spends money we dont have. We will have a trillion dollar deficit this year. A trillion dollars. And what i would say to my republican colleagues, you dont see them here. Im not sure where they are. What i would say to my republican colleagues, i know every one of you, i know every one of you, ive seen your speeches. I saw every one of you go after president obama. Was that all just empty partisanship . Do you not really believe it . Every one of them in their states, i promise you every one of them went home and probably will go home next week and say how theyre fiscally conservative and against the debt and almost all of them are going to vote for this new debt. Almost all of them are going to vote for a trillion dollar debt in one year. Every one of the republicans at least was against president obamas debt. At least the democrats are honest. Theyre not too concerned about the debt. Well, they are sometimes. Theyre concerned about the debt when it comes to taxes. Because they dont want people to keep more of their own money. Theyre afraid somehow of the imbalance of that. But the thing is that we do have to watch the balance of money, how much comes in and goes out. And some have said, well, how can you be a deficit hawk if you voted for the tax cut . Well, one, because i think you own your labor. You own the fruits of your labor. You own all of it. You give up some of your labor to live in a civilized world. So my question to you is that everything you make, everything you own, everything that comes from the sweat of your brow and the work of your hands is yours. And if you give up some, youre giving up your liberty. And you give up a little bit of your liberty, you give up a little bit of your wages to life in a civil advised civilized world, to have law and order. But i ask do you want to give up more or less . Do you want to give up a hundred percent of your paycheck or 10 of your paycheck . We should always be about minimizing government. So taxes really are about how much of your liberty you get to keep, how much liberty to continue to spend your own money. The other side is spending. Are we going to have Government Spending . Yes. The constitution laid out very specific requirements for what it was allowed to do. Article 1, section 8 says what congress can do. Theyre very few and limited. Yet what happened over time is that we began doing a lot of things that arent there. What they said in the bill of rights was pretty important, though, in the ninth and tenth amendment. The ninth amendment says those rights not listed are still yours and not to be disparaged. So the bill of rights was not a complete listing of your rights. You have many other rights, such as the right to privacy, the right to property, that arent exactly spelled out in the first eight amendments. But then the tenth amendment said something really important, too. It said if the constitution didnt explicitly give that power to the federal government, its left to the states and the people respectively. So many of the things we do up here and this is the other reason for our debt. There are checks and balances within the process. Were supposed to do appropriation bills and all that. That might or might not work. It cant be worse than what were doing now. But the real check and balance is the constitution. So the constitution has these limits on how Big Government can get and what government can do. And if we obey the constitution, you would have a balanced budget every year. If you had a balanced budget every year, would there still be things the government does . Sure. But we have to assess as a people, we have to decide and really this is the ultimate decision the American People have to have, are you going to cheer for the republicans and Democrats Holding hands and having a trillion dollar deficit . Or are you going to say to yourself, umm, im suspicious that the republicans and democrats are collapsing hands clasping hands and giving us a trillion dollar deficit. Are we so excited about civility that we dont care what the result of civility is . Or are we really sort of misguided in thinking because people arent yelling at each other and they have bridged their differences but that the compromise means that were all going to spend more money, were going to ignore the constitution, the waste is going to continue on and nothing will be fixed, are we so sold on civility that were willing too give up on and say, oh, well, at least were getting along together. As long as were getting along, thats all we want. I think were smarter than that. I think the American People are more perceptive. I think the American People are going to see through it and see it as the future unfolds, at the stock market continues to be jittery. I think theyre going to see it as we move forward and the ramifications of having so much debt come home. This could be higher Interest Rates and those affect not only you personally but can also affect the massive Government Programs we have, Social Security and medicare. The borrowing that we do for our interest is one of the larger items. I think its the Third Largest item that we spend right now. And so as Interest Payments grow, it crowds out other things. So right now weve got, you know, were still paying government interest probably in the low twos, 2 or more. Even if interest stays at 2 , because government is growing and we have a bigger and bigger dealt, were going to have an 800 billion Interest Payment and it will be the number one item. Its going to crowd out Everything Else. So there are ramifications. There are people who say that when youre at a hundred percent of your g. D. P. Like your whole economy when your whole economy equals your debt, that youre at this sort of precipice. Youre at a point where you may reach a point of no return. There are ways to fix this. Later this year ill offer a budget that frees up spending. You say, well, how bad could that be . Were just going to give the government the same amount they had last year. If you freeze all spending, everything that we spend on, you balance the budget within about five or six years. And youd get things back in balance if you did it. But if you talk to people up here, they would freak out. I promise you, well probably get ten or 15 votes for freezing spending to try to get it back in order. But this is what we have to ask as American People. Are you happy with your government . Are you happy with trillion dollar deficits . Are you happy with people who just dont seem to care . They care somehow more about this clasping hands and everybody gets everything and you get to get home for the weekend . But i think the ramifications for our country are severe and significant. And what i would ask my colleagues as well as those across the country is basically, what do you want from governme government do you want some physical item . Is government here so government can give you some physical item, a cell phone or car . Is that what government is for or is government here to preserve your liberty . Most of us, i would say some of us believe your rights are from god, that they preexist government, and that really governments job is not to get you stuff. Governments job is not to get somebody elses stuff for you. Governments job is to preserve your liberty, to preserve your natural godgiven rights. And in doing that, you may acquire through your liberty and through your hard work, you may acquire stuff and the government helps to praoepbt your neighbor from stealing it but your government shouldnt be the one stealing it from your neighbor and giving it to you. We look at the ramifications of a society where we do think that were going to take from one and give to the other and were going to do it through this government transfer program, when we look atta we ask look at that we ask is that good for the person. A friend of mine says selfesteem cannot be given to you. People say we immediate to have everybody get we need to have everybody get a trophy, everybody gets first place. Whether johnny can read, we need to pat johnny on the back and make johnny feel good about whether he can or cannot read. In reality it comes from achievement. Weve had talk about merit immigration. Theres merit to hard work, picking tomatoes. Theres merit to being a doctor, a lawyer, a professor. Theres merit to so many jobs. And thats also where your selfesteem comes from. One of the things weve done in our country is we are destroying the selfesteem and motivation of the country. What goes along with that . When youve destroyed your selfesteem and you no longer leave your house, weight problems, drug problems, all the things that ensue from that. People say youre simplifying addiction. It doesnt all come from Big Government. Maybe, maybe not. But i think theres a correlation. Theres a correlation to not working and the disease that comes from nonwork. You say youre heartless. Youre just saying that, that everybody should work and there are not jobs. There virtually are full employment now. We have less than 4 unemployment. And yet, where we measure it, we still have communities that have 30 nonworkers because theyre no longer counted in this. This is where a lot of problem exists in our society. A lot of drug problem is coming from nonworkers. And so i think we have to reflect on what we want from government. Do you want something material from government . Do you want government to give you something that your neighbor has that you dont have . Or do you want government to protect your godgiven liberty . And i think if we realize that the abstraction of liberty is something amazing and incredible, and thats what our government is about, maybe we would bicker less and we would become more unified as a people knowing what youre trying to get is not something, you know, they talk about whether coveting something is a bad thing. You know, when you covet, you really want something of somebody elses. Some of it is because its somebody elses, but some of it is p because its a material thing you want instead of the freedom, the freedom to search and seek out through work and through life and through art and through literature your own bit of selfesteem. I think if we knew what government was about and we recognize the true function of government we wouldnt be in this state. But i can tell you that im very, very saddened by where we are. Im saddened mostly by the debate on my side. I disagree with the other side, but i know where they are as far as these are concerned. Im saddened on my side that many people who give lip service to believing and saying when theyre home were fiscal conservatives, well vote for a bill that adds 1 trillion to the debt. Continuing if we were honest with ourselves, we would say no, the government would shut down. I dont want the government would shut down. I think its a dumb idea. I proposed legislation called the Government Shutdown protection act. What my legislation would do is this, you have a year to do your appropriations bill. Theres 12 different units of government. Its your job, thats what youre supposed to do. You say how do we make these people do their job if they wont do their job . What we say is over that 12month people, we say if you dont do your job, government will continue spending but government will continue spending 1 less. So government would go on spending 99 of what they spent the last year. But every 90 days wed take 1 more from government until the people in government decide to do their job. I see some members of the house, they did their job last year. They passed all 12 appropriations bill. Yet, the senate i think we finally in the end passed one four or five months into the fiscal year. I think if you looked at it that way and you said how can we convince congress to do its job, thats part of the answer, passing the individual Appropriations Bills but evaluating them for waste and being concerned with waste. Also important is understanding the function of government, the powers of government are few, defined, and limited. That was a big thing that madison talked about. When you read the federalist papers hes talking about how there are very specific functions of government. Government wasnt supposed to do everything. Theres nothing in the constitution about education. You say oh my god, he would get the federal government out of the education system. Absolutely. Get them completely out. The constitution said nothing about them being in, and we dont have the money for it and the State Governments are better at it. It doesnt say the State Government cant be involved. But the federal government shouldnt be involved at all in education. We took our responsibility that wasnt in the constitution. We dont pay for it. And as a consequence, our government gets bigger and bigger. We take on new functions of government that really were never spelled out in the constitution. Department of commerce, it could be gone. Youd never know it probably. But it could be gone, youd save 35 billion and most of its functions are not in the constitution. We have to have some of that debate over what is the proper role, what is the constitutional role, and how would we have that debate if were not allowed to amend the bill, if were given a 700 page bill the night before, nobody reads it and they say its done. Its a binary choice, their favorite word, binary choice. Take it or leave it. Im leaving it. Ill have nothing to do with adding a 1 trillion debt. I could not go home and look my wife in the face. I could tpho go home and look my friends in the face. I could not go home and look for anybody who voted for me and look them in the face and say, president obama, he was terrible, 1 trillion deficits as far as the eye could see. The republican deficits theyre not quite as bad because theyre just 1 trillion. Thats what were doing here. The republican side is telling america 1 trillion deficits are bad when they are democrats but theyre okay when theyre republicans. Theyre telling you deficits are, theyre bad when the other guys do it but theyre not so bad when we do it. This is the height of hypocrisy and maybe the uncomfortableness that this debate engenders and having this uncomfortableness is maybe why we dont want to have amendments. Its sort of backfiring because im going to talk about this for quite awhile and were going to vote at 3 00 in the morning because they wouldnt let me have a vote during the day. And i probably wont get a vote. But i think its sort of misguided. We should have had 20 votes. There are votes democrats wanted that i probably disagree with and probably would have voted no on but i would have voted to let them have amendments. This is a big deal. This is our spending. You know, this is what the congress is supposed to do is assess our spending and how much we do and yet were not going to have amendments to it . Its predecided by some secret cabal of leader from both sides who have clasped hands to say we have won. The country has won. We now have a 1 trillion deficit this year. The American People are losing by this. And so i think we have to figure out a better way. We have to figure out a way where we do our job, which is each of the individual appropriations bill. We look and we scrutinize waste. I showed you some of the William Proxmire Golden Fleece awards from 1968. The same agency that went through that money is still here. Their budget is probably tenfold bigger than it was in 1968 and were still doing the c. I. A. Still doing the crazy stuff. Heres a good one from the same group of people that brought you Neil Armstrong and 00,000 700,000 to study what did he say, one small step for man, one large step for mankind. These people wanted to know are japanese quail more promiscuous than cocaine. I wish there was a button and we could ask people to dial in and push a button, do you think japanese quail are more sexually promiscuous on cocaine. We spent 350,000 it studying this. Why do we do this every year . Why doesnt it get any better . We dont look at it. If you have a 700page bill and nobody looks at it, how are you ever going to find this . Even in an appropriations bill, if we did an appropriations bill that included this it would still be 500 pages long and youd have to hunt long and hard to find this. Why do we have conditions on how you spend your money . We dont look at it. Nobody reads these bills. People come to my office and they say im for legal aid and i think people should be able to have a lawyer and poor people should get help. And ill listen to them and ill say i never voted on that. I probably will never vote on that. I wont even vote on the department of government that oversees legal aid because im given a 700 page bill that has all of the Government Spending. Whats ironic about this is we have dozens and dozens of people who come to our Office Every Day saying we like this part of government. And i say well, i never get to vote on it so i dont know if i can help you or hurt it because i never get to vote on that part of government. They make me vote on all of government. Its either all or none. The binary choice is shut it down or keep it open but dont reform it. I think its a terrible choice. I did a hearing this week and i called it the terrible, rotten, nogood way to run your government. Thats what i believe. Its a terrible, rotten, nogood way to run your government and we shouldnt do it. This is a secret so dont tell anyone. When i talk to people, i talk to probably 50 senators in the last three weeks, and you know what most of them say . We kind of agree with you, its a really crummy way. This is the last time im voting for it. I say didnt you tell meal that last year . Didnt i hear that the year before it was your last c. R. Youre efrl voting for . Youre ever voting for . Youre never going to vote for another one. You know what would happen. Lets say this speech was so persuasive that all my colleagues came in here, got a conscience and voted down this spending and said hooey with all of you, were not to not spend all that money, the government was shut down and wed come down on monday and do our job. Wed start looking at each individual items and wed say these are the things we shouldnt spent it on spend it on and these are the things we should. If you pass one appropriations bill you dont have to worry about the other part. Once you pass the defense appropriations bill, you dont have to worry about that shutting down. Each time you pass an appropriations bill, you move on to another. We have to do that. I think the thing thats disappointing is probably everybody in here, republican and democrat, will tell you it is a terrible way to run the government. Yet were doing it. We did it a week ago and we did it three weeks ago. We did it a month ago. This is the fourth time weve done it this year. Since ive been here we have never passed all the appropriations bill. We have never had extended debate in committees. I was thinking about this the other day and i was thinking what if the first day you got sworn in, the leadership sat in the chair and all 100 people were required to be here and requested strongly to be here and we had a frank discussion, and we said to both sides this is the year im not doing any continuing resolutions. And guess what . It will just shut down if we dont. But were going to do our job and in the first three months of the fiscal year well have hearing and the main job of the hearings will be to authorize and appropriate the money. Three months for each committee. That would be a pretty long time and maybe spend a whole week or two weeks in the committee with amendments with specific things like weve decided this year not to study what cocaine does for japanese quail. This would be the year we finally stop doing that. Youd have that debate and youd have three months on committees. Youd have nine months left to do the spending bills. Then youd say if you were sitting in the chair, youd say to everyone this is the way were going it go to do it. Then each appropriations bill, were going to take three weeks on the floor to do it. Three weeks. Were not going to put ter around, obfuscate and not have any amendments until this is what were doing. The one reason were going to send this over to the house at midnight is were hoping theyre too tired to vote no. Were going to send it over late tonight or 3 00 in the morning maybe is when its going to be sent over. Its purposefully done. We dont do amendment. We dont do anything in a timely fashion. We wait around until very end and in the very end we try to wear people out so they dont scrutinize the spending. Lets say you do Committee Hearings nor three months. For nine months you did Appropriations Bills. You spend two or three weeks on the floor and let people bring amendments. My First Amendment would be bringing the National Science foundation is no longer able to do the stuff they were able to do. Give them less money, half as much, 25 . A lot less because they are spending a lot on things they shouldnt be doing. This goes throughout government. We had this debate with the post office. Theyre losing 1 billion a quarter. Thats quite a bit of money. They came before our committee and they said we need to, we need to pay them sufficiently. You cant have good quality people unless you pay them. They wanted to pay the top guy like 1 million, 1. 5 million. I said to keep talent . How much talent does it take to lose 1 billion a quarter . Ill do it for less than that. I can lose 500,000 for less. The ridiculous notion of government. Sometimes i think is it the people in government or is government populated by people who are inherently stupid . I dont think so. I think there are wellmeaning people in government. They are not inherently stupid but they dont get the right and proper incentives. Think about it in your life, if i were to ask for 10,000 each, and i have this business proposition, will you go give me the 10,000. If you give it to me, you probably have a pang hoping that you get it back and you get your money back. It is really a heartfelt decision. It doesnt make it always the right decision, but it is heartfelt and if you struggle with every fiber of your being to make sure it is the right choice even though it is not always right. In government, remember your city counsel person, 10,000, its not their money. Then you go to state legislature, its not 10,000, its 2 million. Then you get up here and its 2 million or maybe 200 billion. Its not their money. When you look at government and say, why is government so bad . Bill friedman militariton Milton Friedman hit it on the head. Government will never be efficient because of the very nature of government. Its not an argument for no government, but its an argument for minimizing how Big Government is. It shouldnt be part of something that the private sector can do because the government will never be as efficient. Nobody spends somebody elses money as wisely as their own. Until we recognize that, which goes hand in hand with what the founders thought. The founders thought people ought to be left me to do free to do most of the things themselves. They limited what the federal government would do. As we move forward in this debate and as we look at what can be dont do bring back the greatness of this country, i think we do have to be worried about the debt were accumulating. My hope is that both sides of the aisle will look long and hard and say this isnt the way we should run our government and not just say this and say next time, but maybe say this time because i promise you both sides of the aisle have told me this week, its a terrible way to run the government. Youre exactly right, continuing resolutions, putting all the spending in one bill and not getting rid of the waste but almost everybody who told me that this week will vote for it. The only way to get it fixed is you have to call these people and have them do their job, do the individual appropriation bills, Pay Attention to the constitution, or, frankly, you need new people. Thats what they have decided, do you need new people or are you happy with them borrowing 1 trillion . I think is it irresponsible. It is something that no American Family would do, i dont care if your independent, democrat, republican, a family wouldnt do this. As we look at this debate, my hope subpoena that both sides will come together and say, enoughs enough. This is the time, tonight i say