You saw kentucky senator rand paul coming out and members of the Senate Republicans had their weekly conferences. Democrats, to but on the republic inside their meeting with President Trump for the first time up on capitol hill for one of these tuesday mornings. Were expecting comments from leaders shortly and the senate gaveling in momentarily. Cant bring those, live to you on cspan2 we are streaming them live online at cspan. Org. We will take you back to the next senate floor. Live coverage of cspan. Org. The presiding officer the senator from kentucky. Mr. Paul are we in a quorum call . The presiding officer the senate not in a quorum call. Mr. Paul okay. Id seek recognition. The presiding officer the senator from from kentucky. The senator recognized. Mr. Paul we currently have a 20 trillion debt, and you might ask yourself whose fault is it . Republicans or democrats . The easy answer is, both. Both parties are equally spock, equally both parties are equally responsible, equally culpable, equally responsible of ignoring the problem and allowing our country to rot from the inside out. This year the debt will be 700 billion. The deficit will be 700 billion for just one year for our country. 700 billion. We borrow about 1 million a minute. Under george w. Bush, the debt went from 5 trillion to 20 to 10 trillion. Under president obama, it went from 10 trillion to 20 trillion. Its doubling under republicans and democrats. So right now were in the midst of another spending frenzy. Now, people will say, well, were spending the money for something good. Were going to help those in puerto rico and those in texas and those in florida. My point is theyring about to spend money to help someone in need. Maybe we should take it from another area of spending thats less in need. I think that just simply borrowing it even for something that you can argue is compassionate is really fool hard hi did i and may make us weaker as a nation. Admiral mullin put it this way. He sad the numberone threat to our National Security is our debt. In fact, most people who follow world politics, while we do have problems around the world, dont really see us being invaded anytime soon by an army or an armada. But people do see the burden of debt. So what we have before us is a bill, 36 billion. Much of its going to puerto rico and texas and florida. My request is very simple we should pay for it. About a month ago we 15 billion for the same purposes. We are set in all likelihood to have over 100 billion spent on these hurricanes. I simply ask that we take it from some spending item that seems to be less pressing. I mean, we could go through a list of hundreds and hundreds of items, but one thing i would think that we could start with why dont we quit sending money to countries that burn our flag . So if you are a country and you are saying, death to america, burning the american flag, maybe we shouldnt give you any money. We give money to pakistan, we trade and sell arms with most of the middle east that dont like us, and we do this with borrowed money. We dont even have the money were sending. But week make the burden a little but we can make the burden a little bess if we said, you know what . Lets dont give any known countries that 30, any country us that that hates us, any country thats burning our flag. A woman has been on death row for five years for being a christian. She went to the well to draw water and the women began chanting, death, death to the christian, as she was being beaten and pummeled on the ground and thought she was going to die, the police finally show up ax and they thought they were there to reserve could you her. They were there to imprison her. That was five years ago. Not easy being christian in the middle east. In pakistan, there was a doctor who helped us to get bin laden. His name is alfred. He helped us get information that helped us to target bin laden and finally get this great enemy of our country. The pakistanis put him in jail for helping us. The pakistanis help us one day and stab us in the back the next dame the taliban when they were defeated under president obama, when he put 100,000 troops in there they skoshried off to pakistan. They have a sanctuary and then come back. I think we ought to think twice about sending money to countries that burn our flag, sending money to countries that persecute christians, sending money to countries that frankly dont even like us. We spend about 30 billion helping other countries. With you know, if you were going to help your well, you know, if you were going to help your neighbor, if your neighbor was without food, would you first feed your children if you had a little money left oh, help the children next left over, help the children next door . Would you go to the bank and borrow the money to give to somebody . Would that be compassionate or foolhard did i . Is it compassion did compassiow known give to someone else . So people here will say they have great compassion and want to help the people of puerto rico and the people of texas and the people of florida. But notice they have great compassion with someone elses money. Ask them if theyre giving any known puerto rico. Ask them if theyre going give to tex texas. Ask them what their doing to help their fellow man. Youll find that its easy to be compassionate with someone elses money. It is not only compassion with someone sells money, it is compassion with money that doesnt exist, money thats borrowed. Of the 20 trillion we owe, china holds 1 trillion of that. And all this might be said and you might say, we just have to help people. Youre worrying too much and you have to talk about details. All the money is being wellspent. If you look back at money thats been spent before in disasters, guess what . People replace everything, including things that werent broken. I remember in katrina a family that was hold up in a beachside resort for weeks, taxpayer money. They couldnt put them up across the street for about 60 or 50 a night. They were staying in a 400anight beachside resort with government money, with fema money. I think we have to lowincome at how well i think we have to look at how well government spends money. You want an example of how well government spend money . Last year we had some great signs there was a lot of great taxpayerfunded signs going on. They wanted to study whether or not Neil Armstrong when he set foot o on the money, when he sad one small step for mankind or whether he said one small step for a man . So it was either one small step for man or one small step for a man. They want node if the preposition a was in there. They took some money to study autism and they studied Neil Armstrongs statement when he landed on the moon. 700,000. In the n. I. H. Last year they spent 2 million study being whether or not studding whether or not if someone in front of you if swung knees on the nude food are you more or less likely to eat the food thats been sneezed on . I think we could have polled the audience on that. They spent 300,000 studying whether japanese quayle are more sexually promiscuous on cocaine. I think we could hassume yes. This kind of thing goes on here year after year. You think those are aberrations. Thats new. William proxmire was a senator, a conservative democrat back in the day, and he used to do something called the Golden Fleece award. He would put out these awards. They sound exactly the same as the stuff were finding now. We spent money studying the gambling habits of ugandans. Weve studied how to prepare the philippines for climate change. Were studying around the world with money we dont have. If you wanted to make the argument were running a surplus, were a great country, we are going to help all the other countries of the world, i would actually listen to you if we were running a slums but were not. Were running a 700 billion debt. We borrow 1 million a minute and we got a lot of rich people here. We ought to ask these rich senators, what are you giving puerto rico . What are you giving texas . Instead theyre giving your money, really not even giving your money. Theyre giving money they borrowed. So what am i asking . Not that we dont do this. What im asking is that why dont we take it from something we shouldnt be doing. Or why dont we fry to conserve . So if you decided you wanted to help the people next door, you might say you know im not going to the movie theater. Im not going to go to the broadway play. I am not going to the nfl game. I am going to save money by cutting back on my expenses so i can help the people next door that are struggling. But you wouldnt go to the bank and ask for a loan to help people. Thats not the way it works. Unless youre a government and then common sense goes out the window and you just spend money right and left because youre compassionate. You have avenue got a big heart because you have the ability of the Federal Reserve to print up more money. But there are ultimately ramifications to profligate spending. We are approaching that day. So say that you some say that you get there when your debt is at 100 of your g. D. P. Weve now surpassed that. We have about a 17 trillion, 18 trillion economy and a 20 trillion debt. Is it getting any better . Have we planned on the one hand fixing it at all . There is floss fixing. Is one party better than the other . No, they are equally bad. They are terrible. One sides is at least honest they dont care about the debt. The other side are just hypocrites because they say, oh, were going to win the election by saying were conservative, we care about the debt, but they too. The debt gets worse under both parties. Voters need to scratch their head and say, maybe theyre both equally bad with regard to the debt. Most of the debt is driven by this. Its driven by mandatory spending. What is spanned mandatory spending . These are the entitlements. Medicare, medicaid,food stamps, Social Security. This is driving the debt. Its on autopilot so when we talk about a budget, nobody is talking about doing anything about the spending on autopilot. Why . Its risky to talk about reforming entitlements because everybody is getting one. If we dont, though, were consigned to more and more debt, and ultimately i think we are consigned or resigned to a time in which the currency may well be destroyed and the country could be eaten from the inside out through this massive debt. Last week, we voted on a budget, and from appearances, you would say, well, the republicans put forward a conservative budget, had 6 trillion worth of entitlement savings. In the first year, 96 billion worth of entitlement savings. But ask one republican, ask any republican in congress where is your 96 billion worth of entitlement spending coming, most of them didnt even know its in the budget, but its in the budget to make it look good and make it look like it balances over ten years, and yet there is no plan to do anything to entitlement spending. There is no plan to do any entitlement savings. There is no bill in committee, and no bill will come forward. So i introduced an amendment to the budget, and i said, well, if youre going to cut or save or somehow transform the entitlements into responsible spending where we spend what comes in and we dont borrow, why dont we put rules or reconciliation instructions into the budget to tell people, yes, were honest and were sincere and were actually going to cut spending. Do you know how many people voted for it . There are 52 republicans. We had five. So they say they are for spending cuts, but they are not really because nobody will vote to give the instructions to actually do the spending cuts. If you were to eliminate all of the budget that we typically vote on, the budget that we typically vote on is called discretionary spending. This is the military and the nonmilitary. If you were to eliminate all of that, you still dont balance the budget. Thats a third of the budget. You cant even balance the budget by eliminating a third of it. You have to tackle the entitlements. And yet, nobody has the wherewithal, guts, or the intestinal fortitude to actually do it. Now, we did have a big fix once upon a time in the Social Security. In 1983, president reagan and tip oneill, republican and democrat, came together to say we were out of money and we gradually raised the age of Social Security to 67. Is anybody happy to do that . Is anybody jumping up and down and saying i want to wait longer to get Social Security . No, nobody is, but if we dont do it, there will be no Social Security because were destroying the system. Social security pays out more than it brings in. Once upon a time, it was the other way. We used to have about 16 workers for every retiree. Now we have about a little bit less than three workers for every retiree. Families got smaller. So when people ask me how come Social Securitys running a deficit, how come medicare is . Whose fault is it, republicans or democrats . Really, a little bit of both, but its also the fault of your grandparents for having too many kids. We had a whole bunch of baby boomers born, and theyre all retiring, but the baby boomers had fewer kids, and the baby boomers kids had even fewer kids, so its a demographic shift. But if we put our head in the sand and do nothing, the debt will continue to accumulate. Were accumulating debt by the billions and billions of dollars every year. This year, 700 billion. And its estimated that it will be close to or may exceed a trillion dollars next year. During president obamas tenure, we had deficits of over a trillion dollars in several years. Over an eightyear period, we actually increased the debt over a trillion dollars a year. It was a 10 trillion increase in the debt in the eight years of president obama. If we look at whose fault it is, republican or democrats, its both, but ill tell you the way it works around here. People say it is noble. You are enlightened to compromise. So heres the compromise you get. You heard that four of our brave young men died in niger the other day. Most of the people didnt even know we were there, to the tune of a thousand soldiers. But the people once they heard about it, the hawks once they heard about it, they said oh, we need more. They didnt know a thousand were there, but they said we need more there. We need more people in niger. Known has bothered to have a no one has bothered to have a debate about what the war is about in niger, whether we should send our brave elian there. Our Founding Fathers said that was the first principle. The first principle of going to war, the initiation of war, the declaration of war is to be done by congress. They specifically took that power away from the president. Its not just about funding, although thats another way we control war, but the primary way we control whether we enter into a war is the declaration of war. Its under article 1, section 8. This is where the congressional powers are laid out, and people say oh, thats an anachronism. We dont obey that anymore. They certainly dont, but it was never removed from the constitution. They just quit and began ignoring this. How important was this to our Founding Fathers . Madison wrote this madison said that the executive is the branch of government most prone to war. Therefore, the constitution with studied care granted the power of war to the legislature. This wasnt just madison who said this. It was jefferson, washington, adams. The whole panoply of Founding Fathers said that war was to be initiated by congress. Weve had no vote, no debate, and most of the members didnt know we were in this part of africa, and yet, here we are with the kneejerk reaction by those on the right typically but some on the left, is we need more. We wouldnt have lost these four lives had we had 10,000 troops in a country that none of us knew we were going to be at war there. None of us fully have had debated who the parties are to the war, and yet were going to be at war there now. And so the kneejerk reaction is that we are to expand our role in this war in africa. I had my staff ask a question how many troops do we have in africa . Nobody here knows. We looked it up. We found out its 6,000. We have 6,000 troops in africa. You knew you were at war in iraq and syria and afghanistan and libya, but we didnt really know we had 6,000 troops in africa. That would include libya, but 6,000 troops are in africa. The point of it is when you get back to the debate that were talking about, the budget, is that there is a great deal of expenditures to have troops in 100someodd countries. So we literally have troops in over 100 countries. We have 6,000 troops currently in africa. Its expensive. So how do you convince the other side of the aisle to pay for it . Typically, the republican side of the aisle says katie bar the door, well spend whatever it takes and then some on the military. The democrats say well, what about welfare . We need more welfare. So then they tell you to compromise is noble, to be enlightened, to be pragmatic, to compromise is what we should shoot for. We should work with the other side. So thats what happens. There has been a bipartisan consensus for maybe 50, 60, 70 years now, and that is to fund everything. If the right wants warfare, the left says we must get more welfare. If the left wants welfare, the right says we have to have more money for warfare. So its guns and butter. It began in an aggressive way during the vietnam war, but its proceeded apace. We continue to spend money like theres no tomorrow, but both parties are guilty. Its the right and the left. Its compromise thats killing this country. Its the compromise to spend money on everything for everyone whether youre from the right or the left. But, you know, there could be another form of compromise. We could say that we wish to compromise in the reverse direction. We wish to say that, look, maybe for the republicans, National Defense is more important than welfare, and maybe for the democrats, welfare is more important than warfare, but maybe the compromise could be, you know what . We dont have enough money for either one. Maybe the compromise could be well spend a little bit less on each. You know what . We did that recently. When i first came up here, was elected in the sort of Tea Party Tidal Wave that was concerned about debt, something was passed that was called a sequester, and guess who hated it. All the bigspending republicans and all the bigspending democrats. They couldnt pass out their goodies and favors enough because there was some restraint. And you say well, i heard the sequester was terrible. I saw people at school, and i saw people in my town saying the sequester wasnt giving them enough money. The sequester was actually a slowdown in the rate of growth of spending. And this is why yo