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Floor Speech
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Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, with me today is one of my colleagues from my Senate office, Mr. James Shea. He is one of my right-hand people and does great work. And I am honored that he could join me today.
Gosh, I don't know where to begin. I have been in the Senate for 8 years. In dog years, that is 56 years, and it feels like 56 years. I have learned a lot, met a lot of interesting people. You know, before I got here, everybody told me about the Washington bubble, and I said, you know, how serious could they be.
Well, it is true; there is a Washington bubble. This place is different. It is in its own way sometimes disappointing, sometimes refreshing. It is deeply weird. For one thing, common sense is illegal in Washington. It is illegal.
For another thing, I have discovered that this is a town of very frustrated ex-class presidents, and there is a Washington way of doing things. And when things aren't done that way, when somebody challenges the status quo, many--not all--but many of these frustrated ex-class presidents in Washington, on the Hill and otherwise, they get excited, not in a good way.
They can't get their mind around doing anything other than the Washington way. Some of them, particularly in the media, they go almost catatonic, or the exact opposite, they foam at the mouth. And they really get upset. They can make a Valium nervous. It is like we are not doing things the way we have always done them, and the world is going to spin off its axis.
I want to try to put in perspective what many of my Democratic friends have been talking about today. They are very, very, very upset at President Trump, and they are very, very, very upset at Elon Musk.
President Trump ran for President on a number of issues. One of the issues he ran on--he said it almost every day. He said: If you make me President, I am going to go through the entire budget and review all the spending, line by line. If I heard him say that once, I heard him say that a thousand times. And that is what he has been doing.
He went out and appointed, through an Executive order, Elon Musk--who some people like him, some don't, but he is not a dummy. He is a very successful business person. He has got a top secret security clearance. President Trump issued an Executive order, and he turned to Mr. Musk, and he said: Mr. Musk, I want you to do for me what I said I was going to do in the election. I want you to go through all the spending line by line.
Now, let me ask you something: How are you going to review the spending without reviewing the spending? How are you going to audit the spending by an Agency without auditing the Agency? That is what I mean when I say common sense is illegal in Washington, DC. That is what Mr. Musk is doing.
He has put together a crackerjack team, and they are going through everybody's spending line by line, item by item. And my Democratic colleagues are very, very, very upset, and they have been very eloquent. They have talked about the process, and President Trump's Executive orders supposedly violates the Constitution. And they have accused Mr. Musk of having conflicts of interest. And I have heard people say he is sitting over there with a notepad copying down everybody's Social Security number, and he is going to go use it to make money.
I mean, people in this town--not just my Democratic colleagues--they are really upset. They have never had anybody question their spending. But that is what Mr. Musk is doing. But you know what, I have listened, this has been going on for a week. People have been screaming like they are part of a prison riot. Oh, my God, look at what Musk is doing. He is looking at the spending.
And I have listened to the people talk about the process and debate whether it is constitutional and discuss how many lawyers can dance on the head of a pin, but you know what I haven't heard one single person who is upset with President Trump or Mr. Musk talk about? What he has found. They don't want to talk about the spending, the spending porn, the waste of taxpayer money that he has found. I mean, that is the point of all of this.
I tell you who is interested, the American people, the people in America who get up every day and go to work and obey the law and pay their taxes and try to educate their kids and try to do the right thing by their kids and try to save a little money for retirement. And they have had to live through 20 percent inflation under President Biden. They understand what Musk is doing. They understand spending porn and wasting taxpayer money.
Now, Mr. Musk started with USAID. It handles a lot of foreign aid for America. The American people are very generous. In our country, when you are homeless, we will house you. When you are hungry, we will feed you. In our country, when you are too poor to be sick, we will pay for your doctor. And we send a lot of money overseas to help our world's neighbors. And USAID is a part of that.
But I will tell you what Mr. Musk discovered--I will tell you it fascinated me. He discovered that the American taxpayers are giving money to Afghanistan. He found that we are giving money to Yemen. He found that we are giving money to Syria. I didn't know that. Some of our foreign aid is going to Yemen, Afghanistan, Syria.
He found that USAID has 10,000 people--10,000 people--employees, and every year, they give away $40 billion. Mr. Musk also found--and I am not saying that all of this money is wasteful; I am not. Some of this money, I am sure, does some good. That is why Secretary Rubio is going to revamp the Department and separate the good from the bad.
But this is the kind of stuff Mr. Musk found: He found that USAID gave money to support electric vehicles in Vietnam--our money, taxpayer money. He found that USAID gave money to a transgender clinic in India--I didn't know that. I bet you the American people didn't know that.
He found that USAID gave $1.5 million to a Serbian LGBTQ group called Grupa Izadji. I probably mispronounced that. My apologies. Anyway, they got 1.5 million to ``advance diversity, equity, and inclusion in Serbia's workplaces and business communities.''
What else did Mr. Musk find that my colleagues don't want to talk about? Well, he reviewed a study and then went and checked it. The study was done by the Middle East Forum. They found that USAID spent $164 million to support radical organizations around the world. We are not talking Cub Scout troops here. We are talking about radical organizations around the world. They gave $122 million of that to groups aligned with foreign terrorist organizations--our taxpayer money.
According to this report and Mr. Musk, the USAID has given millions of dollars to ``organizations . . . in Gaza controlled by Hamas.'' Why aren't my colleagues talking about that?
Recipients of the money, they found, have ``called for their lands to be `cleansed' from the `impurity of Jews.' '' That is who we are giving our foreign aid to? What else? I am not going to spend my whole time talking about this, but nobody else is talking about it. They are just talking about the process and Mr. Musk and he is a mean guy and he shouldn't be looking at our spending. Well, he is, and I kind of find what he found out interesting.
He found that we gave $2 million--USAID did--for sex changes in Guatemala. He found that we gave $20 million to produce a new ``Sesame Street'' show in Iraq. He found that we gave $4.5 million of taxpayer money to combat disinformation in Kazakhstan. He found that we gave $10 million--USAID did--of meals to an al-Qaida-linked terrorist group called the al-Nusrah Front. Mr. Musk found that we gave $7.9 million of taxpayer money to a project that would teach Sri Lankan journalists to avoid binary-gendered language. We took--the USAID took 8 million bucks and gave it to a bunch of journalists in Sri Lanka to teach them how to avoid binary-gendered language. I don't know what the hell binary- gendered language is. I think I do. You think most taxpayers would support that? Why aren't we talking about that? USAID gave $1.5 million to promote LGBT advocacy in Jamaica. They gave $1.5 million to rebuild the Cuban media ecosystem. They gave $1.5 million for Art for Inclusion of People with Disabilities in Belarus, another $3.9 million for LGBT causes in Macedonia, $8.3 million for equity and inclusion education in Nepal. I could go all night.
And many of my colleagues are upset. They are really mad at Mr. Musk. Hell, I think we ought to give him a medal. All he is doing is what President Trump said he was going to do. President Trump said he was going to audit the spending. So Trump goes and hires Musk--again, with a top-secret security clearance. Nobody can quibble with his intelligence, you know. The guy is as smart as Einstein's cousin. He is a very successful businessman. Some say he is the richest guy in the world. And he is doing the auditing. And, man, he is finding a lot of stuff. I call it spending porn.
Now, I am not saying everything that USAID does is wasted, but I am saying a lot of it is--a hell of a lot of it is. And we ought to be on the floor of this U.S. Senate thanking Mr. Musk, and we ought to be asking him to go through every Agency and look at everybody's budget-- everybody's budget.
That is what the American people want. They don't want to talk about process. They don't want to continue with the Washington way. They want to save some money.
Now, let me tell you what is really going on here too. For 4 years under President Biden and for, what, 8 years under President Obama--and I respect both of them. I don't hate anybody. I don't. When I say my prayers at night, one of the things I ask God: God, don't let me hate, because it is hard in Washington. Don't let me hate. I have all the respect in the world for President Biden and President Obama. Tough job. But between them, they spent 12 years in Washington. And Presidents set the tone; they control the questions that are asked.
And here is the question that President Obama and President Biden asked for 8 years--for 12 years. I heard it every single day: Who needs to pay more in taxes? Is it you? Is it you? Who needs to pay more in taxes? We need more money. Who needs to pony up more? That was the issue.
But that is not the issue today. We have a new President. You know what the issue is today? What the hell happened to all of the money? What the hell happened to all of the money? And that is what Mr. Musk is finding out. That is all this is about.
I am just shocked that my colleagues have decided that this is the hill they are going to die on. How can you look the American people in the eye and support this kind of waste? Support this kind of spending porn?
I mean, the election, to me, made at least one thing clear, that the American people are sick and tired of people in Washington denying reality. The last administration tried to convince us that we were living in a crime-free world where inflation was temporary and the border was secure, and the American people didn't buy it. You know why? Because it wasn't true.
And the administration, our last administration, tried to argue that Bidenomics was making our lives better, but the American people knew differently. They understood Bidenomics to mean: I get to spend more to live worse. And they voted.
Now, I mean, the American people were poorer under the last administration, but they didn't become stupid. They could see that the government was creating the problem, not trying to fix it. And they noticed the national debt too.
Put up that first chart for me.
You know what our national debt is? $36 trillion. Not million, not billion--$36 trillion. It takes my breath away. Highest it has ever been, over 100 percent of our gross domestic product. Our debt is growing faster than our economy. And we toss around these numbers--a trillion, a billion, a million, a squillion--like it is nothing. I want to try to put this in context.
If I started counting right now and I counted one numeral, if you will, per second--1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7--and I kept counting all day and all night, I didn't sleep, I counted between bites of oatmeal at breakfast, I just counted continually one numeral per second, it would take me 32 years to count to 1 billion--32 years to count to 1 billion. It would be 2057. I would be dead as Woodrow Wilson. I wouldn't live that long, and that is just a billion.
Our debt is $36 trillion. Do you know how long it would take me to count to a trillion? It would take 31,000 years if I counted one numeral per second. About as old as Chuck Grassley--31,000 years.
It would take me 1 million years to count to 36 trillion.
Those are the kind of numbers we are talking about, and the American people understand it.
Since 2019, America's population has grown 2 percent. We are not having babies--2 percent. And that is after massive immigration.
You know how much our budget has grown? It has grown 55 percent--55 percent. Yeah, we have had inflation, but we haven't had 55-percent worth of inflation. That is how we got to this $36 trillion in debt.
Put up the next chart for me.
Now some of this money we had to spend during the pandemic, and it was a bipartisan effort during the pandemic. Republicans voted for it, and Democrats voted for it because we had no choice. I was there. I saw it from the inside. We came this close to losing the American economy.
And you know who helped a lot, doesn't get enough credit? Jay Powell with the Federal Reserve. I watched it. The whole world wanted to go into a cave and retreat.
Back in the great recession, I remember all the other countries in the world looked to us. They may hate us, but they know we are the greatest country in all of human history. They look to America.
And you know what? Back in the great recession, all the other countries wanted treasuries, treasury notes, treasury bonds. Not this time. They were so scared; they didn't want treasuries. They wanted dollars, cash dollars. So Jay Powell--thank the Lord--he goes over to the Federal Reserve. He opens what is called a currency swap line. And he told every country: You want dollars? I will trade you dollars for your currency. Everything calmed down. He doesn't get any credit for that, but it was a gutsy thing to do.
But on top of that, to save the American economy--that wasn't helping the American economy. We had to keep the economy going. We spent a lot of money.
But then COVID ended. And what we should have done was go back to pre-COVID spending, but we didn't do that.
President Biden, after the shutdowns and the coronavirus, the pandemic was over, passed the American Rescue Plan. COVID was over. He spent $1.9 trillion. Never let a good crisis go to waste. I didn't vote for it.
Then he came back and passed what he called an infrastructure deal. It was really just the green new deal. I know what is in that bill. That was another $1.2 trillion.
And then he passed the Inflation Reduction Act. I didn't vote for it. But that was another $1.0 trillion.
And then he passed the CHIPS Act. This is really special. He said: Big Tech, the semiconductor companies, need our money. They need taxpayer money. They are not making enough money. And he gave them money.
He didn't give hardware stores money. President Biden didn't give the healthcare industry money. He said: I want to help Big Tech, and, boy, they sucked it up like a Hoover Deluxe. We spent $280 billion subsidizing Big Tech.
And you add it all up, and that is 4.3, almost $4.5 trillion, and that is how we got $36 trillion in debt. And that is why Donald Trump said: I am going to look at every single line item we are spending. And that is why he gave the job to Elon Musk. And that is why Musk is altering these accounts. But nobody wants to talk about what he is finding. Nobody wants to talk about the spending part, except the American people. They get it, Mr. President. They get it.
I hope Mr. Musk continues. My colleague and friend--we had a little discussion in Banking today. Senator Warner makes a good point. He wants Mr. Musk to come over and talk to Congress about how he is doing this. I am all for that. I am all for that. I would love to have him come over and walk us through what he is doing and how he is discovering all this spending part. We need all the help we can get in reducing our spending because we can't continue at this pace.
I just want to spend a few minutes putting all this in perspective. The world is not going to spin off its axis, folks. Every business that I know of goes through an audit. Now we are being audited. But we are being audited by--not by the usual auditors--but we are being audited by a person appointed by the President of the United States.
I am betting you, when he is through--and he is going to go through all these Agencies. He is starting on the Department of Education next. I think he will end up finding that some of our money is being well spent, but he is also going to find that some of our money is being stolen and it is being wasted, and that is an insult to every taxpayer in this country.
I am going to end like I began. We ought to be giving Mr. Musk a medal. We ought to be thanking him. Maybe nobody else wants to hear about the spending part, but I can't wait to read the book. I hope he finds all of it and compiles it. I hope Marco Rubio, the new Secretary of State, takes USAID and shakes them by the shoulder and lifts up the good people there and fires the bad people--the people that wasted taxpayer money like this, giving money to terrorist organizations, giving money to organizations that support Hamas. I hope he gets rid of every single one of them.
I think, if we listen to Mr. Musk, we can save a lot of money. And I hope he does come over and explain what he is doing.
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