Transcripts For CSPAN2 U.S. Senate U.S. Senate 20180208

Syrian war, and we aided 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. We poured hundreds of tons of weapons with of with gatar, 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. Its very, very confusing who the enemy is and who our friends are over there. But its also very, very expensive. I think we have to defend ourselves and we may occasionally have to i a 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 no. Thank you, mr. President. A senator mr. President . The presiding officer the senator from south carolina. A senator id ask unanimous consent to terminate the quorum call. The presiding officer the senate is not in a quorum call. Mr. Graham im sorry. Id please inform me when ten minutes is expired. Thank you. Mr. President , i rise tonight to let the military know that we may have a short night in the senate, but youre going to have better days ahead. This whole exercise for me is about you. Its about those who have been fighting this war for the last 17 years. Its about stopping the madness created by the congress in 2011. What we did in 2011 is come up with a Budget Proposal called sequestration that if we could not find a bipartisan path forward to cut 1. 2 trillion from the federal budget over a decade, we would punish the military by taking 600 billion out of the military and 600 billion out of nondefense spending and leave entitlements alone where the money is at. Nobody thought it would happen. It was a penalty clause in the budget control act to make sure that the Super Committee would act responsibly. Guess what . They didnt. The bottom line is we couldnt reach a budget agreement. We spent 47 trillion over the next ten years which is how much well spend. We couldnt save so sequestrationic cans sequestration kicks in. What has it done to our military . This is what general mattis says, the secretary of defense. Let me be clear. As hard as the last 16 years of war have been on our military, no enemy in the field has done as much harm to the readiness of the u. S. Military than the combined impact of the budget control acts defense spending caps worse fned by operate ago worsened by operating for ten of the last 11 years under continuing resolutions of varied and unpredictable duration. This is the secretary of defense telling the congress that no enemy on the battlefield has done more damage to our military than the budget agreement that we reached in 2011. So i want to congratulate President Trump for keeping his Campaign Promise to rebuild the military. In case you couldnt understand what i said, here it is in writing. And spend some time looking at it. This is one of the most respected warriors of his generation whos now secretary of defense telling the congress to end the madness. And tonight were going to end the madness. If we have to lose some sleep, were going to end the madness. Were going to spend 160 billion over the next two years rebuilding a military that has been in decline since 2011. How bad is it . Its terrible. If you dont believe me, just listen to what our commanders say. The navy is about 60 of the f18s in the navy arent able to fly. Weve lost more people in training accidents than weve lost on the battlefield. If you ask every military commander, they will tell you that sequestration has done a lot of damage when it comes to our military readiness. So this 160 billion infusion of cash is much needed. And when you talk about deficits, heres what i can tell you. Were spending g. D. P. Wise at the lowest level on defense really since world war ii when you look at g. D. P. Spending on defense. Its been above close to 5 g. D. P. Were in the three and a half range. When i hear senator paul say weve doubled the defense budget, compared to g. D. P. Spending in defense, were on the low end. Whats happened since 2011 . This is the way the world has turned out since we passed sequestration through the budget control act. The Syrian Civil War came about. The collapse of libya, the rise of isil, the invasion of the ukraine and the annexation of crimea by russia. China is building islands over land claimed by others. Yemen is falling apart. North korea is pressing toward the capability to hit the homeland with a nucleartip missile. Weve had Cyber Attacks come from north korea. The bottom line since 2011, all hell has broke loose and weve been standing around here looking at each other instead of listening to our commanders. President trump has listened. President trump is behind this budget agreement. Two years of funding to rebuild the military at a time they need every dollar they can get. So as to the deficits, yes, it bothers me. But heres what i can tell the public without any hesitation. You can eliminate the department of defense and youre not growing to change the debt situation long term for the country. Twothirds of the debt is driven by mandatory spending and interest on the debt itself. Medicare, medicaid, Social Security are entitlement programs that are growing in a tremendous fashion because the baby boomers are retiring enmass. We have less workers and all these trust funds are failing. Thats what drives the debt, not military spending. Onethird of the federal budget is Discretionary Spending. Out of that onethird comes the military and its about 50 of the onethird. All i can say is that i want to applaud senator mcconnell and senator schumer for reaching an agreement. The nondefense spending is about 160 something billion. What does that mean . It helps the f. B. I. The f. B. I. Without this infusion of cash will have less agents in 2018 than we did in 2013. Now, theyre on the front line of defending the nation as much as anybody else. The department of homeland security, the c. I. A. , the National Security administration, the c. I. A. , all of these nondefense agencies have a defense role and theyll benefit from this budget agreement. Sequestration did not get us out of debt. Fixing sequestration is not going to add to the debt in any serious way. Every republican voted for the tax cuts because we believe that the 1. 5 trillion will be made up by Economic Growth and then some. I think were more right than wrong about that. When it comes to defense spending, republicans and democrats have finally listened to this statement by general mattis and all of us came together behind our president to increase defense spending in a fashion relevant to the need. To those who believe that the military is well funded, youre not listening to anybody in the military. You havent spent any time out in the field. Ive been to iraq and afghanistan 42 times in the last decade. I can tell you the pressure thats been placed upon our military. You have to put all the money in deploying people robbing peter to pay paul so training suffers, readiness suffers. Its a miserable experience to be in the military in the last four, five years. Families go lack be. People lacking. People deploy more than they should because were not big enough. This 160 billion is going to allow us to grow the navy. Were moving toward a 350ship navy, not 278. Weve got the Smallest Navy since 1915, the Smallest Army since 1940s where were headed under sequestration. This turns it around. So President Trump, thank you for keeping your promise to rebuild our military. To senator schumer and senator mcconnell, thank you for working together and getting us on track to rebuild the military and help some accounts that need help outside the military. To the members of the body, theres a million reasons to vote no in any bill. While i respect how you vote, i just dont know how you go to the military and explain your vote if you vote no. How do you tell those in uniform who are getting by under incredible difficult conditions because they dont have the money to train and be ready, theyre in a hot war, what do you tell them . Well, i voted no because this and that. You know, the deficit and debt or a problem. Senator paul to his great credit is willing to reform entitlements. Ive worked with him and senator lee to reform medicare and do something about Social Security, keep these programs from going broke. So i will compliment senator paul. Hes a man of great political courage when it comes to taking on hard issues like title reform but when it comes to the military, i could not be more different. Hes holding us up. He has every right to do so. I just want to let our soldiers know and all their families that were going to wait him out, that youre not the reason were in debt. The money were giving you, you take gladly. There will be a smaller pay raise in here, but senator pauls solution to raising pay for the military is to withdraw from afghanistan. Ive not sherrod one gentle me that we can ive not heard one general say we can leave afghanistan safely. The last time we got out of afghanistan we got 9 11. We lost 3,000 americans almost based on 19 people willing to kill themselves and took 3,000 of us with them. Think of what would happen if we left too soon. Were not going to do that again. Im proud of our commander in chief, President Trump, for giving them the ability to fight the war. The gloves are now off. They just need the resources to take the fight to the enemy and turn it around because what happens over there matters here. If you dont believe me, remember 9 11. So whatever it takes, as long as it takes, were going to increase defense spending in the next 24 hours. Then were going to start marching to fixing other problems. The dreamers, theyve waited a very long time to bring certainty to their lives. Next week we take up their problems, their plight. But the one thing i can tell you, today, in the next 24 hours were going to end the nightmare for the military. Next week well take up solutions to help the dream act population and secure our borders. We can do two things at once. And if you want to get the country out of debt, count me in. If you want to tell younger people theyve got to work longer and cant retire at 65 because we live so much longer, count me in. If you want people in my income level to take less from Social Security because i can afford to give some up, count me in. If you want people in my income level to pay more into medicare because we should, count me in. But one thing you cannot count on me is to use the military as a punching bag and blame it on them that were in debt, because were not because of them. Heres what general mattis said. We can always afford freedom. We can afford survival. If you dont believe the people were fighting would kill us all if they could, then youve got a short memory. The only reason 3,000 died on 9 11 and not three million is because they couldnt get the weapons to kill more of us. If north korea keeps going the way its going, god help us all. If the iranians go nuclear, god help us all, we live in dangerous times. If radical islam could get their hands on a chemical buy logical weapon they would use it. The best way to keep them from hurting us here is for them to stay over there. More muslims have died in this fight than anybody else. Theyve seen the face of the enemy, and i have certainly seen it. And the best way to keep it off our shores is to have a Strong Military creating lines of defenses over there so we can be safe here. And i am very happy tonight. I had to miss my flight, not going to get much sleep. But what were doing pales in comparison to what the military has done for the last five or six years. A lot with less. Theyve taken on too much danger, too much risk because the congress has sat on the sideline and watched rome burn. Those days are over. So whenever we vote, were going to vote, and ill make a prediction. Were going to get more than 60 votes to fund the military. When it gets to the house to my fiscal conservative things, i understand there are things in the nondefense spending aspect of this you dont like. I get that. But there are democrats in this body and there are democrats in the house. And they have a say. Thats just the way it is. So i will sleep well tonight. I may not sleep long. But i will sleep well knowing that the men and women in europe who men and women in uniform who suffered so much for so long are going to be better off in the morning. So a short night for me will be better days ahead for them. And all i can say to my colleagues, dont let these groups mislead you about what your job is. Your job as a member of the United States congress, in my opinion, is to defend this nation above all else. Without National Security, Social Security really doesnt matter. Without National Security, everything that we enjoy could be lost. So the primary role of the federal government, in my view, is to give the men and women in uniform who are all volunteers what they need to keep us safe. And come tomorrow, theyre going to have more. If it means we stay up late tonight, so be it. To the congressional leadership, thank you. To the president , thank you for being a commander in chief we desperately needed for the last eightplus years. To my colleagues, vote yes. You may get some criticism from people who run blogs, but the next time you see a soldier, you know that you voted right. I yield. A senator mr. President. The presiding officer the senator from south carolina. Mr. Graham thank you. I will be making a unanimous consent request here in a second. The reason im doing this, i think every hour that we go without funding the military, every day that we wait, the longer we continue this madness, the worse it is for those who fight a war we cant afford to lose. I think the congress and the words of general mattis have done more damage to the military than any enemy on the battlefield. So tonight im going to speak for you. I respect senator paul, hes a fiscal conservative, but when it comes to National Security, not so much. So he wants to do entitlement reform, god bless him. I ask unanimous consent notwithstanding rule 22 at 6 00 p. M. Today the senate vote on the motion to invoke cloture on the motion to incur on the house amendment to the Senate Amendment h. R. 645 with a further amendment. 8 00. If cloture is invoked, all postcloture time be yielded back and the senate vote on the motion to concur. The presiding officer is there objection . Mr. Paul mr. President. The presiding officer the senator from kentucky. Mr. Paul reserving the right to object. I think no one in this body more than i wants to continue funding the military. I have three young nef fews who fef fews nef fews who serve in the military and my dad served in the military. I think its important when we talk about having a strong country, we have to talk about solvency. There becomes a point in time that you borrow so much money that it becomes a threat to National Security. It was a former chief of staff who said that the biggest threat to our National Security is our debt. I think theres an irony in those who criticize president obama for trillion dollar deficits are now in the body saying we must pass this trillion dollar deficit. I think it is important that we have this debate. What ive been arguing for tonight is not a delay, not any kind of permanent delay. What ive been arguing for is an open debate. If were having all the spending, every last bit of spending has been dloo med together in one bill and there is no reform. If were not going to have an open debate, if its going to be take it or leave it, frankly, ill leave it. Because think my duty and what i told the American People was, i care. I care about how much debt we have acouple laid as a accumulated as a country and i think it is dangerous. Therefore i object. The presiding officer objection is heard. Mr. Graham thank you, mr. President. The presiding officer the senator from south carolina. Mr. Graham i know whats in it, 160 billion over the next two years that is absolutely necessary to rebuild a military thats in decline. If you dont believe me, ask the secretary of defense. Theres other administration in this bill, some of which i like, some of which i dont. I know this, the president of the United States says he will sign if if you will send it to him and the reason that were not going to send it to him right now is because senator paul has every right to object. This is a debate worth having. What is the most important thing for our country . You know, the deficit and debt are real. And to his credit senator paul is willing to do the hard things like change the age for retirement and mean test benefits. Thats how you get out of debt. What were doing tonight is putting money into the pipeline of the military that has suffered mightily sirns senator paul since senator paul and others voted for sequestration in 2011. Enough is enough. The day of reckoning is upon us. Every hour, every minute matters to me. So what i am trying to tell people back in south carolina, if youre worried about the debt and deficit, count me in. But to go to there, you have to do something that very few people will do, and senator paul is now in the category of the very few. On the debt and deficit, i will give him high marks, on National Security, not so much. He said on television that the best way to give the military a pay raise is to withdraw from afghanistan. Go over to afghanistan before you say that. Name one military commander that believes thats a rational approach to increasing military pay. You better pay them a lot more because they are going to be fighting for a lot longer if we leave now. And how much has 9 11 cost us . Its this kind of thinking that led to 9 11. The only people i know who like that idea are the taliban. They wish we would leave tomorrow. Isil is now present in afghanistan. I wish the world wasnt so dangerous and complicated, but it is. Have we learned nothing from radical islam . Leave them alone, theyll leave us alone doesnt work. Their goal is to restore their faith, to destroy our friends in israel, to come after christians, vej tairnians vegetarians, you name it, they will come after you. The only thing between them and us are the men and women in military who have suffered mightily. In the words of general mattis, no enemy has done more damage to our readiness than budget cuts plus continuing resolutions. Hes a nice man. Let me say it more direct. Congress has shot down more planes through budget cuts than any enemy could hope to. Congress has crippled the navy more than the chinese or the russians could ever hope to. Congress has made it harder for people to be with their families because the military is too small for the times in which we live. The times in which we live are the most dangerous since the 1930s. I will repeat again. The only reason that 3,000 of us died on 9 11 is that they couldnt find a way to kill more of us. If they can ever find a way, they will do it. As long as we have some soldiers in afghanistan, afghanistan is not likely to be the platform for the second 9 11. If you think this is over the top, talk to the people fighting the war. Go there yourself. I spent a lot of time in afghan prisons, Detention Centers looking at the enemy as a reservist and as a senator. I know exactly what they have in mind for us. Heres my pledge for those doing the fighting, were going to end this insanity. Were going to rebuild the military. As to President Trump, thank you so much. Thank you for understanding that debt and deficits are no excuse to leave the war fighter hanging out. What do you tell somebody who doesnt have the equipment they need to go to the fight . Well, the debt and deficit is the reason you dont get anymore. If we have to do have to raise taxes, whatever it is to make sure we can keep our military going, i will do it. I have come to conclude, like ronald reagan, the best way to help the economy is cut taxes, he cut taxes, rebuilt the military. Ronald reagan did not believe in this isolationist approach. He believed on the other side of that wall was an evil empire, and he stared it down. I came into the military in 1981. The first thing i got was a 25 increase in pay by p ronald raying by ronald reagan. I loved that guy from that day to know. Morale was low during the carter years, readiness was in decline. Were taking the gloves office, changing the rules of engagement. Were going to provide the equipment and training our men and women desperately need. Were going to set aside these budget cuts. To senator mcconnell, senator schumer, thank you for coming together. To those who object diswroact some object to some things in this bill, i get it. Whats more important . The debt and deficit or the war in which were in . Theres nothing in this bill if it went away tomorrow would get us out of debt. The debt were defending could be fixed in five minutes if we did entitlement reform. When i was 21 my mom died, when i was 25, my dad died, we moved in with my aunt and uncle. If it wasnt for my sister, we wouldnt have a would have had a hard time making. Im 62, not married. I dont have any kids. I make 175,000 a year. I will glatly give up some of my gladly give up my Social Security so people who need it more than i can have it. I will gladly pay more into medicare to keep it from falling apart. I dont need lectures about the debt and deficit. Were in a shooting war. Weve had more people die in training accidents than weve had in combat because we made them do too much too long without enough. Thats got to end. So i ask unanimous consent that notwithstanding rule 22 at 8 00 p. M. Today the senate vote on the motion to invoke cloture on the motion to concur on the house amendment to the Senate Amendment to h. R. 1892. If cloture is invoked, all postcloture time is yielded back and the senate vote on the motion to concur. The presiding officer is there objection . Mr. Paul mr. President. The presiding officer the senator from kentucky. Mr. Paul reserving the right to object. I think there are some interesting points when we look at our debt and we try to figure out how best to fix it. What weve been dealing with today is a spend r spending bill of 700 pages that deals with Discretionary Spending. This is military and nonmilitary spending, and its about onethird of what we spend overall. The other twothirds is called entitlement spending or mandatory spending. So often people will say, well, we cant cut the Discretionary Spending because were not doing anything to the twothirds of spending that is mandatory. This is medicare, medicaid, Social Security, food stamps, and some welfare programs. It is true they are growing at a rapid rate, growing at 6 , and the military and nonmilitary is growing at 2 . There is more of a problem on the entitlement side. Often you hear people come to the floor and they say, well, weve cut all of this Discretionary Spending, what we really need to do is entitlement. It is a bit of a canard. I have tried to push cost savings and theres never been a bill come to the floor. They say, im not going to cut this, but if you cutting is else, nothing comes to the floor. Twothirds of the spending is not cut. Entitlements have to be contained. Some of the entitlement problem is not the republican or democrats fault, it is a function that were living longer. When Social Security was created, the average Life Expectancy was 65 or less, now it is 80. You can see how the costs have gone up. The other thing that happened somewhere along the way when we were victorious in world war ii, we had a lot of babies for one reason or another, the baby boomers are retiring. There is an enormous cost and this has added to the entitlement cost. Of all the things we could do, i recommended that we raise the age of eligibility. People say you dont want people to get their Social Security at 65, well, its already 67, or medicare. If we leave things as is, medicare is 35 trillion short and Social Security is 7 trillion short. So you have 7 trillion short in Social Security and 35 trillion in medicare. You have to do something about the entitlements. The same grievance i have for the process here is the same grievance i have for entitlement reform. Ive be been ive been pushing it for six years here. The leadership on both side. I heard this. Theyll say, you can talk about it, but dont put it on paper. Many people are for entitlement reform until it comes to the specifics. You saw this a little bit in the deebility over obamacare, in the debate over obamacare, getting rid of entitlement or making it more cost effective, people freak out about that. If we were to look at entitlements, it would take some pressure off of military spending. I think it is important to put in perspective. We have doubled spending since 2001. Is and there is the question of national defense. Is it about having troops and armaments and go to where the attackers are or is the job of the military to be involved in every civil war around the world . Currently were involved in seven different wars. None of them have been voted on. Our Founding Fathers said that the executive branch was the most prone to war and therefore gave that power to congress yet we havent voted on any of the seven wars were involved with. Seven different wars at least. There have been people talking about authorizing war and they want us to be involved in 34 countries. We should have a more robust debate. We havent been able to force a debate on whether or not were at war for the last seven years. Ive been trying to get a vote on whether or not were the a war. We certainly appear to be at war. Were in yemen, somalia, niger, iraq, syria, afghanistan. Were in a lot of different places yet the senate has never voted on going to war. You say were going after those people who attacked us on 9 11, we killed those people. The people we are now embattled with are now sons and daughters of other people who might have the same ideology, but they are spread across the world. In yemen we have not declared war. We had a man raid and a navy seal died and a bunch of people in the village died. So we were told we have information to get the enemy. But you have to also look from the perspective of the people who live there. You say you would look from the perspective of our enemies . No, you have to understand your adversary, your enemy, their response to it if you ever want to figure out a final solution or some kind of ending of a war. So you have to think about when the man raid came at night with nightvision goggles to a small people. Lets say they were terrorists and someday might have come here. Well, we killed them. We also killed their wives and their children, too. And i dont fault our soldiers. Our soldiers go in the middle of the night and they are given a command. Its not the soldiers fault. Its ours for having an Unclear Mission or sending them into an impossible mission. There is no clearcut war. There are three or four different factions fighting in yemen. Heres the point i have been making. The neoconservatives are histrionic about i ran and supporting the houthi rebels. On the other side are sunni extremists who are supported by saudi arabia, which also supports sunni extremism across the world. But there is also a third party in yemen that is al qaeda and the arab peninsula. My fear is that when you go in, you say oh, the Iranianbacked Houthi rebels, we must kill them. Were going to support the sunnis from saudi arabia. You have to ask yourself, well, what about al qaeda . Do they get stronger or weaker . Heres my fear. We go into a civil war that nobody in america knows about, nobody can know up from down on, and we decide to get involved. What if the end result is chaos . What if out of that chaos arises al qaeda . What if the end result of us getting involved in the civil war is they all kill each other and we end up with a civil war in which al qaeda becomes stronger . Mr. Graham regular order. The presiding officer is there an objection to the request . Mr. Paul the interesting thing about it is you look at the war in yemen is that when you the presiding officer is there objection to the request . Mr. Paul yes, i object. The presiding officer objection is heard. Mr. Paul so as you look at the war in yemen and you go back and forth and say what are the results of getting involved in the civil war, it may be that al qaeda gets stronger . If you look at what happened in syria, the neoconservatives, they went crazy and said we should go we should support the moderates in syria that are fighting against assad. Well, it turns out the moderates in syria were al qaeda linked, isis linked jihadists. In fact, one group, the neocons said we must give weapons to, it turns out as soon as they got antitank weapons, they said this is a quote from the leaders, days after they got that, they said when were done fighting assad, not isis, assad, were going to attack israel to take back the golan heights. We did this and pumped millions of dollars and tons of weapons into syria, and it didnt work. Finally when we quit doing the funding and sending of weapons in is when actually the kurds rose up with our help and did a much better job. So the thing is that there is a perpetual war crowd who ignores the constitution and they will say we should be at war everywhere, and we dont need to vote on it. One thats a terrible insult to our forefathers and terrible insult to the Founding Fathers. But as you look at this and you look at the debate, its also incredibly draining to the treasury and often has unintended consequences. So as we got involved in the Syrian Civil War, the moderate, socalled moderates, many of them jihadists, many of them al qaeda the fiercest fighters were al qaeda linked, alnusra, they began pushing back on assad and you had sort of a chaos. Guess who arose in the chaos there. Isis. So really isis became a result of or at least accent waited by our intervention in syria, and then we had to go back in and fight isis. So heres the scenario that could happen in yemen. We decide that were going to go into yemen and were going to support the sunni extremists that the saudis are for against the houthi extremists that iran is for, but in the chaos perhaps al qaeda rises again and we have to get more heavily involved. So i think there is no end to the sort of idea that we are going to kill a terrorist group in the middle of the desert and in yemen and that somehow it wont be more. I will give you an example of how sometimes what we get involved with actually backfires and actually causes more terrorists to arise. So we have been feeding the saudi planes bombs. We probably sold them the bombers as well. We have been feeding the bombs, helping them with targeting. It turns out they have been targeting civilians. So they targeted a funeral procession. The saudi bombs that we gave them, we paid for, we gave them. They may have paid for them indirectly, but the saudi bombs that are u. S. Bombs, they ended up bombing in yemen a funeral procession and willing about 150 people that were unarmed and wounding 500. And so you say oh, well, i dont care what they think. I dont care what their response is. Well, think about what their response might be and then decide whether you care. And im not saying im sympathetic to the people. I dont know the people enough to be sympathetic or not, but i am aware of their response to being bombed in a funeral procession. My guess is that a thousand years from now, that the people and their families will through oral tradition remember the bombing of the funeral procession. Im not kidding you. I mean, these people have a long memory. The sunnis and the shia have been fighting for a thousand years. They remember the massacre at carballa. I promise you they still celebrate it when one side massacred the other. That was at least 500, 600 years ago, maybe more. So there is a long memory going on in this. We have to decide whether it is beneficial more beneficial to kill one of them than it is to the result of having ten new terrorists created by that. And the thing is theyre everywhere. There is a branch of islam that is radical, and it does wish our demise and wish us harm. We have to decide what the best way of containing this is, whats the best way of defending our country. And if you look at it, what i think you will find is that there have been a great deal of unintended consequences. One, an enormous drain on the treasury, but two, a lot of unintended consequences as far as sometimes its actually made it worse. I think our intervention in syria actually exacerbated the rise of isis. I think our intervention in yemen could well exacerbate our cause or allow the rise of al qaeda in the arab peninsula again. Its confusing when you ask what do the soldiers want . The only soldiers that are allowed to speak are the ones at the very top or those who are retired. Even at the very top, most generals who are still active cant give a full opinion. They may give it to the administration, but typically not like on television or to the public. But the average soldier really has never asked is never asked for his or her opinion. I understand that. I understand the role of the order of the military, and you have to take orders, but the interesting thing is as you meet the average soldier i promise you this is true. If people were able to do this and we were able to actually take a poll of thousands and thousands of ordinary soldiers, i think if you ask them do we still have a purpose in afghanistan, are you ready for another deployment, you have been on six deployments to afghanistan. Are you excited about the next deployment because freedom is going to ring out in afghanistan, they are going to be a great selfsufficient country and we will have won the war. I think most of the soldiers who have been there will actually tell you the opposite. And dozens and dozens and dozens of these soldiers have come home and actually are unclear now what our motives are. They are unclear what our goal is. Unclear what the end result is. We had two undersecretaries recently in the Senate Foreign relations committee. One was under secretary of defense, another under secretary of state. One of the senators asked them how many taliban are there. How many people are we fighting . It seems like a pretty honest question. And he said you dont dont tell me the exact number. About how many are we fighting . None of them knew. They said we have to wait until fighting season and then well find out. Any time you are in a situation where there is a fighting season and every year there is a fighting season, that indicates maybe this is a perpetual war thats not going to end, but neither of these guys know. There is 100,000 taliban or 10,000 taliban . Interestingly for the neocons who think this is going to end like hiroshima and nagasaki and there will be unconditional surrender, it will never end that way. Even secretary mattis when i have asked him will there ultimately be negotiation with the taliban . He says actually there will be. The under secretary of the department of defense in our meeting said that the goal is to push them towards negotiation. But heres the interesting thing about afghanistan. We have had as many as 100,000 troops. President obama, who ran on a message of having less war and less involvement and was mercilessly criticized by the republican side, actually escalated the war in afghanistan to a great degree. So president obama puts 100,000 troops into afghanistan, and what happens . The enemy melted away. Im sure we killed some, we won some battles, but they sort of melted away into our good ally super pac for the most part, but then they come back. People say we left too early. Well, how long are we going to stay . Are we going to stay forever . We put 100,000 troops in and it temporarily pacifies afghanistan. So as we have brought the troops down now, taliban control maybe a third, some say maybe half of the territory. And you say well, if we leave, the taliban will take over. Well, how long is it going to take until the afghans step up and fight for themselves . You know, one of the biggest problems we have had is actually infiltration of the afghan army and them actually shooting us on the base. Its ostensibly not the soldiers, people from the enemy that have infiltrated, but at the same time there has been such enormous corruption in there. When karzai ruled afghanistan, his brother was accused of being in the drug trade. A member of the house of representatives said we spent 8 billion eradicating their poppy crop. They had their best crop last year. Something is not working. He often comments that for 8 billion he could buy a lot of roundup and probably do a better job. But the thing is this, we arent doing a very good job. The mission doesnt seem to have the purpose it once had. Look, if i would have been here, i would have voted to go there after 9 11. We needed to disrupt the terrorist networks. We needed to punish them. We needed to make sure they couldnt attack us again. So it was a noble endeavor, but there has to be an end. So when we say that i think part of our problem is were unsure how to define victory so we never can have it. You know, there was a proposal to have a big military parade, and many of my friends who have served in the military were a little bit worried about that because the image has been somewhat an image we have seen more in, you know, totalitarian governments than in our own. We really havent had a habit of it. I was looking at a story that said we did have a big parade after we won the first iraq war and the troops did parade through. Im not completely against having a parade necessarily. But my suggestion was this why dont we bring the 14,000 troops home from afghanistan, declare victory, and have a parade . Because then there really would be something to celebrate, bringing those 14,000 troops home. I think if we were involved in less war, we could pay our troops better. We have an enormous amount of veterans retiring for 15, 16 years. We have never been at war constantly for 16 years. So we have a lot of veterans that have been wounded. So to take care of them is going to take enormous resources, and all of us want to provide those resources, but the thing is, if we continue in sort of this perpetual war mode, are we eventually going to run out of money where we cant even take care of our own veterans . So really what we are looking at tonight is were looking at a trilliondollar deficit. And i do think that that deficit really it does threaten our National Social national securi. I think our Foreign Policy threatens our National Security in the sense that there are things that we need to upgrade. We need to take care of our nuclear arsenal. We need to take care of our bombers. We need to have the most modern planes in technology, but we often cant have it because were involved in so many wars. People talk about the romance getting overextended. Were everywhere, and we always think somehow its our responsibility to take care of everything. And i think that in many parts of the world, particularly in afghanistan, they see they have been, you know, since genghis kahn, people have been going across afghanistan, conquering it, somebody new comes. Each time the Indigenous People have been Strong Enough to sort of ward off and eventually get rid of their attackers. Their attackers wore out. Its sort of the same way now. Some of the People Like Us being there. Some of them have been honest, upright, good people. Some have been crooks, you know. Karzai and his family were involved in the drug trade. The other problem is this. And this is a real problem that the other side fails to acknowledge is afghanistan is not really a country. Afghanistan is an area of central asia that westerners drew a line around. In the late teens or 20s. It might have been 1922. We draw this line around afghanistan. We call it a country, but its not really a country. The far western part speaks farsi or is related to the iranian people or has more in common. The northern tribes have more in common with the uzbeks and different nationalities to the north. The pashtuns are on both sides of the pakistan border. If you ask any of these disparate people who their allegiance is to, they will tell you primarily their allegiance is to their warlord or local elders or local council, but they didnt have much allegiance to kabul and never really have. They have never seen themselves as subservient to the capital. When we go there and say were going to create a nation, there isnt a nation that can be created because there arent people that want to be part of a nation. Iraq has the sunnishia split that is 1,000 years old. Youve got the kurds as well. Youve got a people that arent necessarily that comfortable under the yoke of one country. So as we try to force them in together and try to have them dominate, what you kind of found in a lot of these areas is that you end up having a strong man, and the strong man rules with an iron fist. This was Saddam Hussein who none of us have any love for him but the interesting thing about World Politics and balance of power is that when we went in and toppled Saddam Hussein, let freedom ring, we made the middle east more unstable because iran and iraq had fought a fierce eightyear war, bloody war and had come to somewhat of a standstill, but Saddam Hussein for all of his warts was somewhat of a counter balance to iran. So when iraq is toppled and Saddam Hussein is gone, you once again have a power vacuum and into that power vacuum al qaeda will fill, and did. And you upset the balance of power between iran and iraq, and now iran seems to be more threatening throughout the region. So as we look at our spending, without question there is part of the spending that isnt in this by, the mandatory spending. But for those who say were not going to do anything for the part of the bill were actually voting on and were okay with the 1 trillion deficit, i think there is a sort of a litmus test. Its a litmus test of hypocrisy. If they were against 1 trillion deficits for president obama, why is it okay to be a republican deficit of 1 tr l . I think there is no escaping the hypocrisy of that. I think there is no escaping also the dire warnings we heard. Almost all of the republicans, i venture to say every republican in the senate has made dire warnings about the debt and was critical of president obama. I was one of them. But we need to be honest enough to look in the mirror at ourselves when we are in charge of all three branches of government. You see, when the republicans took over the house, they said, well, dont have too high of expectations. We only control onethird of the government. Or one half of onethird of the government. Then we took over the senate and they said well, we still cant do anything because president obama is there. Now we have a republican president. I dont know what the excuse is going to be. Some say well, we must govern. And if by govern they mean act like the other side and run up huge deficits, guess its not what im interested in as far as governing. Governing is about making tough choices. And i think what has happened in our country because we basically have a printing press, a Federal Reserve that rele pen tpheurbs and pays replenishes and pays our debt, pwaoeuz buys our debt, is we have sort of a limitless notion of debt, and thats kind of whats been going on. We just keep adding to it, and we, to a large extent havent had a catastrophe. I think we were close in 2008, and some of that is related to accumulation of debt. I think you also will see some of that in the near future. Theres an unsettling notion out there with the stock market having risen so fast, so far so fast that youre seeing this jittery notion out there. And there is the worry about Interest Rates. Theres the worry that historically we funded this massive debt at about a 2 interest. What happens if we get back to more normalized rates of interest . So i think this is an important debate. Its important to get also back to the crux of the debate. What ive been arguing for tonight is that we have amendments. The most important job that congress does is to pass spending bills. Its the most important thing we do and the most important oversight that we have. And if were to do that oversight, we should have a debate. We should have amendments. But what were looking at is a bill that was decided in secret, 700 pages were printed last night at midnight, released at midnight and for the most part have not been read. And its very easy not to have a full understanding of a bill thats 700 pages or nearly 700 pages that comes forward. But within the midst of this we know a couple of things, that weve gotten rid of fiscal responsibility, there were spending caps put in place to try to control spending. For a couple of years, 2011, 2012, 2013, we were seeing a slow down in the rate of growth of spending. We heard everybody squawking about this sequester. They said the sequester is so bad but the interesting thing about the sequester is it wasnt a cut in spending. It was to slow down the rate of growth in spending. If you look at curves over a long period of time actually the rate of growth, you still had growth. You still had government growing but we slowed down the rate of growth. As revenue was picking up we were whittling away at least little bit at the annual deficit. Then the cries came and really actually mostly from my side. They said the military is being hollowed out. We have to have more military money. But the dirty little secret around here is you can only get more military money if you give the other side more welfare money. So we got military, warfare and welfare. Thats guns and butter. Its been going on a long time. So we spent a lot of money and both sides have now agreed to do this. The leadership has agreed to do this. But in this spending bill, what youre going to have is a looting of the treasury basically. When both sides are really culpable, both sides equally responsible for this bill and for the debt that will ensue. But the real question has to be, i think most importantly for my side, if you were against president obamas 1 trillion debts, 1 trillion deficits, why are you for 1 trillion deficits when you simply put a republican name on it . I think people are going to see through this. I think people will see, and youre already seeing some of the clips in the media, putting forward the comments in 2010 and 2011 about president obamas debt. And these are comments coming from republicans who are now for this bill. As they say in some parts of the country, you got some explaining to do. Thats the question. Are people going to look at this and say my goodness, is everybody out there just a partisan politician, that all they care about is party . And that the debts bad when its a republican debt but its not bad i mean its bad when its a democrat bad and not bad when its a republican debt . Thats sort of what were facing. So my recommendation is that we really look long and hard at this. And most of the senators will tell you, they say this is the last one. Im never voting for this again. These are terrible. This is a rotten way to run your government. I object to doing it this way but im going to vote for this one because i dont want the government to shut down. While i dont want the government to shut down, i also dont want to keep it open if were not going to reform it. Its a damned if you do, damned if you dont. We could have done better. You know, we could have moved forward with a responsible spending package that had amendments that we could all offer on the floor, an open amendment process and a debate. But we chose not to go that way and thats why were here. Some would say youre responsible for this. Its all your fault. If im responsible for drawing attention to the debt, so be it. Somebody has to do it. I didnt come up here to be part of somebodys club. I didnt come up here to be liked. I didnt come upl here here to just say, hey, guys, i want to be part of the club so im going to always vote whatever you tell me to do. Ive often voted with democrats. Ive often voted with republicans. Have bills, i probably have two dozen bills that ive cosponsored k democrats. But im also seen as one of the most conservative members of the senate. I think there is a way you can have bipartisanship but bipartisanship doesnt mean you have to give up on everything you believe in. Thats sort of what this spending bill is. Its a bipartisan spending bill that gives up everything republicans ostensibly believe in as far as deficit and spending. I will vote against this bill. I will continue to advocate that if they want to vote earlier, they can vote earlier as long as i get a vote on an amendment where we will have an open debate and an explicit vote that says are you for or against breaking the spending caps that we put in place. Thank you, mr. President. Mr. Tillis mr. President. The presiding officer the senator from north carolina. Mr. Tillis thank you, mr. President. Mr. President , i was talking with the pages earlier, asking them if they knew what was going on. And im not sure if people that are watching the debate know whats going on. Lets talk about mechanics of whats happening right now. We have got a measure before the senate right now that cures at 1 00 a. M. Tonight. At 1 00 a. M. Tonight were going to vote on something that we could vote on right now. The outcome is going to be something that my friend from kentucky will oppose, but its going to happen. Because the majority of republicans believe that funding the government is a pretty important thing to do. I am in a club. Im in a club that says we need to keep the government open. Im in a club that says that we dont need to be going and telling people theyre going to be furloughed tomorrow when we know darned well that at 1 00 a. M. Tonight were going to be back open for business. Im in a club that tells everybody that weve obligated ourselves to pay our bills and were going to pay our bills. I dont like this. I served as speaker of the house for four years. We paid our bills on time. We got our budgets done on time. We got regular order. I agree with all that stuff, but right now were in a position to where this is very simple. We can right now provide certainty to the thousands and thousands of people that expect government to be open, or we can play this game until 1 00 a. M. I for one think we should do it right now. But if we want to go through the theater and we want to go in 1 00 a. M. , thats going to be the end result. So employees out there, i apologize on behalf of people that cant give you certainty right now at 9 00. But at 1 00 a. M. Youll have it. And im sorry that we have to go through this process and we seem to go through it far too often. I also tell you Something Else that i have to speak briefly on, and i am going to offer a motion, mr. President. And its the whole idea of, that this concept of lets just withdraw from afghanistan. Ive been to baghdad. Ive been to the kurdish region in iraq and ive been to afghanistan. And ive heard people in iraq say the worst thing that we did was the precipitous withdrawal from iraq. Look, we can debate whether or not we should have gotten in there, but were in there. And now we have to figure out a way to exit that doesnt put iraqis at risk and american men and women who are serving this country. You dont do it through a precipitous withdrawal. Its irresponsible and i will guarantee you theres not a Single Person in uniform who would agree with you that thats the right way to protect our troops and protect the people of afghanistan and the many allies that we have there trying to take the fight to the taliban and al qaeda. Its irresponsible. So, yeah, i am a member of that club. Im a member of a club that says when the United States says were going to go in and protect a country and were going to try to get it on the right path and we stay there until we get it done and we do everything we can while were there to keep our men and women safe. And if thats the wrong club to be in, so be it. I happen to think its the club that every single one of us should be in and this is not the sort of discussion we should be having tonight. Tonight is about funding the government. Tonight is about actually having a great discussion about regular order, getting Appropriations Bills on the floor, having a debate like were going to have on immigration next week. But now is not the time to have this discussion. We have to decide what do you want to be as a u. S. Senator . Do you want to be a senator that wants to make a point or you want to make a difference . You know what . I dont see how points alone make a change in america. What makes a change in america is when we ratify a bill or we get a bill out of here, we send it to the president and it becomes law. If all i do is a speech on the floor and it doesnt produce an outcome, time after time after time, then you may want to rethink about how youre trying to get your point across because what happens when you dont produce an outcome here . You havent convinced 60 senators or 51 senators that your idea is good enough for them to support. Go to work, build a coalition, make a difference. You can make a point all you want. But points are forgotten. Theres not a whole lot of history books about the great points of the american senate. There are history books about the Great Results of the american senate. The great bills like the tax reform bill, the other things that weve done in this session. But not points. People arent here to talk about a good point. Theyre here to talk about a good outcome. How do good outcomes happen . When we take votes like the vote we should be taking at 9 00 tonight. We may take it at 1 00 a. M. Im a night person. Im all right with that. But we should be taking it now. And so, mr. President , i ask unanimous consent that not withstanding rule 22 at 9 00 p. M. Today the senate vote on the motion to invoke cloture on the motion to concur in the house amendment to the Senate Amendment to h. R. 1892 with the further amendment. Further, that if cloture is invoked, all postcloture time be yielded back and the senate vote on the motion to concur. The presiding officer is there objection . Mr. Paul mr. President. The presiding officer the senator from kentucky. Mr. Paul reserving the right to object, the question is often asked if not now, when . Were often told now senators is not the time to discuss this. If we can do this through committee in an orderly fashion theres always going to be a better day. But the day never comes. The vast majority of the senators will admit to you that the way we do our budgeting and the way we do our spending around here is abominable. Its an abomination and most people are opposed to it. Yet they come to the floor and say lets keep doing it the same way we have always done it. So until someone takes a stand, until the majority of us will say no, enoughs enough, it will continue to be the same thing. The promises of making it different in the future are somewhat of an illusion or a false promise that just never gets here. Four times in 41 years have we done the right thing where we did the individual appropriation bills. Four times in 41 years. So what i have been proposing this actually would have been a nice thing to vote on tonight, too, but because its a closed debate, there wont be any votes. Its kind of confusing. People come down saying we want to vote, but they dont want to vote on anything they dont agree with. They dont want to have any kind of open amendment process where we could have votes. One of the things that i have been interested in putting forward is something called the shutdown prevention act. This is something i have put forward that says you know what, if after a year of being able to put forward your Appropriations Bills, you havent done your job, that the spending for your department will go down by 1 . Mr. Tillis mr. President , regular order. Mr. Paul as it goes down by 1 , that would force you to do your job. The presiding officer does the senator object . Mr. Paul i object. The presiding officer objection is heard. The senator from north carolina. Mr. Tillis thank you, mr. President. I dont believe the gentleman from kentucky he did object to the motion . Well, mr. President , thank you. Just one brief comment. Thank you for presiding. I was supposed to be up there 30 minutes ago, and i will be up there in a couple of minutes. I also want to take a moment to talk about the great opportunity we have next week to pass immigration reform. The great opportunity that we have to fulfill the promise to the daca population of some 1. 8 million that the president has proposed we provide a path to citizenship. Its a proposal that has 25 billion allocated over ten years, with maybe 2. 5 billion to 5 billion appropriated in the bill that we will take up or various amendments that we will take up next week. The first pillar is daca. We have satisfied that, and i believe we have it pretty close to done. On border security, were done. Because the president himself has said its not a monolithic wall over 2,300 miles. Its not even a wall over half that territory. Its about maybe a thousand miles. And a thousand miles of wall also include some walls that are secondary. When you see a milelong wall, it is actually two walls because there is a secondary barrier. Were also talking about technology and infrastructure so that we can start working on the opioid epidemic. Tons and tons, millions of doses of heroin, fentanyl and other drugs come across our border every month. By implementing border security, a lot of people think this is just about preventing people from crossing the border. This is about securing our nation. And fortunately, many of my colleagues on the other side of the aisle recognize that. They think that the proposal, many of them, i dont know that all of them do, but many of them believe that the department of Homeland Security and the Border Patrol have put together a great strategy that makes sense. I have always criticized last year, we dont need to build a wall across all 2,300 miles, but we need security. We need to know whats coming into this country. Whether people are crossing the border illegally or whether they are pumping hundreds and hundreds and millions of doses of poison into the thousands of people that die every year of opioids. In my state of north carolina, more people die from opioid overdoses every year than interstate accidents. Over 1,400. So im glad to know that pillar one, a path to citizenship for some 1. 8 million daca recipients, has an opportunity to become law, to make that difference i was talking about, not the point. 25 billion to secure the border. Now were having a great discussion about whats called the diversity lottery. Its about 50,000 visas every year that are allocated in a random way today that makes no sense, in a way that actually makes sure that underrepresented countries have an opportunity to come here. Maybe some 15,000 a year. Many from subsaharan africa. And the other ones can be used to draw down a backlog for people who have been trying to get into this country for as long as 17 years. We talk about we want more people immigrating, but the reality is if you get in line today through the legal processes, it could take you 10 to 17 years to get through the process. Were trying to figure out a way through that allocation of the diversity lottery to make that half the time. So people that have been waiting 17 years, we can clear out the queue and others in the queue will never get that long. That nine years in total. I think were making great progress here. So the last thing we have to work season is chain migration or family unification reunification. Today about 72 of the 1. 1 Million People that come to this country every year are through what they call a family petition. So they are people that may have some relationship here. They could be a brother, a sister, a mother, a father. And thats important to do, but its also important for us to take a look at what our economy needs, what America Needs to make sure that we have the resources and the people that best provide a great platform for the americans, and we have to fight for all the americans that we have to fight hard for in this country. So there are simple provisions. Something like if you have an advanced degree, maybe we should allocate some of what is going into just purely family reunification into getting engineers, doctors, scientists, highly educated people who want to come and live in this country. At the other end of the spectrum, we need people of various skills, with a Community College certification, maybe. A welder. A technical drawer. The number of things that you can get in a Community College. I know this because i went to a Community College, actually two of them. And there are a number of skills that you get over two years that you may have gained in a foreign country or you may want to come here and complete the degree and then stay here. Thats all were talking about in terms of adding a merit component to what right now is just purely random or purely familybased immigration. I think there is a way to bridge that gap. I know people are kind of drawing their swords on certain issues, but lets look at what were trying to do. Number one, to promote immigration to this country, but number two, make sure that some of that is very much focused on the constant needs that we have in this nation to have the economy grow. And by the way, if the economys growing, theres going to be a greater demand for resources and people to support that growing economy. So i think at the end of the day, if we do this, it could have the effect of actually promoting a case for more negligence, more Legal Immigration over time. I want to thank senator durbin and senator graham, a number of people who have really spent years trying to solve this problem. By the same token, i would tell them you have spent years trying to solve the problem with a single solution, and it hasnt worked. It hasnt worked in a republican administration, it hasnt worked when president obama was in power. It didnt even work when you didnt need a single republican vote to vote for comprehensive negligence reform. There was a time here because no republican voted for obamacare, so there was clearly a time here that the table should have been set for whatever Immigration Solution you wanted in the same way that the table was set for whatever Health Care Solution president obama wanted. I dont begrudge him for taking advantage of the opportunity, whether or not i disagree with the policy, but its very telling if that solution which started back in 2001 couldnt make it through a sympathetic republican president s administration, if that legislation couldnt make it through after 2008 with a clearly sympathetic president obama administration, why on earth would we simply propose the same thing thats failed for 17 years . When were so close to coming up with something this balanced, this compassionate. I have all kinds of people mad at me because i support a path to immigration for 1. 8 million. I wear that as a badge of honor. Its the right thing to do. Its also the right thing to fix the visa lottery and work on migration that still maintains roughly the same numbers but does it in a responsible way that also protects the interests of the American People, the people who are here today, and to create a better environment for the people who want to move here tomorrow. So, mr. President , again, thank you for standing in my place for a moment. Im going to yield the floor, and i will come up to the chair. Mr. Tillis mr. President. The presiding officer the senator from north carolina. Mr. Tillis mr. President , i ask unanimous consent that not withstanding rule 22 at 9 30 p. M. The senate vote on the motion to invoke cloture on the motion to concur in the house amendment to the Senate Amendment to h. R. 1892 with further amendment. Further, that if cloture is invoked, all postcloture time be yielded back and the senate vote on the motion to concur. The presiding officer is there objection . Mr. Paul mr. President. The presiding officer the senator from kentucky. Mr. Paul reserving the right to object, i think its interesting as we followed the debate this evening and people watching at home may be interested because it kind of turns on inside baseball things and youre not sure what to know or believe. One side says theyre ready to vote and the other side says were ready to vote. Thats the way its kind of been except for one side wants to vote only on what they want to vote on and they have agreed to beforehand. The other side wants an open debate where we would have amendments. Thats the side im on. Ive been arguing all day basically to have open amendments and i want to do an amendment that would say that basically we should obey the spending limits. Instead of having a 1 trillion debt, we should obey our spending limits. So it is about open debate. It is about voting. Im all in favor of voting. Im in favor of voting right now. And ive offered the other side a 15minute vote on containing or retaining the spending caps. And so i object because i think there should be amendments and there should be sufficient debate on the subject. Owe he