Rand Paul

Mr. PAUL

Mr. PAUL. Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. PAUL. Mr. President, I ask for the yeas and nays when appropriate.

Mr. PAUL

Mr. PAUL. Mr. President, as a cosponsor of this important legislation, I am pleased the Senate will pass this bill and once again provide for stronger security at our diplomatic facilities. Numerous reports have documented the security failures that resulted in the tragic deaths of four Americans at the consulate in Benghazi. Both the Administrative Review Board and the report of the Senate Homeland Security Committee found that inexcusable failures of judgment led State Department decisionmakers to ignore the rising threat levels in Benghazi and the repeated requests for enhanced security at the site. Marine Security Guards were not on site to protect our consulate in one of the most dangerous and unstable regions in the world. The failures of management that led to these decisions are reprehensible; the lapses in judgment indefensible. It is beyond my comprehension why the individuals whose poor decisionmaking directly resulted in the deaths of four Americans remain employed by the State Department, and compensated by the U.S. taxpayers. One of the most troubling aspects of the Benghazi attack is the complete disregard that State Department leadership gave to the repeated requests for enhanced security from Ambassador Christopher Stevens. Should funding have been an issue, the State Department always has the option available to come to Congress for approval to transfer funds within accounts. In fact, this is what S. 227 accomplishes--it provides the State Department transfer authority to prioritize diplomatic security in our embassies around the world. It is a sad, but necessary postscript to this tragic event--and a step that, if taken earlier by the State Department, may have saved the lives lost in Benghazi. It is my hope that the Senate takes into consideration my repeated calls for increased Marine security at our embassies in high threat areas of the world. In the two budgets I have authored during my Senate tenure, I not only called for increased funding for military protection, but also for reducing the presence of embassies in the most dangerous areas of the globe. The safety of our men and women in diplomatic service must be prioritized. This means placing more emphasis on involvement in security by the Defense Department, but it also means assessing whether our diplomacy in the most dangerous areas of the world is better done from afar.

Mr. PAUL

Mr. PAUL. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the reading of the amendment be dispensed with.

Mr. PAUL. Mr. President, I rise today to present an amendment that would stop the transfer of F-16s and Abrams tanks to Egypt. I think it particularly unwise to send tanks and our most sophisticated fighter planes to Egypt at a time in which many are saying the country may be unraveling. Ironically, a year ago, the Arab spring occurred. Hundreds of thousands of people gathered in Tahir Square to protest against the government that was instituting martial law. Ironically, the current President now has instituted martial law. Once again, the dread ``indefinite detention'' is threatened to citizens in Egypt. As the rioting expands, many see Egyptian descending into chaos. What is President Obama's response to this? To send them some of the most sophisticated weapons we have, F-16 fighters and Abrams tanks. I think this is particularly unwise. This amendment will stop it. I think this is particularly unwise since Egypt is currently governed by a religious zealot, a religious zealot who said recently that Jews were ``bloodsuckers'' and ``descendents of apes and pigs.'' This does not sound like the kind of stable personality to whom we should be sending our most sophisticated weapons. I think it is a grave mistake to send F-16s and Abrams tanks to a country that last year detained American citizens on trumped-up political charges, to a country that currently is still detaining Egyptian citizens on trumped- up political charges. I think it is a blunder of the first proportion to send sophisticated weapons to a country that allowed a mob to attack our embassy and to burn our flag. I find it objectionable to send weapons, F-16s and tanks, to a country that allowed a mob chanting ``death to America'' to threaten our American diplomats. I am concerned that these weapons, some of the most sophisticated weapons in the world, someday may be used against Israel. I am concerned these weapons threaten Israel's security. I am concerned that we are sending weapons to a country with a President who recently was seen to be chanting ``Amen'' to a cleric who was saying, ``death to Israel'' and ``death to those who support Israel.'' I think it is foolhardy to support and send arms to both sides of an arms race. We send 20 F-16s to Egypt, which already has 240 F-16s. We send 20 in addition. What does Israel feel? They have to have two for every one Egypt has. It escalates an arms race and makes it more difficult for Israel to defend herself. Today we have a chance to stop this folly. I urge my colleagues to instruct the President that we will not send any more F-16s and any more Abrams tanks to the current Government of Egypt. I yield the floor.

Mr. PAUL. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to call up amendment No. 9.

Mr. PAUL. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. PAUL. I find the argument spurious and, frankly, absurd that not giving F-16s to Egypt is somehow against the interests of Israel. Imagine this. The President of Egypt has called Jews bloodsuckers and descendents of apes and pigs. The President of Egypt has also said that when we look at the relationship of Israel and her supporters--he stood next to a cleric, chanted ``Amen'' and said ``Amen,'' that we should go after and destroy Israel and the supporters of Israel. Somehow it is a good idea to ship weapons to this country and to this religious zealot? I find it absurd that that would be in Israel's best interests. Somehow, the argument is made that, oh, this will lead to stability in Egypt. Well, giving F-16s is somehow going to stabilize unrest in Egypt? It makes no sense whatsoever. I would say that when we look at this and we hear arguments such as this will cost money, do you know whose money it was that bought these F-16? It was our money to begin with. We send the money to Egypt and then they buy the weapons from us. If we are worried about a place to store the F-16s, why don't we give them to our military? Everybody seems to be saying it is a problem, this sequester, and there is not enough money for our military. Why don't we give the 20 F-16s to our military? Why don't we give the tanks to our military? Apparently, these are more tanks that are being given to Egypt than often different contingents of our Marines have at any one given point in time. I would say keep the money and keep the weapons in our country. Mark my words, it is a mistake to send these weapons to Egypt. It is not in Israel's best interest. For people to come down and argue it is in Israel's best interest to send weapons to a country that professes hate, professes a disbelief in the Holocaust, that professes they are in favor of destroying Israel-- that is whom we are supposed to send these weapons to? It makes no sense at all. Our foreign policy often makes no sense at all. I do think we need to reassess. We made this deal with Mubarak. We didn't make this deal with Mursi. Currently, Egypt is unraveling. I think it is a terrible mistake to send these weapons to Egypt, and I hope my colleagues will consider that. I yield back the remainder of my time, and I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. PAUL. I ask unanimous consent to speak for 5 minutes.

Mr. PAUL

Mr. PAUL. This amendment would stop the transfer of F-16s and Abrams tanks to Egypt. Egypt is in danger of unraveling. Egypt is currently ruled by martial law. I think it is unwise to give our most sophisticated weaponry to a country in such disarray. I think it is unwise to give our most sophisticated weaponry to a country ruled by a President who recently said that Jews are bloodsuckers and descendents of apes and pigs. I hope my colleagues will consider the ramifications of continuing to arm such an unstable regime, and I urge a vote in support of ending arms sales at this point to Egypt.

Mr. PAUL

Mr. PAUL. Mr. President, some of you may have heard that there is something called the fiscal cliff approaching and that we must do something about it or we will go over that cliff. But if you want to fix and do something about going over a cliff, you have to know what is the fiscal cliff. Well, the fiscal cliff, apparently, is taxes going up. So it must be a bad thing if your taxes go up. People have said: Well, it is kind of like having people drowning. And people are drowning. What does that mean? That is a bad thing. Taxes going up is a bad thing. So what are they telling us? Let's save 98 out of 100 of them. Well, that sounds pretty good. I am for saving as many as we can. But that sort of implies that our policy is that drowning is a good thing; that we are going to let 2 percent drown; that raising taxes is bad if it happens to everyone--it is a cliff--but it is OK if it only happens to one or two people, and maybe you do not know them, and maybe they are rich people and we don't care. Does anybody work for rich people? Does anybody know somebody who works at a car lot selling expensive cars but that person only makes $40,000 a year but he sells cars that are purchased by rich people? Does anybody remember the yacht tax? We were going to go get those rich people--had a special tax on yachts. Guess who lost their jobs. The working guy making $50,000 and $60,000 a year, because the rich people went to the Bahamas to buy their yachts. This is not about getting rich people. This is about what it will do to the economy, what it is going to do to the average middle-class person who works for a rich person. But you have to understand what the fiscal cliff is. You have to understand that the President is telling you that it is a cliff and it is bad, and everybody on television thinks it is terrible to go over the cliff. What is the cliff? Taxes going up. But if it is bad for taxes to go up for a bunch of people, why it is good for taxes to go up on a small portion of people? You say: Well they are rich. They can afford it. Here is the problem. The rich pay most of the taxes in our country. The top 2 percent pay half of the taxes. What you are saying is that they are rich and they can afford it. But that is half of the Nation's income that will have increased taxes. You will take money from the productive sector, which is the private sector, and you will put it into the nonproductive sector, which is Washington. So if you want ditches to be dug and then to be filled again, send more money to Washington. But if you want jobs to be created, if you want the economy to thrive, you should want to leave that money in your community. It should not matter to you whose money it is or who has it, you want that money--in my case, we want that money in Kentucky. We do not want to send it to Washington because there is no objective evidence that the money is well spent up here. There is no objective evidence that we are good with money up here. We should not send more money up here. We should leave more money in the private sector. Now, Milton Friedman recognized this when he said: Nobody spends someone else's money as wisely as you spend your own. That in a nutshell, that in one sentence explains to you why the private sector is more efficient than the public sector. The public sector--it is not our money. So those of us up here who will spend it--that is why they spend $1 trillion more than they have each year. That is why they break their own budgetary rules. That is why there is no budget. That is why we live in an era of runaway spending. That is why your government is insolvent, your government is bankrupt. Guess what. When you raise taxes on 2 percent of the people, there is a chance you will not get any more tax revenue because when you raise tax rates, you sometimes get less revenue. And the converse is true-- sometimes you lower rates and you actually get more revenue. In the 1920s we lowered tax rates, and we got more revenue. Guess what. The rich paid a higher percentage of the revenue when we lowered rates. We did it again in the 1960s under Kennedy. We did it again under Reagan. We grew at 7 percent one year under Reagan because we lowered rates and we unleashed an economic boom. That is what we want. Do we want a government that is just envious, jealous, and wants to punish people or do we want a government that has sane and rational policies that will allow the economy to grow? That is what happened in the 1980s. We had 7 percent growth one year. We had millions of jobs created. Mark my words. You will raise tax rates, and you will feel good because you went after and got those rich people because you said you were. You campaigned against rich people, you have enough envy whipped up in the country, you are going to get them, and you are going to stick it to those rich people. But guess what. You may not get any more revenue, you may not get any more economic growth, but you can say: I stuck it to the rich people. That is what we are talking about. Some of you may say, well, we are going to do this, but maybe we will do something about spending at the same time. The one thing they are taking off the table is spending restraint. There will be no spending restraint. In fact, whatever deal comes out of here will increase spending. That is part of the deal. We are going to raise taxes, and we are going to raise spending. Tell me what is good about that. There is a cliff approaching. It is not the cliff we hear about on TV. The cliff is a debt cliff. There is a debt crisis in our country. We now have a debt that equals our GDP. Our debt equals our economy. We are borrowing--while we are today dithering over a deal that will do nothing--we will borrow $4 billion today. We are borrowing $50,000 every second. Each man, woman, and child in this country owes more per capita in debt than they do in Greece. So, by all means, let's complete a deal today so we can go home. Let's complete a deal. Let's raise taxes. Let's stick it to those rich people. Let's not touch spending, and let's pretend as if we have done something. The deal will do absolutely nothing to save this country. Two-thirds of our spending is entitlements. The President has taken entitlements off the table. We will not reform the entitlement programs. Why are the entitlement programs broken? Is it Republicans' fault or Democrats' fault? No, it is your great-grandparents' fault. They had too many kids. It has nothing to do with partisan politics. There were a whole bunch of babies born after the war, and then there have been less babies born with each generation. It is nobody's fault, but it is not working. We spend more on Social Security than comes in in taxes. That is a problem. On Medicare, it is even worse. We spend $3 for every dollar we collect in Medicare. Does anybody think that is going to work? It has been going on for a long time now and it is getting worse. We owe $35 to $40 trillion on Medicare, and it is not getting any better. So what do the retirement groups say? AARP says: Absolutely, don't touch it. Oh, that is great. That is part of the solution. Don't touch it. What does the President say? Entitlements are off the table. What does the majority leader say? We will not do anything about entitlements. Oh, well, great. This is going to be a real great solution. We are really going to do a lot--but we are going to stick it to rich people. I hope nobody works for any of these rich people. I hope nobody sells any of this stuff to rich people. So the thing is, look at what is going on up here, and when you ask for action, don't ask for any action. We have to figure out what the problem is before we can get to what we need to do. People say, well, we have raised taxes; we just need more revenue. Spending, as measured as a percentage of the economy, 4 years ago we were spending 20 percent of our GDP. We are now spending 25 percent of our GDP. When we say on our side that it is a spending problem, it absolutely is, it absolutely is, and it is out of control. Guess what. Most of it is called mandatory spending. That means entitlements. We can't do anything about it. They are now taken off the table. Now, about a year ago, you may remember there was this big debate, the Budget Control Act. There was a big debate over raising the debt ceiling, and they attached to it some slowdown in spending. Now, these were not cuts; the sequester is not a cut in spending. It is repeated all the time on TV that the sequester is a cut, but it is not a cut; it is a slowdown in the rate of growth. But it is at least going in the right direction. So what is the one thing we hear now that is going to be part of this deal? We are going to get rid of the sequester. So the one even pretend, make-believe attempt to try to slow down spending, they are going to jettison it. They are going to kick the can down the road--but we are going to get those rich people. We are going to attack those rich people. We have to wake up soon as a country. We are literally insolvent. Some say, well, we are a great and powerful country. Bad things could never happen to us. It can, and it has happened to great civilized countries. Do you know what they do. Great and civilized countries can destroy their currency. We have printed trillions upon trillions of dollars, and we are in danger of destroying the very value of our currency. So instead of having a President who runs around saying he is going to stick it to rich people, what we really need are honest people to go around the country and say to people: If you are working class or you are retired, the government is stealing from you. The government is stealing your savings through big government. On the one hand, they offer you something. They offer you baubles. They offer you something for free: Here is a cell phone. Just take the cell phone and vote for me. It will be OK. The problem is, it is not free. On the one hand, you get the free cell phone. On the other hand, you get $4 gas. On the other hand, you get food costs rising. Why do prices go up? Because we run a deficit giving you free stuff, and then we print money to pay for it, and that steals value from what you have. It is not that gas is more precious; gas is rising because the value of the dollar is shrinking. Food is rising because the value of the dollar is shrinking. So big government isn't your friend, and deficits are not your friend. We hang in the balance up here and nobody is serious about it. What is the one thing that has been taken off the table? Spending. We will not cut any spending. So we are looking for a deal that will raise taxes, which everybody seems to equate with drowning--except we are only going to make a few people drown, and they are rich anyway. But I think drowning is a policy. Drowning, even if it is selective drowning, being in favor of selective drowning is not a good policy. What I have said and what I tell people is let your representatives know. Let your Senators know that you would rather have some kind of serious fix to the problem rather than kicking the can down the road; that you would rather have them actually do something that would allow the economy to grow, would allow jobs to be created, and, as a consequence, government would bring in more revenue. The only thing proven to ever bring in more revenue is economic growth. What is going on right now? We are growing at a little under 2 percent. When the President, 2 years ago, extended all the tax rates and chose not to raise tax rates, we were growing faster. He said we don't want to rock the economy, and he agreed to extend all tax breaks. But now I think he is hell bent on raising taxes. Realize that what you are going to get is raising taxes, more money taken out of the private sector and given to the government, the inefficient sector. Don't count on that new money coming in going to make the debt smaller; count on it funding more programs. You will notice, if you look carefully at whatever this fiscal cliff deal is, there will not be spending cuts, but there will be spending proposals. So we are going to try to tax rich people more and get more money. It may not work because often you raise rates and get less revenue. We are going to try that, but we take the money that we get from rich people, and we are going to immediately spend it on more foolhardy programs, which is what we have been doing up here. We are not going to fix the problem, we are going to perpetuate the problem. What I would argue for is we should be doing the opposite. We, the Republican Party, the party of limited government and low taxation, should have no part in this. We should have no fingerprints on this, and we should in no way support anything that raises taxes because it is bad economic policy. So I, for one, will not support any proposal that comes out that does not cut spending and raises taxes. Mr. President, I yield the remainder of my time, and I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. PAUL

Mr. PAUL. Mr. President, when Hurricane Sandy struck the Northeast, hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of people were without power. We all saw the video footage. We saw the terrible trauma, and people are still trying to dig out from underneath the debris of Hurricane Sandy. During that period of time, hundreds of workers drove up from the South wanting to help. These workers were nonunionized, and they were turned away. This was a sad day for our country that nonunion workers were not allowed to participate in the cleanup and were asked to join a union before they would be accepted as workers. I think it is a mistake to politicize things such as this, particularly in a time of an emergency. So what I have asked for and what my amendment would do is allow an exemption to Davis-Bacon. Davis-Bacon is a Federal law that requires that we not have competitive bidding on Federal projects. What happens is on Federal projects the wages are fixed at a union scale wage and there is not a competitive bidding for wages. So what I have asked is that we suspend that and say, in order to get better use of the money, in order to advance the money by billions of dollars and do more with the money--and this is an enormous amount of money, running into the billions of dollars--in order to get better use of our money, to suspend Davis-Bacon, and we would basically be allowing competitive bidding on wages. This has been done before. President Nixon and both President Bushes did this. During Katrina, we suspended Davis-Bacon because it was an emergency. We wanted to make the best use of our Nation's dollars. This amendment would suspend Davis-Bacon for this emergency. It is estimated it might save as much as 22 percent of the cost. We are talking about billions of dollars. Mr. President, $60 billion is being requested for this cleanup. Where is the money going to come from? You have heard we have an enormous debt--$16 trillion--in our country. We have over $1 trillion in debt this year. We print up the money, but that simply steals from your savings and steals from your current currency. We can tax you or borrow more. But we owe $16 trillion already. What I am asking is why don't we try to make good use of the money that is going toward this disaster, allow money to go further? That is simply by allowing competitive bidding on wages. Currently, there is no competitive bidding on wages. My amendment would allow for this. I urge my colleagues to stand with taxpayers--to stand with taxpayers against special interests, against political and partisan purposes--and for the sake of an emergency to say: We are going to be frugal with the dollars spent. We are not going to be extravagant. We are not going to reward certain special interests that are very involved in the political process. We are going to say we are going to use the money wisely, we are going to allow competitive bidding on wages. So I urge my colleagues to support this temporary and specific suspension of Davis-Bacon for emergency funds. I yield the floor.

Mr. PAUL. Mr. President, I rise in support of amendment No. 3410, which would take the spending for Sandy relief and spend only 1 year at a time and would offset that spending with spending cuts. Now, you ask, why would we want to do that? Well, if you have been watching Congress in recent years, you might understand that we are not very good with money up here. Each year we are spending $1 trillion that we do not have. To me, there is absolutely no objective evidence that we are very good with money up here, so you do not want to give Congress 3 years' worth of spending authority on Hurricane Sandy. Why don't we do it 1 year at a time and make sure there is correct oversight and make sure the money is not being wasted, make sure the money is not being abused. I will give a couple of examples of what is in the current bill. We have money for Alaskan fisheries in the Hurricane Sandy bill. They tried earlier today to stuff money in here for a country by the name of Palau in the western part of the Pacific. Now, I thought this was about emergency relief for Hurricane Sandy, which hit the northeast coast. What does that have to do with sending money to the far reaches of the Earth, including sending money to work on Alaskan fisheries? If you want to give money to Alaskan fisheries, have a bill on the floor about Alaskan fisheries, but do not pretend that we are going to stuff it in some emergency bill for the Northeast. So what I have asked is, let's just spend what you are going to spend next year. CBO says there is going to be $9 billion spent next year. That is what I allocate. I take the $9 billion from places where we are wasting it. I think we are wasting it by sending it overseas. I am not particularly happy about sending money to countries that are burning our flag and chanting ``death to America.'' I think it is an outrage. The President has said: Well, we need to quit doing nation building overseas and start doing it at home. But where are the actions that support his words? I agree completely--we need to quit doing nation building overseas when we are running a trillion-dollar deficit here, but we can't just say we are going to continue to print the money or borrow the money or simply raise taxes. There is not enough for all of this spending. What you need to do so is say: Some of the spending is wasteful, and we should not do it. I personally think we should not be sending billions of dollars to dictators who oppress their people, who burn our flag, who will not protect our embassies. I think it is an absolute mistake. You can go through a list of 30 or 40 years of foreign aid and see dictators who have personally profited and stolen our money. We have bridges and roads crumbling in our country. We have infrastructure that was damaged by Hurricane Sandy. They simply want to print more money and borrow it. People will stand and say: Oh, we have never offset emergency funding. Well, maybe that is why we have a $16 trillion deficit-- because no one wants to cut any spending around here. If you want to help those affected by Hurricane Sandy, do it, but do it by taking the money from someplace where we are wasting it. What my bill says is that we will spend next year's $9 billion, which is what they have asked for for the next year, and we will offset it by taking $9 billion out of the foreign aid fund. Now, usually when we bring this up here, someone will trod on down and say: Oh, but this will affect Israel. This has nothing to do with Israel, will not affect any money given to Israel. There will be money left in the foreign aid fund. It has always been my purpose that we start by taking the money from countries that hate us, countries that are burning our flag. I have not seen anyone in Israel burning the American flag, but I have seen it happening in about 10 other countries that receive money, that actually receive more than Israel. So what I would say is let's not trot out canards about Israel; let's make it about what it is. The Mubarak family in Egypt got $60 billion. The country got $60 billion while the Mubarak family themselves stole probably half of it. They are one of the richest families in the world. The kids are some of the richest people in the world because they stole your money. This has happened repeatedly. It has happened throughout the African Continent. It has happened around the world, that your money is sent overseas. Just in Iraq and Afghanistan during the wars, we built $6 billion worth of roads. Meanwhile, we have problems here. I have two bridges in my State that I do not have the money to repair because we are too busy repairing some other country's roads. There are people in this body--the majority of them here--who think: Oh, let's keep spending this money. And the majority of the American people do not think it is a good idea. I hope they will wake up and call their Senators and their Congressmen and say: This is absurd. It must end. So this is a very simple amendment. Spend 1 year on the emergency fund, $9 billion, and offset it by cutting foreign aid overseas. I urge my colleagues to support this amendment.

Mr. PAUL. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to call up amendments Nos. 3376 and 3410 en bloc.

Mr. PAUL

Mr. PAUL. Madam President, I rise today in support of the Fourth Amendment Protection Act. The fourth amendment guarantees the right of the people to be secure in their persons, their houses, their papers, and their effects against unreasonable searches and seizures. John Adams considered the fight against general warrants--or what they called in those days writs of assistance--to be when ``the child Independence was born.'' Our independence and the fourth amendment go hand in hand. They emerge together. To discount or to dilute the fourth amendment would be to deny really what constitutes our very Republic. But somehow, along the way, we have become lazy and haphazard in our vigilance. We have allowed Congress and the courts to diminish our fourth amendment protections, particularly when we give our papers to a third party--once information is given to an Internet provider or to a bank. Once we allowed our papers to be held by third parties, such as telephone companies or Internet providers, the courts determined we no longer had a legally recognized expectation of privacy. There have been some dissents over time. Justice Marshall dissented in the California Bankers Association v. Schulz case, and he wrote these words: The fact that one has disclosed private papers to a bank for a limited purpose within the context of a confidential customer-bank relationship does not mean that one has waived all right to the privacy of the papers. But privacy and the fourth amendment have steadily lost ground over the past century. From the California Bankers Association case, to Smith v. Maryland, to U.S. v. Miller, the majority has ruled that records, once they are held by a third party, don't deserve the same fourth amendment protections. Ironically, though, digital records seem to get less protection than paper records. As the National Association of Defense Attorneys has pointed out, ``since the 1870s, a warrant has been required to read mail, and since the Supreme Court's decision in Katz v. the United States, a warrant has generally been required to wiretap telephone conversations. However, under current law, e-mail, text messages, and other communication content do not receive this same level of protection.'' Why is a phone call deserving of more protection than our e-mail or texts? In U.S. v. Jones, the recent Supreme Court case that says the government can't put a GPS tracking device on a car without a warrant, Justice Sotomayor said this: I for one doubt that people would accept without complaint the warrantless disclosure to the government of a list of every Web site they have visited in the last week, or month, or year. . . . I would not assume that all information voluntarily disclosed to some member of the public for a limited purpose is, for that reason alone, disentitled to the Fourth Amendment protection. Justices Marshall and Brennan, dissenting in Smith v. Maryland, emphasized the danger of giving up fourth amendment protections. They wrote: The prospect of government monitoring will undoubtedly prove disturbing even to those with nothing illicit to hide. Many individuals, including members of unpopular political organizations or journalists with confidential sources, may legitimately wish to avoid disclosure of their personal contacts. In Miller and in Smith, the Supreme Court held that the fourth amendment did not protect records held by third parties. Sotomayor wrote in the Jones case that it may be time to reconsider these cases, reconsider how they were decided; that their approach is, in her words, ``ill-suited to the digital age, in which people reveal a great deal of information about themselves to third parties in the course of carrying out mundane tasks.'' Today, this amendment that I will present, the Fourth Amendment Protection Act, does precisely that. This amendment would restore the fourth amendment protection to third-party records. This amendment would simply apply the fourth amendment to modern means of communications. E-mailing and text messaging would be given the same protections we currently give to telephone conversations. Some may ask, well, why go to such great lengths to protect records? Isn't the government just interested in the records of bad people? To answer this question, one must imagine their Visa statement and what information is on that Visa statement. From our Visa statement, the government may be able to ascertain what magazines we read; whether we drink and how much; whether we gamble and how much; whether we are a conservative, a liberal, a libertarian; whom we contribute to; what our preferred political party is; whether we attend a church, a synagogue, or a mosque; whether we are seeing a psychiatrist; and what type of medications we take. By poring over a Visa statement, the government can pry into every aspect of one's personal life. Do we really want to allow our government unfettered access to sift through millions of records without first obtaining a judicial warrant? If we have people who are accused of committing a crime, we go before a judge and get a warrant. It is not that hard. I am not saying the government wouldn't be allowed to look through records. I am saying that the mass of ordinary, innocent citizens should not have their records rifled through by a government that does not first have to ask a judge for a warrant before they look at personal records. We have examples in the past of abuses by our own country. During the civil rights era, the government snooped on activists. During the Vietnam era, the government snooped on antiwar protesters. In a digital age, where computers can process billions of bits of information, do we want the government to have unfettered access to every detail of our lives? From a Visa statement, the government can determine what diseases one may or may not have; whether one is impotent, manic, depressed; whether someone is a gun owner and whether he or she buys ammunition; whether one is an animal rights activist, an environmental activist; what books we order, what blogs we read, and what stores or Internet sites we look at. Do we really want our government to have free and unlimited access to everything we do on our computers? The fourth amendment was written in a different time and a different age, but its necessity and its truth are timeless. The right to privacy and, for that matter, the right to private property are not explicitly mentioned in the Constitution, but the ninth amendment says that the rights not stated are not to be disparaged or denied. James Otis--arguably the father of the fourth amendment--put it best when he said: One of the most essential branches of English liberty is the freedom of one's house. A man's house is his castle; and whilst he is quiet, he is as well guarded as a prince in his castle. Today's castle may be an apartment, and who knows where the information is coming from. It may be paper in one's apartment or it may be bits of data stored who knows where, but the concept that government should be restrained from invading a sphere of privacy is a timeless concept. Over the past few decades, our right to privacy has been eroded. The Fourth Amendment Protection Act would go a long way toward restoring this cherished and necessary right. I hope my colleagues will consider supporting, defending, and enhancing the fourth amendment, bringing it into a modern age where modern electronic and computer information and communications are once again protected by the fourth amendment. Madam President, I reserve the remainder of my time.

Mr. PAUL. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. PAUL. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the reading of the amendment be dispensed with.

Mr. PAUL. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent to call up my amendment, which is at the desk.

Mr. PAUL

Mr. PAUL. Mr. President, I rise today to support the Fourth Amendment Protection Act. The fourth amendment guarantees that people should be secure in their persons, houses, and papers against unreasonable searches and seizures. Somewhere along the way we became lazy and haphazard in our vigilance. We allowed Congress and the courts to diminish our fourth amendment protections, particularly when papers were held by third parties. I think most Americans would be shocked to know that the fourth amendment does not protect their records if they are banking, Internet, or Visa records. A warrant is required to read their snail mail and to tap their phone, but no warrant is required to look at their e-mail, text, or Internet searches; they can be read without a warrant. Why is a phone call more deserving of privacy protection than an e-mail? This amendment would restore the fourth amendment protections to third-party records, and I recommend a ``yes'' vote.

Mr. PAUL

Mr. PAUL. Mr. President, I rise in opposition to this bill because I believe it contains language that would allow American citizens to be detained without trial. The other side has argued that is not true, that they will be eligible for their constitutional rights if they get into an article III court or a constitutional court. But here is the rub: They have to be eligible. Who decides whether someone is eligible for the court? It is an arbitrary decision, and this is what this debate has been over. Don't let the wool be pulled over your eyes that everyone has protection and they will get a trial by jury if accused of a crime. We had protection in this bill. We passed an amendment that specifically said: If you are an American citizen or here legally in the country, you will get a trial by jury. It was explicitly stated and it has been removed in the conference committee. It has been removed because they want the ability to hold American citizens without trial in our country. This is so fundamentally wrong and goes against everything we stand for as a country that it cannot go unnoticed and should be pointed out. Proponents of indefinite detention without trial say that an accusation alone is sufficient, that these crimes are so heinous that trials are unnecessary. They will show us pictures of foreigners in foreign dress from foreign lands and say that is what this debate is about. It is untrue. This debate is about American citizens accused of crimes in the United States. Make no mistake that the faces of terrorism include awful people who should be punished to the full extent of the law. The same portrait of evil could be drawn of domestic terrorists, domestic terror, and domestic violence. One could parade pictures of Charles Manson, Timothy McVeigh--the Oklahoma bomber--Jeffrey Dahmer, and people would cry out that they don't deserve a trial either. Most Americans understand at some level that when someone is accused of a crime in our country, they get a trial by a jury of their peers. No matter how heinous the crime is or how awful they are, we give them a trial. This bill takes away that right and says if someone thinks a person is dangerous, we will hold that person without a trial. It is an abomination. It should not stand. Most Americans understand that if someone is accused of a crime, it does not make them guilty of a crime. They will still get their day in court. Some here may not care when they determine that they are going to detain Ahmed or Yousef or Ibrahim. Many innocent Americans are named Ahmed or Yousef or Ibrahim. Many Americans are named Saul or David or Isaac. Is our memory so short that we don't understand the danger of allowing detention without trial? Is our memory so short that we don't understand the havoc that bias and bigotry can do when unrestrained by the law? Trial by jury is our last defense against tyranny and our last defense against oppression. We have locked up Arabs, Jews, and the Japanese. Do we not want to retain our right to trial by jury? Do we want to allow the whims of government to come forward and lock up whom they please without being tried? In our not-too-distant past Americans named Ozaki, Ichiro, or Yuki were indefinitely detained by the tens of thousands without trial or accusation. Will America only begin to regret our loss of trial by jury when the people have names such as Smith and Jones? Mark my words: This is about people named Smith and Jones or people named David, Saul, Isaac, Ahmed, Yousef, or Ibrahim. This is about all Americans and whether they will have due process and the protections of the law. We are told these people are so evil and so dangerous that we cannot allow trials. Trial by jury is who we are. Trial by jury is that shining beacon on a hill that people around the world wish to emulate. It is why people came here. It is why we are exceptional as a people. It is not the color of our skin; it is our ideas, it is the right to trial by jury that is looked to as a beacon of hope for people around the world, and we are willing to discard it out of fear. It is a shame to scrap the very rights that make us exceptional as a people. Proponents of indefinite detention will argue that we are a good people and we will never unjustly detain people. I don't dispute their intentions or impute bad motives to them, but what I will say is remember what Madison said. Madison said if a government were comprised of angels, we would not need the chains of the Constitution. We would not need to bind our representatives and restrain them from doing bad things to good people. If all men in government were angels, we would not need the rules. All men in the government are not angels now and never will be. There is always the danger that some day someone will be elected who will take the rights away from the Japanese, Jews, or Arabs. It happened once. We are told by these people who believe in indefinite detention that the battle is everywhere. If the battle is everywhere, our liberties are nowhere. If the battle is without end, when will they return our liberties? When will our rights be restored if the battle has no end and the battlefield is limitless and the war is endless? When will our rights be restored? It is not a temporary or limited suspension of our right to trial by jury but an unlimited, unbounded relinquishment of the right to trial by jury without length or duration. We are told that limiting the right to trial by jury is justified under the law of war. Am I the only one uncomfortable applying the law of war to American citizens accused of crimes in the United States? Is the law of war a euphemism for martial law? What is the law of war except for something to go around the Constitution? It is an extraordinary circumstance that might happen in a battlefield somewhere else but should not happen in the United States. Every American accused of a crime, no matter how heinous, should get their day in court and a trial by a jury of their peers. These are not idle questions. I believe the defense of the Bill of Rights trumps the concerns for speedy passage even of a bill which I generally support. Sixty-seven Senators voted just a few weeks ago to include a provision in this bill that says we have a right to a trial by jury. It was plucked out in secret in conference despite the wishes of two-thirds of the Senators in this body--Republican and Democrat--who were concerned about protecting the right to a jury trial. Many Senators say: Well, we tried and we lost. They outmaneuvered us; they were sneakier than we were. I disagree that we give up. I think the time is now. I think we make a statement. The fight is today. The subject is too dear. If a majority today were to stand and say: The right to trial by jury is important enough to delay the Defense authorization bill for 2 weeks, I think it would be an important message to send. So today I stand and urge a ``no'' vote on what I consider to be a travesty of justice. Thank you.

Mr. PAUL

Mr. PAUL. I thank Senator Coons for inviting me, both figuratively and literally, across the aisle to join him on this side--I am glad to be here today--and for introducing me to this prize that Sandy Greenberg has brought forward to end blindness. I am an eye surgeon. I have also done research on glaucoma and have been a longtime member of Lions Club International, whose primary research and goal is the prevention of blindness. One of the heroes to the Lions' eye movement and to our work worldwide on blindness has been Helen Keller who, at the age of 19 months, lost not only her vision but her hearing. In 1925, she came to the Lions Club International with this mandate--and this is part of her speech from that day: You have heard how through a little word dropped from the fingers of another, a ray of light from another soul touched the darkness of my mind and I found myself, found the world, found God. It is because my teacher learned about me and broke through the dark, silent imprisonment which held me that I am able to work for myself and for others. It is the caring we want more than the money. The gift without the sympathy and interest of the giver is empty. If you care, if we can make the people of this great country care, the blind will indeed triumph over blindness. The opportunity I bring to you, Lions, is this: To foster and sponsor the work of the American Foundation for the Blind. Will you not help me hasten the day when there shall be no preventable blindness; no little deaf, blind child untaught; no blind man or woman unaided? There is a long history, both in our country and in other countries around the world, of private philanthropy and these prizes. Going back to the early 18th century, there was a prize for longitude. The Harrisons, father and son, worked for nearly 40 years to develop a clock to precisely measure where they were on the Earth, to measure longitude. We currently have something called the X Prize, which gave money last year to a company that developed a technology to speed up the cleanup of oil in the ocean after BP's disaster. Siemens Foundation gives a $100,000 prize. That was given last year to a 17-year-old girl from California who developed a nanoparticle that, with a chemotherapy agent, goes directly to treat tumors. A prize from Siemens was also given to 15-year-old Benjamin Clark, who won the prize for his work in how stars are born. I love the idea, and I think it is underappreciated, of private philanthropy. Today, I am happy to be here with you to congratulate Sandy Greenberg for putting forward this prize, and I hope it will bring some results. I think there is within our grasp the ability to treat and, hopefully, prevent blindness.

Mr. PAUL. I think what is great about the prize is it didn't set a short and limited goal. It goes for the whole thing: They want to prevent and cure blindness. I think we need more big thinking. We need to talk about let's cure diabetes, let's cure AIDS. Sometimes it takes an incremental approach. But sometimes it takes a big, grand or bold vision. The Senator mentioned Dr. Salk. In the early days, with the polio vaccine, some actually died from the vaccine. He had to move forward despite some obstacles and despite some setbacks. Originally, the whole idea of vaccination came from Dr. Boylston in Boston, preceding the time of our Revolutionary War. There, it was a live vaccine taken from the actual pustules of someone who had smallpox, lanced it, stuck it into the pustules, and then cut into a person who did not have smallpox and gave them the disease. He tried to give them a mild variant of this. For this, Dr. Boylston was hounded through the streets and mobs came to the house. The persons he chose to vaccinate first were his kids. That took a very bold step forward to vaccinate his kids. His kids survived, and the rest is history. George Washington had his family inoculated. Back at the time of the Revolutionary War, more people died from communicable diseases than died from actual bullets. This was true in most wars up until this century. I think it takes bold vision, and I think Sandy Greenberg will help to move this along with this prize. I love the idea of incentives. We are a country built on incentives. I don't think any scientist is going to jump forward and say, I am doing it only for the prize. But prizes don't hurt, and we should acknowledge that these scientists who can come forward and may come forward with a great cure should be rewarded. I would like to thank Sandy Greenberg and his family for setting up this prize. I hope that out of this some great good will come for those who have gone blind and for prevention.

Mr. PAUL

Mr. PAUL. I think another important point to make about this is we truly have different philosophical differences with people on the other side. But what people at home ask me is when you agree with the other side, when the other side says we want this part of immigration reform, why can't we do it? That to me is empty partisanship. Are we afraid to give Republicans credit for introducing immigration reform in the Republican-controlled House? Are we afraid it might be perceived as a Republican idea? That to me is empty partisanship. I routinely vote with the other side on some issues that some on this side object to because I believe in the issue. This is an issue where we all should be able to agree on immigration reform. Yet the other side will object to moving the ball forward on immigration reform. That I don't understand and that I see as empty partisanship, and that is the dysfunction of this body when we agree on something we still cannot pass it.

Mr. PAUL. I compliment the Senator from Texas for being a leader in immigration reform. There are many of us in the Republican Party who wish to have immigration reform. I do wish it be noted for the Record today that we can take a small step forward toward immigration reform today. This bill that would allow Ph.D.s, master's, successful graduates to come into this country with a green card could be passed today. This bill is at the desk and we will ask consent from the majority party today to pass this bill. I will also note the President and the Members of the majority party will object. The President has said he will not pass this unless he can get everything he wants. When I go home or when I talk to folks with the media, they say: Why can't you guys get along? Why can't you do anything in Washington? Why is this system so horribly broken? This is precisely why. We agree on this bill. I think the other side will stand and say they like the concept, but they do not want to do it yet. They want to wait until we agree on everything. Guess what. We are never going to agree on everything so we are never going to get immigration reform if we cannot start agreeing to some things and moving the ball forward. This is the same on tax reform. This is the same on entitlement reform. We lurch from deadline to deadline. There will be a deadline, the so-called fiscal cliff coming up, and the President has announced that we do not have enough time to do entitlement reform. We don't have enough time to do tax reform. We don't have enough time to do immigration reform. When are we going to start? When is there going to be a committee hearing designated toward entitlement reform? I have been here 2 years. There is no such committee. When will there be hearings on immigration reform? There will not be time. Deadlines will pass. But not break things up into smaller pieces? Why have to have some enormous fiscal cliff or whatever that everybody has to agree to a thousand moving parts? We are of different persuasions, of different parties, of different beliefs. We are never going to agree on a thousand things. Why don't we start passing some things we can agree to? This is a small step forward. We can pass this bill today. Does the Senator have an explanation that can help me understand why we have to have empty partisanship, why we cannot move forward to pass some small things for immigration reform?

Mr. PAUL

Mr. PAUL. Madam President, the amendment before us requires that the President submit a plan for a no-fly zone for Syria. I want to compliment the authors for including in this amendment a clause that says nothing in this amendment shall be construed as a declaration of war or an authorization for the use of force. I think it is very important in our Nation today that we are not saying we are starting, beginning, or getting involved in a new war. However, I do think this amendment is ill-advised for two reasons. No. 1, I don't think I know with certainty whether the Syrian rebels will be freedom-loving, tolerant, constitution-toting believers in a republican form of government or whether they will institute an Islamic republic that will have no tolerance for Christians and no tolerance for people of any other faith. It still remains to be seen whether a secular government will be established in Libya, Tunisia, or Egypt. There is the question of whether al-Qaida is more or less of a threat in Libya today since the rebels have won the civil war. I don't think we know for certain what a rebel government in Syria will do with the 1 million Christians who live in Syria. Since the Iraq war, hundreds of thousands of Christians have fled Iraq and gone to Syria. Even after the war, apparently Syria was seen as more of a tolerant nation than Iraq. Will a rebel Islamic government in Syria tolerate or persecute Christians? Will a rebel Islamic government institute the death penalty for blasphemy, for conversion, or for apostasy? Will they have a true democracy, a secular government, or will they have a Syrian rebel government that is less tolerant than what they currently have? In many ways the Arab spring has become the Arab winter. In Egypt we have a leader from the Muslim Brotherhood who recited amen when a radical cleric stood up and said: Death to Israel. As a radical cleric said: Death to Israel and anyone who supports them, this Muslim Brotherhood leader of Egypt that came out of the Arab spring is nodding his head in assent and seemed to be chanting amen. Will they seek peace with Israel or war? Will the Syrian rebels seek a secular government or one ruled by Shari'a? I think there are many unknowns we need to be asking ourselves before we involve ourselves in a civil war. Secondly, I think it is a bad idea to discuss contingency plans for war. While I am in favor of the Senate retaining our prerogative to declare war, I believe that the details of the execution of war are in the purview of the Executive. In other words, we do have the power to begin or to not begin a war. That is the power the Constitution gave us, but I don't think the Constitution intended to have 535 generals. I don't think it intended to have us explicitly talking about every contingency plan for every possible war in every corner of the globe. Our Defense Department, no doubt, has contingency plans for a ballistic missile attack on the United States, a conventional land invasion, naval or air encounters throughout the world, but we don't necessarily openly discuss them or encourage them. I don't think it is best to openly discuss these plans for defending against an attack and especially not for involving ourselves in a civil war. Our Nation and our soldiers are weary of war. Our Nation yearns for leaders who will strive to keep us out of war. Our Nation yearns for leaders who are reluctant to begin a new war or get involved in a new war. I hope my colleagues today will not encourage a rush to war by publicly clamoring for a plan to become involved in Syria's civil war. I yield the floor.