Trade Act of 2015

Floor Speech

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. PAUL. Mr. President, the number one threat to our country's future is our debt. The number one threat to our national security is our debt. This deal gives the President the power to borrow unlimited amounts of money. This deal represents the worst of Washington culture. The left and the right have come together in an unholy alliance to explode the debt. The left gets more welfare, the right gets more military contracts, and the taxpayer is stuck with the deal.

This is a bipartisan busting of the budget caps that will further indenture our next generation. I promised the voters of Kentucky to oppose deficits, to oppose budgets that don't balance, and to spend only that which comes in. I will not give this President any power to borrow unspecified amounts of money. Our debt now equals our entire economy. Not raising the debt ceiling means we would be forced to only spend what comes in--also known as a balanced budget. I could accept that. But I can also accept a balanced budget that brings us to balance over 5 years. The debt threatens us like never before, and now is the time to take a stand. I have traveled far and wide across America. I have not met one voter outside of DC who supports adding an unlimited increase to the debt ceiling.

I hope my colleagues will listen and will listen very clearly to their constituents before voting for this terrible, rotten, no-good deal. The time is now to take a stand. The time is now to say enough is enough--no more debt. The very foundation of our country is threatened by the addition of debt. This is precisely the time when we should be using the leverage of raising the debt ceiling to exact budgetary reforms.

In 2011, that is exactly what we did. We had a compromise that worked in the right direction. We had a compromise that said we will set limits on both the military and the domestic spending. Instead, what we have today is an unholy alliance of right and left. We wonder why the deficit grows no matter which party is involved, no matter which party is in charge. The deficit continues to grow because, frankly, many are not serious about reducing the debt. Many up here are serious only about increasing spending for their sacred cow.

The true compromise that is necessary in America is for both right and left to say enough is enough, to say that the particular interests they have in spending money is hurting the country. It is time for the right to say: You know what; the country is not stronger by going further in debt. The country actually, I believe, is weaker. We do not project power from bankruptcy court.

I think the time is now. Enough is enough. We shouldn't be adding more debt. The left needs to acknowledge this as well. The left may say this is for humanitarian purposes, we want to help people. I don't doubt their motives, but I do doubt whether you can help people from bankruptcy court. I think we are weakening our country.

One of the reasons why we have been able to help so many people in our country is that we are the richest, most humanitarian country in the history of mankind. In the year 2014 alone, we gave away nearly $400 billion in private charity in this country. I fear that will not continue to last. I fear that as this deficit mounts, as the debt mounts, they will drag us down.

Already some economists estimate that we are losing a million jobs a year because of the burden of debt. I think what we need to do is to have compromise in Washington, but the compromise needs to be that the right and the left need to say we don't have enough money at this point. Some say we need to have military readiness. But this week in the Armed Services Committee, they talked about $20 billion of waste in one program within the military. We have had Secretaries of the Cabinet Departments and a Secretary of the Navy saying: You know what; we can save money within the Pentagon. But if we keep adding to the top line, if we keep adding more money, if we keep spending good money after bad, we are going to bankrupt the country.

I hope my colleagues will listen to their constituents, because I have been in 40 of the 50 States and I have yet to meet a single voter who says: Keep adding to the debt; keep spending more money.

What I find is the opposite. They say: Work together to save the country. Work together not to add more debt.

This debt ceiling vote does something that is unprecedented. It doesn't even add a certain amount to the debt. It adds an unspecified amount. Over the next year or year and a half, we will add as much debt as can be crammed into the budget, as much money as can be spent. There will be no limit. We are giving an unspecified amount of borrowing power to the President. I don't care whether it is a Democratic President or a Republican President. It is unconscionable to give unlimited borrowing authority to the President.

As we contemplate this decision, we need to think beyond the short term. We need to think beyond the short term of self-constituencies on either side of the aisle and say enough is enough. We don't have the money. Let's take a stand now and try to reform the process before it is too late.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. PAUL. Mr. President, the No. 1 threat to our country's future is our debt. The No. 1 threat to our national security is our debt. When Admiral Mullen was asked about the debt in the recent past, he said that it is indeed the debt that is the No. 1 threat to our national security.

This deal gives the President the power to borrow unlimited amounts of money. This is extraordinary in the sense that we are not to specify how much money the President can borrow; we are to allow the President to borrow unlimited amounts of money.

This deal represents the worst of Washington culture. One of the colloquial ways of putting this is guns and butter. What this deal does is allow one side to have more guns and one side to have more butter. It is the old proverbial guns and butter that is bankrupting this country.

Often people want to point fingers in Washington and out in the campaign hustings and they want to say, well, it is Democrats' fault or it is Republicans' fault. What this bill shows is it is really the fault of both parties. There is an unholy alliance in Washington between right and left, frankly, and it is the guns and butter caucus. On the right they say we need more money for military. On the left they say we need more money for welfare. So they get together, there is a secret handshake, we spend more money on everything, and the country is going bankrupt as a consequence.

We borrow $1 million every minute. This threatens the very foundation of our country. If we ask people--and I think if we ask people throughout America, Republican, Democrat, or Independent--if we ask them whether or not it is a good idea to continue to borrow money without reforming what we do, to continue borrowing money at an alarming rate, they would say enough is enough; we should spend only what comes in.

Now, some have said we shouldn't negotiate over something like raising the debt ceiling, that it might potentially cost us our bond rating. But the interesting thing is that in 2011 when we had this discussion, what we found was that actually our bond rating went down, and the S&P bond rating agency said that it went down because we failed to enact meaningful budgetary reform.

Mr. President, could we have order.

The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senate will be in order.

Mr. PAUL. Often people wonder why the deficit gets worse, either under Republicans or under Democrats. Under the previous Republican administration, the debt doubled. It went from $5 trillion to $10 trillion. Under this administration, it will go from $10 trillion to about $20 trillion, although we don't know the exact number because we are now letting the President borrow an unspecified amount of money. But we are on target to add more debt under this President than all of the previous Presidents combined.

People ask: Why does this go on? Where are the fiscal conservatives? I guess I would maintain that there are very few fiscal conservatives on either side of the aisle. Both sides of the aisle have what I would call sacred cows. On the right they have the sacred cow of military contracts. And then the interesting thing is they say: We don't have enough money to properly defend the country.

But the interesting thing is that when you look at military spending, we actually spend more on our military than the next 10 countries combined. Think about it. Russia, China, and eight more countries--add up all of their military spending, and it still doesn't equal what we spend on the military.

Since 9/11 we have increased our military spending by 50 percent. How do we do that? How do we get the money for the military? It only happens by a compromise with the other side. The other side will sometimes resist excessive spending in the military, but they say: You know what; we will give it to you if you give us what we want. So the left wants more domestic spending; the left wants more welfare. The right wants more military spending. So what is the unholy alliance? What is the great compromise? This is being touted as a bipartisan compromise. Well, it is a bipartisan busting of the budget caps. It is a bipartisan compromise that is ruining the country.

The No. 1 threat to our national security is the debt. So for those who say that we just need more military spending and somehow we will be safer, I think we are actually becoming less safe as we get further and further mired in debt. We need to seek something like the opposite of this compromise. We could have compromise, but I think the compromise would be that the right acknowledges that we don't have an unlimited treasury and that we actually are making the country weaker by hollowing the country from the inside out through this massive debt that we are accumulating.

I don't think you project power from bankruptcy court. To the left, I would say: If your goal is humanitarian, if your goal is to help people who are in need, if your goal is to help the poor and help those who can't help themselves, we are doing a disservice to the country if we are going further into bankruptcy to do so. We have to understand what the contrast is.

We have to understand the contrast between our country and other countries. One of the great contrasts and one of the things about America that allows us to be the most humanitarian nation probably in the history of man is this engine of capitalism. The engine of capitalism, however, I think, is being brought down. The engine of capitalism is being burdened by this enormous anchor of debt.

I think we really should be concerned about whether we can continue to do the things we do to help our fellow man if we are burdened by this debt. So I think both the right and the left mistake their purpose here in the short run by saying: Well, we are going to get what we want--more money, more money, more money. Frankly, we don't have any money. We are borrowing money at $1 million every minute.

There has been much discussion as I traveled around the country. There has been much discussion about education. People say they want free education for everyone. They say we should just give education to everyone. Well, the interesting thing is this: Do you know to whom we give free education? We give $15 million of free education to foreign students just for community college. The things that go and riddle through the government of what we are spending money on and the reason we never get reform is because we are doing this unholy compromise when we are not going through item after item after item of waste.

I will give you a couple of examples of the waste that exists in government. We spent $800,000 last year in Afghanistan on a televised cricket league--a televised cricket league for Afghanistan, $800,000. They don't even have televisions in Afghanistan. Why does this go on? Why are we never able to fix any of these problems? Because of the unholy compromise between the right and left that skirts these issues and continues to blithely go on.

We do not self-examine what is wrong with government because we bundle government into one large continuing resolution in which there is no self-examination of waste.

We spent $150,000 on yoga classes for Federal employees. We spent $200,000 last year studying whether Japanese quail are more sexually promiscuous when they are on cocaine. The American public is outraged at the waste.

Even within the Defense Department we have had hearings just this week that said we wasted $20 billion on one program. This program is called Future Combat Systems. So we waste money, but nobody is fixing it. The American people are asking themselves: Why does it go on? Why is there never any reform? Why? Because there is an unholy alliance between the right and the left. Everybody gets what they want. The right will get more military money, and the left will get more welfare money--guns and butter in abundance. Who gets stuck with the bill? The taxpayer. The taxpayer is stuck and burdened with the bill, and we have made our future generations indentured servants. We are making the next generation bear the burden of our profligate ways, and there is no sustained force to say enough is enough.

When we look at waste in the military, former Secretary of the Navy John Lehman, who was the youngest Secretary of the Navy under Reagan, has said that he believes we do need to modernize our navy. He thinks we do need more ships. But he also says we should pay for it by reducing the costs in the Pentagon by reducing the bureaucracy in the Pentagon. When John Lehman was Secretary of the Navy there were seven joint task forces. There are now 250 joint task forces.

But here is what I would ask you: We have this program about which we pointed this out last week called Future Combat Systems--$20 billion worth of waste in the Pentagon. Do you think it is going to get fixed if we raise the level of money we spend? The only way waste is ever ferreted out is if we lower the amount. If you lower the top line number, if you lower the amount of money that is given, waste will have to be ferreted out. In fact, what we need are the constraints of the marketplace that ferret out waste within the private marketplace.

The opposite happens in government. When you look at government spending and you look at it department by department, what really happens is the opposite. As each department gets to the end of their fiscal year, what do they do with the remaining money? They spend it. They try to spend their money at the end so they will get it the next year.

I proposed a budgetary reform which wouldn't fix the entire government, but it would actually do something I think to lead us in the right direction. I proposed legislation that I think actually would help to right some of the problems and try to have correct incentives in the way we spend our money, both on the military side as well as on the domestic side. I would give all Federal employees bonuses based on cost savings. When the American people read about the waste throughout government, they say: How come it never gets better? Do you want to know why Congress has a 10-percent approval rating? Because you guys just raise all the money. You blithely go on, rubberstamp, and give the money. We have to go for the weekend. But there are ways that we could reform this. If you gave bonuses to Federal employees for finding savings, then you would have the correct incentive--the same kind of incentive that you have in private business, which tries to maximize profit by reducing costs.

In government, though, you never get that. In the government people keep spending their money and spending their money. In fact, what we discovered is that as the fiscal year comes to a close, spending accelerates and multiplies. People spend more money in the last month than they spend in the other 11 months. They spend more money in the last week than they spend in the early weeks. They spend more money in the last day of the fiscal year than on any other day of the year. In fact, as the sun rises and as the sun sets, you can watch the spending accelerate on the last day of the fiscal year. As 5 o'clock approaches in the East, there is a fury to spend money. As the sun continues into the West and to Federal agencies in California, they are spending it like crazy as 5 p.m. approaches.

Why don't we fix any of these problems? We don't fix them because we have become a rubberstamp and we give everybody what they want. The right gets their money for guns, the left for butter. Guns and butter are bankrupting the country.

What we really need are fiscal conservatives. You can be liberal and be a fiscal conservative. You can be conservative and be a fiscal conservative. But the problem we have now is that there are people on the right who are actually liberal with military spending. I don't think you can be a fiscal conservative if you are for unlimited spending for the military.

If you look at what we are spending on the Pentagon, if you look at what we are spending on military spending, we spend more than all the next 10 countries combined. We have increased our defense spending by 50 percent. Perhaps we should look at the amount spent and try to ferret out waste and try to figure out what is working and what is not working. While we are doing it, we should think--and we should think long and hard--about whether or not we want to get back involved with another war in Iraq.

The first war in Iraq cost us $1 trillion. In Afghanistan we have now spent more than the entire Marshall Plan. We don't have a lot to show for it. Many of the things that have been built in Afghanistan have been wasted. Much money has been stolen. There are stories repeatedly of the Karzai family being involved in drugs and drug running and money being wasted and squandered.

We have to decide this: What is our mission currently in Afghanistan? What is the purpose of our mission in Afghanistan? What is the purpose of our mission currently in Iran and Iraq? Are we going to be back in Iraq with another half million troops over there? Are we prepared to spend another trillion dollars in another war in Iraq?

The message that I am trying to get across tonight is that it is not the fault of one party or another. It is the fault of both parties. I think the American people actually recognize this because essentially there is a universal disdain for all of those in office. If you have missed this, if you haven't noticed this, you are missing out on something big that is happening in America. What is happening in America is that people are very, very upset that nothing seems to improve, that the waste continues on and the spending continues on.

Look at projects that are wasteful. I will give you another example of a project that really annoys people. This project is one where we spent $250,000 bringing 24 kids from Pakistan and bringing them to Space Camp in Alabama. There are hundreds and hundreds of these projects. We have American kids who can't afford to go to Space Camp in Alabama. What in the world are we doing borrowing money from China to send it to Pakistan to bring some of their kids to Space Camp? It is outrageous. We are bankrupting the country with this, and it goes on and on.

One of the reasons there is never any reform in our spending is because we don't address spending the way we properly should. There are 12 different departments of government and about 10 years ago was the last time that we actually passed appropriation bills. So there are 12 departments of government. We should pass them and exercise the power of the purse by passing the individual appropriations bills. If we were to do that, that is when we would begin to reform. That is when we would begin to say that we don't have the money to spend on this. That is when we would ask tough questions.

But Congress has become a shell of itself. Congress has become so miniscule as to be almost insignificant. This is with regard to almost all policy. The executive branch writes the regulations. The executive branch fights the wars, and we do nothing. We have been at war almost constantly for the last 20 years. We have been at war in Syria and now in Iraq for over a year, and yet Congress has not weighed in.

Congress has not voted to give the President any authority. Some will say: Well, we gave him that authority on 9/11. Well, go back and read the use of authorization of force from 9/11. Read the use of authorization of force and see what is in there. What you will find is in there is that it was directed toward those who attacked us on 9/11. Well, they did not attack us from Iraq. Iraq had nothing do with 9/11. Yet we use that same resolution from 15 years ago.

Think about the absurdity of this. Think about the absurdity of using a resolution from 2001 to fight war forever. Really, can a vote from a Congress--and probably more than half of us were not part of that Congress in 2001--can that vote really be used to bind generation after generation after generation in perpetual war?

We find also that it is both sides really. Both sides have supported the war in Iraq. You had Hillary Clinton support the war when she was here. She now runs away from this. But you also have Hillary Clinton who is still involved with wanting us to be back involved in Syria, calling for a no-fly zone.

Before we get involved, should we not have a debate in Congress? There is an extraordinary amount of money that is spent. There is an extraordinary amount of lives that are lost. In the Iraq war, we spent over $1 trillion, but we lost also nearly 5,000 of our brave young men and women over there.

The problem in Washington--and this is an interesting point--many in the media point out that the problem is incivility and not getting along. I guess I would argue the opposite, that we get along too well, that compromise actually comes too easy, and that when you look at whether there is enough discussion on whether the debt is harming us, there is actually too much agreement on both sides and lack of concern really for the debt.

So you have both sides coming together with this bill to basically say that we are going to give the President an unspecified and unlimited amount of borrowing power. I think that is bad for the country.

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

Mr. PAUL. I think I would prefer to finish up. You know what, I think each Senator can have an hour. I would love it if you would fulfill the next hour and make points about why we really are spending our country into oblivion. But I think I am going to finish my hour.

Mr. President, can you tell me how much time I have remaining?

The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator has approximately 38 minutes remaining.

Mr. PAUL. Good.

When we look at the problem here, it is not really a problem that involves a lack of compromise. What we have is both right and left have come together--and not just tonight, right and left have been coming together for a long time up here. Right and left have been saying: You scratch my back, and I will scratch yours. Basically, the compromise is, we both get what we want. The right's sacred cow is military spending. The left's sacred cow is domestic welfare spending. Both sides end up getting what they want, but as a consequence, we borrow $1 million every minute.

Many economists have said that our debt is actually the biggest threat to our future. Many economists have actually said that our debt is actually costing us about 1 million jobs a year. Kids ask me: What about a job? What are you going to do to create jobs? What are we going to do to keep America strong, to keep America producing and manufacturing and creating millions of jobs?

I think it is the wrong thing to add more debt. I think it is wrong to spend money you don't have. So often up here, everybody looks and says ``Well, I am going to do this with the money'' when, indeed, the first thing we should be asking is where the money is going to come from. We borrow the money from China, often to send it to Pakistan. We have sent billions of dollars to Pakistan.

I will give you an example of where we could save some money, and yet there seems to be very little interest for saving money in Washington. I put forward an amendment I think about 6 months ago in the Foreign Relations Committee. My amendment said that any country that persecutes Christians should not get any of our foreign aid. I have asked people about this in Kentucky and across the country: Should a country that persecutes Christians get any of our foreign aid? I have not met anybody who is in favor of that, and yet almost everybody here is for it. The vote was 18 to 2 in the committee to continue sending foreign aid to countries that persecute Christians.

You say: Well, how are you defining that? How do you define the persecution of Christians.

Pretty easily, actually. We define it as any country that puts a Christian to death or puts anyone to death for criticizing the state religion. In Pakistan, it is the death penalty if you criticize the state religion. It is the death penalty if you convert from the state religion to any other religion. Yet we pour billions of dollars in there.

When I tried to end the practice of sending money to countries that persecute Christians, the response from the other side was, well, this money is not going to those who are persecuting Christians, the money is going to the moderates to influence their behavior. The problem is that there is no objective evidence that they are changing their behavior. If you look over the last dozen years, you look over the last two decades in Pakistan, are they becoming more friendly to America? Are they changing the laws so they don't persecute Christians? Well, it is actually probably the opposite. In some ways, there has been more radicalization of Pakistan.

I will give you an example--Asia Bibi. Asia Bibi is a Christian. There are not many Christians left in Pakistan. Asia Bibi went to the well in a small Muslim village. She went to the well to draw water. As she was drawing water, they began to stone her. They stoned her and beat her with sticks until she was a bloody pulp. As she lay on the ground crying out for help and hoping that someone would show up, finally the police came. As the police came, this Christian woman, Asia Bibi--when the police came, they did not help her, they arrested her. She was arrested and accused of criticizing the state religion. What is our response? Our response is to send more money to Pakistan.

We continue to send money--good money after bad--to countries that abuse their citizenry. Look at a country like Saudi Arabia. Many people have forgotten that 16 out of the 19 hijackers were from Saudi Arabia. We still have some questions from the 9/11 report that do discuss Saudi Arabia, the possibility of Saudi Arabia's involvement in the 9/11 attacks. We also have a Saudi Arabia that has a horrendous human rights record. This is a question that has been put forward. Some have said that really their goal is to support women's rights, such as Hillary Clinton. Yet she has taken tens of millions of dollars from Saudi Arabia.

In Saudi Arabia, there was a young woman who was 17. They called her the Girl of Qatif. She was raped. She was gang-raped by seven men. When they finally brought about justice in Saudi Arabia, their idea of justice was that the girl who was raped was publicly whipped. She was whipped for being in the car with an unmarried man.

If you think foreign aid and selling weapons to a country like Saudi Arabia is going to change their behavior, you have got another thing coming. If you think selling weapons to Saudi Arabia or selling weapons to Egypt is somehow changing their behavior or creating a warm fuzzy feeling in the hearts of Saudi Arabians or Egyptians for us, you have got another thing coming.

Over a period of time, we sent $60 billion to Egypt. Probably one-third to half of that was stolen by one family, the Mubarak family. We also sold a lot of weaponry to them. They ended up using some of the weaponry on their own people.

As protesters gathered in Tahrir Square in Cairo about a year ago, as these protests were occurring and hundreds of thousands of people were showing up, when Mubarak was still in power, Mubarak attempted to quell the protest. He attempted to stifle the crowd by spraying tear gas on the crowd. That is bad enough, to try to quell protests with brute force, but what made it doubly bad is when the Egyptians bent over and they picked up the empty cartridge from the tear gas, it said, ``Made in Pennsylvania.''

You see, I think America is a great country. I think by our example and by our trade and by our diplomatic engagement with the world, we are the shining light for the world. But when we sell weapons to countries that then use those weapons to suppress their own people, I am not so sure that helps American relations around the world.

We should participate as a body more in how the money is being spent. I think this is one of the points of this resolution. When we see that we are giving an unspecified amount of borrowing power to the President--we have done it both ways in the past. We have done it this way in the past, and I think it is wrong--it was wrong then. But we have also done it when we have allowed the President to borrow certain amounts. Many people have argued: We should not have a debt ceiling. We should never have this problem. It is too disruptive, and we should let them borrow as much as they want.

I really think the opposite. I think we need to put a closer rein on what actually happens in government. But I think we also need to specify and lay out the entire budget. A good example of this is when we had the Ebola outbreak, and people were looking for money, and they said there was not enough money. It turns out there was plenty of money, but the money was being spent on a lot of bizarre things that come out of the NIH. We looked and we found that over $2 million was being spent on origami condoms. Well, I think we are fairly good on the science of condoms, and an extra $2 million on origami condoms was perhaps not the best use of money. But when you bring out these outrageous spending examples, you think: Well, certainly we are going to fix it, right?

Every year I think for the past 20 years there has been a waste book produced. The waste book has hundreds and hundreds of items that should be eliminated. Why are they in there every year? Why have we never fixed any of this? It is because we don't do individual appropriations bills, we don't look at the individual bills and say: This is how we will reform it.

Some have said: We are not passing those appropriations bills because you are trying to tell the President how to spend the money.

Yes. That is what we are supposed to do. That is what the power of the purse is.

If you ask people around the country what are the things they are most unhappy about, I know from talking to Republicans and conservatives that the thing they are most unhappy about with us--and when I say ``unhappy,'' I mean really unhappy--they are unhappy that we are not exercising the power of the purse, that basically we are a rubberstamp for Big Government.

Others will argue--they will say: We need to be the adults in the room and we need to govern. We need to govern seamlessly with no hiccups.

I would say there are two potential problems here. You could argue that, well, by letting us get close to the brink on the debt ceiling or getting close to running out of money, that is disruptive and sends a bad signal to the marketplace. You could argue in the short run that maybe that is disruptive. But you could also argue that it is incredibly disruptive to the country to keep borrowing money at $1 million a minute. So I think you have to weigh which is worse. Is it worse to keep borrowing money at $1 million a minute or is it worse to actually have a little bit of uncertainty about the debt ceiling?

With regard to the debt ceiling, though, if you look at the debt ceiling and ask whether we would ever default, we bring in, in tax revenue, about $250 billion a month. Our interest payments lately have been averaging about $30 billion. There is actually no risk of defaulting at all.

We should do the opposite. Instead of scaring the marketplace and saying that there is any chance of default, we should say that we have no intention of defaulting. We should say that we will not default. In fact, we have legislation--I have actually introduced legislation; it is called the Default Protection Act. It says that we will not default. It says that the first thing we will spend out of our revenue would be for our interest. It also says that out of our revenue we would pay for Social Security. We would fully fund it. We would pay for Medicare and fully fund it. We would pay for our soldiers' salaries. We would pay for veterans affairs.

People say: Well, we have little else.

You know, then maybe the question should be--maybe government should not be doing much beyond interest, soldiers' salaries, veterans affairs, Medicare, and Social Security. Maybe that is what government should do and nothing else, at least until we got caught up again, at least until we had as much money coming in.

What would happen if we did not raise the debt ceiling? If we don't raise the debt ceiling, we have a balanced budget. Is it really so awful to concede that we would only spend what comes in? Every American family does it. Every American family only spends what comes in. I think it would be good for the country to do that.

But there is an even better way. What many conservatives have offered is something called cut, cap, and balance.

This is a way we could raise the debt ceiling, and we would temporarily raise it for about a 5-year period. We would raise the debt ceiling in a gradual manner over about a 5-year period. The reason you would do that and the reason I would vote for that is I would vote for it because we would be balancing the budget. So cut, cap, and balance, we would cut the deficit in half in 1 year. It is the best way to get on a good footing. Let's go ahead and cut out a significant amount in 1 year, and then it makes it a lot easier in the successive years if you hold the line.

Calvin Coolidge was incredible with this kind of stuff. In Amity Shlaes' book she goes through in exquisite detail--wonderful detail--how he ended up balancing the budget. In those days the President was paid a pretty good amount for those days. I think it was about $100,000, but everything came out of their salary. So when an ambassador for France came for dinner, the dinner came out of Coolidge's salary. So Coolidge would be down in the kitchen after dinner saying: I noticed we cooked five hams. I think we could have done with four hams.

That was the kind of handle he had on expenditures. He also had a handle on expenditures throughout government, and he met every week with the Treasury Department. He met every week with the Cabinet Secretary to say: This is how we are going to stop spending money. This is how we are going to stop wasting money.

Cut, cap, and balance is an alternative to what we are putting forward. I think if we were a true, open, and deliberative body we would have a vote on that, but no vote has been scheduled for cut, cap, and balance. So those of us--and I think there were a significant number who said that this was not a good deal. Those of us who believe it to be not a good deal were not allowed the opportunity to have an alternative.

The alternative we have is called cut, cap, and balance. In cut, cap, and balance, we would cut the debt or cut the deficit in half in 1 year. We would cap spending.

This deal actually does the opposite of capping spending. This deal actually gets rid of the caps and exceeds the caps on spending. We would cap spending at 18 percent of GDP. That means you would multiply 18 percent by the total dollar amount of the economy and that is what we would spend.

Why did we choose 18 percent? We chose 18 percent because that is about what comes in historically on average. If you look over the past 20 years, we have occasional times when we bring more money in, occasional times when we bring in less, but on average we bring in about 18 percent. So really if you want to balance your spending--which would be the responsible thing if we were responsible adults, if we cared about the American people, cared what they thought, and cared that they were worried about the debt we were adding--we would spend about what comes in. So 18 percent is about what comes in. If we spent 18 percent, we would have a balanced budget.

I think people ought to think about it in this perspective: We bring in $3 trillion. Our problem isn't so much how much money comes in, our problem is that we spend in excess of what comes in.

Couldn't we just spend what comes in? Couldn't we spend $3 trillion? Couldn't we have a strong country? I think we would actually be a stronger country if we spent only what comes in. We wouldn't have ``no'' government, and in some ways we might have a government that was even bigger than I desire. If we only spent what comes in, if we spent the $3 trillion--and that is all we spent--think how strong we would become again as a country. Think about the strength of our marketplace, the strength of the stock market, the strength of our job creation if we were only spending what comes in.

This is not a new problem. It has accelerated under this President, but I think we should be very ecumenical with the blame. There is enough blame to go around. I think there is an unholy alliance. The problem in Washington is not lack of cooperation, it is too much cooperation. We have decided, right and left, that we want to spend more money, but we don't have the money. So what do we do? We say we are going to simply borrow it, but there are repercussions to borrowing. There are repercussions to spending money we don't have. I think this is a point in time when we should reevaluate. It is a point in time where maybe you ought to spend time and go home.

I know when I am at home I don't meet anybody who is for this deal. Those who vote for this deal--maybe if you are from a State that isn't concerned about the budget, isn't concerned about the debt, you may get away with it, but I think people are going to have a rude awakening when they get home because outside of DC the antipathy for this deal is rising. The anger is rising. The belief that basically everybody needs to be sent home from Washington is a rising sentiment in the country because we don't appear to be listening.

If you ask people--and I ask people all the time. Do you think we ought to have term limits? The answer is yes.

Would the Parliamentarian inform me of how much time remains.

The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mrs. Capito). The Senator has 19 minutes remaining.

Mr. PAUL. When I have discussed this issue with folks at home, with constituents in Kentucky, the question they ask me is, How can you give the President an unspecified amount to borrow? Weren't you elected to try to stop this? I was elected in 2010 when the tea party movement arose. The tea party movement arose--and this is an interesting, maybe some say, historical fact--the tea party arose not so much in criticism of Democrats; the tea party folks weren't those who really believed the Democrats would be fiscally responsible. The tea party arose because they were concerned that Republicans weren't being fiscally responsible. The tea party arose largely as a rebuke to the Republican Party. The tea party arose and said: You know what, bailing out the banks wasn't something the average middle class, ordinary, conservative Republican supported. We didn't support the bailouts. We didn't support President Obama's huge and enormous government stimulus, nearly $1 trillion. We also don't support borrowing or lending money for these programs. There are two ways you can stop this. You can stop this by voting against the spending, which there doesn't seem to be a significant amount of will in this body on either side of the aisle to stop and discontinue this profligate spending. So it is spending and borrowing, spending and borrowing. Which comes first? Well, they go hand-in-hand, but it is a real problem. I think it is a problem that threatens the very fabric of our country, and it is why I ran for office.

The reason I ran for office is because I was concerned we were accumulating so much debt that we were piling on debt that ultimately could lead to the destruction of our country. People say: Well, we are a strong country. The debt will never bring us down.

We are at a point where our debt basically just about equals our economy, 100 percent of our economy, and that is a tipping point. Many economists who look at the economics of nations have looked at that and said: We are at a tipping point. We are at a point where if we do nothing, if we continue to give a blank check to the government, if we give a blank check to this President for his final year in office, what might happen?

This is a President who is going to add more debt than all of the previous Presidents combined, and we are going to give him a blank check? Those who vote for this deal will be giving the President a blank check. They will say: You can borrow whatever you want. Fill in the blank.

That ought to be the title of this bill: ``Fill in the blank.''

How much debt do you want? Fill in the blank.

There is no specific amount. This bill will allow for unlimited addition of debt. This bill is exactly why people are upset and angry with Washington.

The fact that this bill is going to slide through is exactly why Congress has about a 10-percent approval rating. People here scratch their heads and can't figure it out. This is why. They don't want you to act like adults and govern over this enormous debt. They want you to act. They want you to do something. They want you to quit the borrowing and spending.

The lesson that needs to be learned is that this isn't one-sided. This is not the fault of one party, this is a two-party problem. These are the two parties getting together in an unholy alliance and spending us into oblivion.

People say: Well, how will we defend the country? Don't we need more money?

We have increased military spending by 50 percent since 9/11 in real dollars. There is waste in the Pentagon. I have been arguing that we should audit the Pentagon. The Pentagon says they are too big to be audited. How insulting. It goes on and on.

The frustration of the American people is that as it goes on and on, nothing ever changes. The establishment in Washington is completely and utterly tone deaf to the way America feels about this. All you have to do is drive outside the beltway, enter into America, and ask the first person you meet at a supermarket: Do you think we should keep borrowing more money?

I don't care what party they are in. I defy you to drive outside the beltway, stop at a gas station, stop at a supermarket, and ask the first person: Do you think we should increase the debt and increase spending at the same time? Do you think we should increase the debt? Do you think we should increase the debt ceiling with an unspecified amount?

Ask any parent of a college-age kid whether we should give them a credit card with no limit. If your child comes to you and has $2,000 on the credit card, what do you do? You tell them they have to watch their spending. Do you give them more money? No.

Should we give Congress more money? Hell, no. Congress is bad with money. They are not good with money. Do not trust them with any more money. It is a mistake, a huge mistake, to give this body any more money. We should be doing the opposite. We should be binding this body with the chains of the Constitution that say only certain powers were delegated to Congress, only certain powers under article I, section 8, and we shouldn't allow for unlimited government.

Our Founding Fathers were concerned about a big government, but they were also concerned about a big and overwhelming military that was there all the time and would tend to grow. Even some of our greatest heroes--President Eisenhower worried about the military industrial complex. So there have been leaders in the past who have said we have to be careful that we don't get to a point where the contractors are driving Congress, where the contractors are creating a situation in which their concerns and their well-being are more important than the well-being of the country.

Will the Parliamentarian report on the time remaining.

The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator has 13 minutes remaining.

Mr. PAUL. Some will criticize this exercise of keeping the Senate awake at night. The rumblings can be heard, but what I would say is that the future of the country is worth the time spent. One of the reasons we are spending the middle of the night discussing this is that we don't have an ordinary process for proposals. We don't have an ordinary process for amending bills.

Were there to be an ordinary process where conservatives would be allowed an alternative such as cut, cap, and balance--we actually did that in 2011 when the opposite party was in charge. We did have a vote on cut, cap, and balance. It actually passed. It passed in the House overwhelmingly and was defeated in the Senate, but the fact is there are other alternatives. There isn't just one alternative. The only alternative shouldn't be that we continue to go further and further into debt.

Sometimes people say: Well, I can't even conceive of $1 trillion. It is just this enormous money, this enormous amount of money. What is $1 trillion?

To illustrate what $1 trillion is, imagine if you had thousand-dollar bills in your hand and you had thousand-dollar bills stacked four inches high. That would be $1 million. But if you want to imagine $1 trillion, in thousand-dollar bills it would be 63 miles high. That is what we are talking about adding.

While they have not specified how much debt they are going to burden us with, many are estimating that it will be over $1 trillion. So when you think about what your government is doing to you tonight, think about how much of a burden of debt the next generation will get in just the next year, just from this bill over the next year and a half--over $1 trillion. If you want to know how much that is, imagine thousand-dollar bills stacked 63 miles high. That is the burden we are passing on to the next generation.

None of this is an argument for no government. None of this is an argument for no Federal Government. In fact, this is an argument for just spending what comes in. We actually have a lot of money that comes in; $3 trillion comes in. Could we not simply live with the $3 trillion that comes in? What would happen to the country if we only spent what comes in? Would there be some sort of calamity? I think it would actually be the opposite. I think it would send a signal to the world that we are serious, that we are going to make America great again. America's greatness was founded upon fiscal sanity, small government.

Liberty thrives when government is small. We need a government that is small and restrained by the Constitution. If we had a government that was restrained by the Constitution, we wouldn't be in this fix. Many of the functions of government we do up here are not written into the Constitution and were never delegated to the Federal Government. The reason we have gotten into this fix is because we have gotten away from the confines of the Constitution.

Jefferson once said that the chains of the Constitution will bind government. Patrick Henry said that the Constitution is not about restraining the people; the Constitution was intended to restrain the government.

There has been a long history of this. This is not something that has occurred overnight. If you want to go back and see the history of people trying to restrain their government and keep their government small, you can probably go back to the plains of Runnymede in 1215. When the Magna Carta was passed, that was one of the first explicit sort of explosions of people saying to government enough is enough; the king does not have unlimited power.

This goes against the character and the charter of the Magna Carta, which tried to limit the power of the monarch. Instead, we are giving unlimited power to borrow to the President. So if you look at the character of the Magna Carta and you look at the character of our Founding Fathers, who wanted to have restraint, who wanted government to be restrained by rules, what you find is that we are going headlong in the wrong direction. What we need is to obey the Constitution once again. When we obey the Constitution, I think what would happen is that the budget would balance almost automatically. It would balance every year.

Washington does need to have compromise, but this is the wrong kind of compromise. The compromise is going in the wrong direction. What we need is compromise that actually reduces spending. Instead, we have compromise, or so-called compromise, that is actually increasing spending.

This deal will give the President unspecified and unlimited power to borrow money without limits. In the President's last year in office he will be able to borrow whatever--no limits whatsoever. We are abdicating our role as a constitutional body to limit and check the power of the Presidency with this.

Some will say: Oh, you are only saying this because it is a President of the opposite party. I would be saying this if it were a President of either party because we have allowed too much power to gravitate to the Presidency, and this allows even more.

Will the Parliamentarian give an update on the time remaining.

The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator has 5 1/2 minutes remaining.

Mr. PAUL. In the remaining time, I would like to talk about a budget point of order that I will be putting forward. This legislation does something that many in this body have been critical of in the past. It actually takes money from the obligations to Social Security and transfers them to a more immediate program.

Specifically written into the budget rules, though, were rules that say: If you are going to take money, if you are going to steal money from Social Security, from people who are retired and who have put it in there, and you are going to spend it on something else, there is a special budget point of order that says in order to do this you will need 60 votes. So we will be putting forward a budget resolution that says: If you are going to steal money from Social Security, if you are going to take money from Social Security and you are going to spend it on other concerns--people will say: Oh, well, we are going to spend it on disability. Well, the Social Security fund was put forward as a pension plan. You have an obligation to those who put the money in. So stealing money from people who will be getting money in the future to pay for immediate concerns is robbing Peter to pay Paul.

So those in this body will be asked tonight to vote on whether or not you are willing to vote to take money from Social Security to spend it on immediate concerns. This is sort of like saying: All right, I have a pension fund. Let's say I have $100,000 in my pension plan, but I want to go to the racetrack and I need some money this week. So I am willing to take the $100,000 out, and I am willing to pay a $30,000 penalty. I am willing to do it because I am an addict, and I am addicted to spending, and I have to spend the money now.

That is what it is, and you are all guilty of it, right and left. You are going to take money out of the Social Security fund, and you are going to spend it on an immediate fix. And by fix, I mean not fixing the program. By fix, I mean what a junkie does. A junkie is addicted to spending. That is what the problem is here, that we are addicted to spending.

So, Madam President, at this point I raise a point of order against the pending motion pursuant to section 311(a) of S. Con. Res. 11, the concurrent resolution on the budget for fiscal year 2016. The legislation reallocates payroll between the retirement and disability programs and therefore breaches the budget act. I ask for the yeas and nays.

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