Rand Paul

Mr. PAUL

Mr. PAUL. Mr. President, as a physician and an eye surgeon, I have seen ObamaCare up close, and it is not working for Americans. If you look across the country and say ``Is it working?'' you find that ObamaCare premiums have doubled for those in the individual marketplace in just a few short years. You find that the ObamaCare insurance mandates have caused 4.7 million people to lose the insurance they chose. If you like your doctor, you can keep him or her--that was the promise, and it was a lie. Some 4.7 million people were told that they couldn't choose the insurance they want and couldn't choose their doctor. It is estimated that there are 800,000 fewer jobs because of ObamaCare. How does that happen? Well, if you work 32 hours a week and your employer has to provide insurance at 30 hours, guess what happens. Some people get moved to 28 hours. You add up all those hours, and millions of people are working fewer hours. Who are the people who got shafted by ObamaCare? Often, working-class people. In my State, there are 25,000 people who pay a fine because they can't afford ObamaCare. These 25,000 people make less than $25,000 a year. They are our working class. ObamaCare punishes them and says: You have to pay a fine. They say: I wish I had insurance, but ObamaCare added all these mandates, things that I can't afford. Sure, everybody wants to have everything under the Sun covered by their insurance, but when you mandate that, you elevate the price of insurance. So what has happened? Young, healthy people have lost their insurance and don't buy insurance in droves. ObamaCare says: You can come back any time after you are sick and buy your insurance. That sounds good, but what it leads to is the death spiral of ObamaCare. ObamaCare premiums have doubled because the young, healthy people are saying it costs too much and the sicker people are the only ones left in insurance. This is what happens when you let the government get involved in the marketplace. If you allow the marketplace to work--what is the one universal feature of capitalism? You get the lowest amount of cost and the most amount of goods distributed to the most amount of people. Right now under ObamaCare, 50 percent of America has one choice. What does that mean? A monopoly. Who wants the insurance company to have a monopoly? When the insurance companies have monopolies, the prices get doubled. There are now some parts of our country that have no choice in the individual market. If you are a plumber or a welder or a carpenter, you have to buy insurance in the individual market. In many places in America, you have no choice. In half of America, if you buy insurance by yourself, if you are not part of a large group, in half of America, there is one choice--a monopoly and monopoly prices. In my State alone, 50,000 Kentuckians have to pay a tax. They have to pay a fine because they can't afford ObamaCare. They are regular working people, and they do work and they do pay taxes. They pay a fine. We pay $16 million in fines in just my State. Across America, this is happening. How did it become an American sort of legislation or plan to force people to buy stuff they don't want and then to extract money out of their paycheck if they don't do what you tell them? Ultimately, Americans should remember that ObamaCare is predicated on force and coercion. ObamaCare dictates what kind of insurance you can get and makes you pay a fine if you don't get what the politicians tell you you must get. President Obama basically told you that you were too stupid to make your own choices. These people who want to dictate to you are elitists. They think they know better than you what kind of insurance you should get. If you don't buy the insurance they dictate, they will fine you. If you don't pay the fine, they will jail you. How is that consistent with the American ideal of freedom? This debate is about more than actuarial tables. We get dragged down into this debate, and we think it is all this healthcare wonkiness, this and that. It is about freedom of choice. It is about whether you as an American can make the choice whether you want insurance or don't want insurance, whether you want insurance that is really expensive or not. They put a special tax in there if you have good insurance. First they tell you what kind of insurance to buy, and then they tell you that your insurance is too good. If you are in a union or you are an executive and you have great insurance, ObamaCare tells you they are going to tax you because your insurance is too good. These busybodies think they know everything about what you want. They are going to dictate what kind of insurance you can get, and then when you buy it, they are going to tell you that you have too much, so you have to pay a tax. That isn't the American way. Today we will vote on a bill we have voted on many times. The Senate itself voted on this 2 years ago. It is the identical bill. We are going to vote on a bill we voted on 2 years ago. I hope everybody who voted for it before will vote for it again. It is what we call a clean repeal. It is not cluttered with insurance company bailouts. It is not cluttered with this and that, new Federal regulations. It is just trying to peel back ObamaCare. While it is a clean repeal, it is only a partial repeal. Why? It is only a partial repeal because we have these arcane Senate rules that say we can't repeal the whole thing. Because we are only repealing part of it, ObamaCare will remain. Even if we are successful with this bill, at least half or more of ObamaCare remains. Bad things remain. All of the mandates on what you have to purchase on your insurance will remain. That doesn't mean we shouldn't do this. The other side does not want to help. The other side has never met a regulation they want to repeal and has never met a tax they want to lower. So if you want to get rid of the taxes, it has to be done today. People say: Well, this doesn't have the replacement. Well, sure we should replace ObamaCare. I have been advocating that from the beginning. But we have to figure out what that replacement is. And the only way we are going to be forced into a bipartisan compromise is if we repeal it. If we do not repeal it today, there is no impetus from either side to work on replacing it. If you repeal it, even the other side will say: Oh, my goodness, we have to do something because they repealed these subsidies in this Medicaid expansion. They will say: We will work with you now. But everything else is false. They will not work on repealing one regulation or one tax. That heavy lift is left to Republicans, and my hope is that Republicans would band together and say: Sure, this isn't everything I wanted. It is not everything I want. It is a partial repeal. It leaves in place a lot of ObamaCare that we should get rid of, and we should continue to try to get rid of these Federal mandates on insurance. This is a beginning, and it is all we are being offered up as a beginning, but it is a victory for those of us in America who have said: Enough is enough. My government shouldn't be telling me what I can buy and what I cannot buy. My government should not tell me which doctor I can choose and which doctor I have to leave behind. The government should not be involved in my healthcare business. I want to be left alone. The right to privacy, the right to be left alone is a fundamental right of Americans. That is what this is about. It is about freedom of choice. It is not about actuarial tables. It is not about the Federal Government designing a perfect healthcare system. The Federal Government cannot deliver the mail. They lose a billion dollars a quarter delivering your mail. Do you want them in charge of your doctor? Do you want them in charge of your insurance? This is the one chance we get today. We will have a chance to repeal ObamaCare. We will have a chance to fulfill our promise to the American voters. There is a partisan divide. Democrats are for keeping it; Republicans are for repealing it. But Republicans made a promise. We made a promise to the American people to repeal it. There may be some Republicans today who say: I am not voting to repeal any longer; things have changed. The problem is that we are not going to get toward a solution if we don't begin to repeal. The other thing about this repeal is that there is a 2-year window in which part of the repeal doesn't take place for 2 years. Over those 2 years, my guess is that we will have impetus from the other side to actually begin to negotiate. Currently, there are 27 million people in America without insurance. From all the talk, you would think that ObamaCare has covered everyone, and somehow Republicans are against that. Count me as one Republican who wants to figure out how we insure the 27 million who don't have insurance. Of the 27 million people who don't have insurance under ObamaCare, half of them don't buy insurance because it is too expensive. Why is it too expensive? Because ObamaCare dictates about 15 different things that every insurance policy has to have: Vision, hearing, pregnancy--you name it; it is all on there. Everyone wants it. If you put it on every insurance policy, not everyone is going to be able to afford it. You force people out of the market. So 27 million people don't have insurance, and half say they can't get it because it is too expensive. Where is the problem in insurance? If you are here today visiting in Washington, and you work for Toyota or Ford or General Motors or any big American company--any big corporation in our country--if you work for them, my guess is that you are not worried about your wife getting sick and they fire you from your job or raise your rates. What happens when you have group insurance is, if your family member gets sick, you don't lose your job. Your insurance rates really don't change, and you continue on with your life. You still have the tragedy to deal with of someone in your family being sick. But if you have group insurance, it seems to work in our country. What we are talking about is the individual insurance market. We are talking about the plumber, the pest control guy, the carpenter, the welder, the farmer--people who are in a small business. Either they have a few employees or it is just them. That is what we are talking about. It is horribly broken. I don't wish it on any American. I wish no American had to buy any insurance in the individual market. In fact, what I am proposing would so disrupt the individual market that maybe everyone would leave. I am trying to give an exit ramp to everyone in the individual market to get out of the individual market because the individual market is a terrible place to be. If you are a farmer in America and you buy insurance for you and your wife, and your wife gets breast cancer, you are not only deathly afraid for her health, you are deathly afraid your insurance rates will be doubled, tripled, or you will be dropped. I don't care if you are a Republican, Independent, or a Democrat. People in the individual market do worry. We have had people here worried that people are going to lose their health insurance. The individual market is a terrible place to be. So what should we do? Should we give hundreds of billions of dollars to the insurance company and say: Please insure these people and make sure their rates aren't too high. I don't like that because I am not for crony capitalism. These companies make billions of dollars a year in profit. I am not for giving them one penny of your money. Do you know what I want? I want something that doesn't cost anything, that doesn't cost one penny and would completely transform healthcare and insurance in this country. I want to legalize--I want to make it open to every American that you can go out with an association across State lines and buy your insurance as part of a group. What would that mean? In my State, the Farm Bureau has 33,000 people. But when you go to the Farm Bureau to buy your insurance, you get an individual policy. A farmer, his wife, and their family get a policy. It is just them. They are not really protected by the group. They don't get the leverage of price, and they are not protected. If they get sick, their rates are based on them and their family. Why don't we let them join together? There are probably a million farmers in the Farm Bureau throughout the American Farm Bureau. What if the American Farm Bureau had an association and one person negotiated for them? I don't think we can overstate the negotiating value of a group. In China recently, they negotiated for patented medicines, and they reduced the price by 67 percent. Groups can negotiate prices down. This is a free market reform. This is collective bargaining for consumers. I can't see why either side--I am still hopeful, no matter where this goes, that at some point in time, when partisan fervor dies down, we can go to the other side and say: What's so wrong with collective bargaining? I thought you were for collective bargaining for labor. Why not be for collective bargaining for consumers? Let the consumers band together. AARP has 33 million people. What if one person negotiated the rate for their insurance and their drugs? My guess is that they would have the lowest drug prices in the world, and more people would want to join AARP. What if the credit unions--there are about 20 million people in credit unions, maybe more, across the United States. What if you could join your credit union and became part of a national association to buy your insurance? The leverage of 20 million people would be maybe 40, 50 times bigger than America's biggest corporation. Right now, if you are General Motors and you are a big corporation, you have leverage to bring prices down. What if you were in a corporation 20 times bigger than General Motors--an association that negotiated your prices? This is freedom, though; this isn't a government plan. This is the Federal Government saying that you are allowed to do what you want. You are allowed to collectively bargain as consumers. I think there is every chance that we could fix a lot of the market. Would there be anybody left behind? Yes. I mean, we have terrible tragedies. I spent my adult career in medicine. I have seen the terrible tragedies, the terrible disabilities, the terrible neurologic disorders people are born with and have to live their lives with. Those exceptions will be treated and are treated. Frankly, one of the misunderstandings of this debate is that any Republican is up here talking about trying to take away stuff from those who are disabled, can't work, and do have to have care. That is traditional Medicaid. They will continue to be cared for. Under this, we are talking only about able-bodied people. Should able-bodied people--people who walk around, hop out of their truck--should they be working? Should they be providing for their health insurance? Yes. Can there be a transition zone? Yes. We have transition programs between unemployment back to employment. We shouldn't have people permanently unemployed--people permanently on benefits who don't work or won't work. There should be work requirements. I am not afraid to say that every able-bodied person on Medicaid ought to work. There should be a work requirement. I meet many people on both sides of the aisle who are for that. I don't say they should work as punishment. I think everyone in America should work as a reward. I think work is a reward. I don't care whether you are from the lowest job on the totem pole to the top, to the chief executive. Work is where you get self-esteem. No one can give you self-esteem. Your self-esteem comes from work. I think we are wrong. In fact, I think what we have done--in some cases, we now have multigenerational dependency on government, and they are so distraught and so lacking in self-esteem that it also compounds the drug problem that we have. Some say that we need more Medicaid money to fight the drug problem. I worry that more Medicaid trips to the doctor may actually be part of the drug problem--that much of the dependency is coming from OxyContin, which the drug company says was not addictive, but everyone got put on OxyContin because it supposedly wasn't addictive. A lot of our heroin and OxyContin problem came out of going to the doctor. If we were to get everyone out of the individual market into group insurance, there would be some people left behind. My hope is it would be a small number of people, and we would know after a year or two. Let's see what it is. We already have a safety net. The other side is acting as if there is no safety net. We have had a safety net for decade after decade. The safety net is Medicaid. If your child has a disability, no one is trying to take that away from him. The thing is, we have to try to fix what we have. We need to understand that what we are looking at--what we are trying to fix isn't just some kind of policy that nobody can understand. Healthcare policy is very technical and detailed. This is about freedom. Do you think that every American should get to choose whether they have insurance and what kind of insurance they have? This is what it is about. It is freedom of choice. It isn't about whether we want people to be insured. When you hear these hyperbolic statements saying that all these people are going to die--Republicans want people to die-- those hyperbolic statements aren't really helpful to the debate. I do not question the motives of any of the Democrats as far as wanting to provide care. I never questioned President Obama's desire to help people get insurance. To me, it is more of a question of what will work. What distributes goods better: socialism or capitalism? Look at the Soviet Union. We defeated the Soviet Union because capitalism defeated socialism. Socialism doesn't work. When the government fixes the prices, it doesn't work. Are we going to have some government involvement? Yes. But because Government is so pitiful at anything they do, we should minimize government's involvement in any industry. If we say that government has to be involved to take care of the poor, let's do it at the State level, not the Federal level. People ask me: Are the people in government inherently stupid? I say no, but it is a debatable question. The reason is this: Government doesn't get the proper incentives, and they are too distant from the people, and we have a printing press. What is the fundamental deceit of ObamaCare? This is the fundamental problem of all government, but the fundamental deceit of ObamaCare is this: They said that everyone is going to get free healthcare. Everyone is going to have Medicaid, and you don't have to pay for it, and the States don't have to pay for it. We are going to have the Federal Government pay for it. But the problem is the Federal Government can't pay for most of the things we already have. We already had Medicaid we can't pay for--Medicare we were short of money for. We already have Social Security that we are short of money for. What do we do? We borrow the money. Our deficit this year will be $500 billion. Our deficit is projected next year to be $1 trillion. That is the real question. It isn't, do you want to help people? It is, how are you going to pay for it? If this were done at the State level, what would happen? If the State of Kentucky wants to keep the expansion--we have expanded Medicare to 450,000 people. The question should be, should we double the State income tax in Kentucky? If that went to the State legislature, they have to balance competing concerns. If we double the State tax to pay for it--we live right next to Tennessee, which has no State income tax--would we possibly lose existing businesses or existing jobs or would we encourage new businesses not to come to Kentucky? That would be a valid debate. We want to help people, but what are the ramifications of it? In Washington, it is said that there are no ramifications because everything goes to the debt. Everything just piles up. We have $20 trillion in debt. Whose fault is it? Both parties. Under George Bush, the debt went from $5 trillion to $10 trillion. Under President Obama, it went from $10 trillion to $20 trillion. Both parties are at fault, but the entitlements are consuming us. How would we possibly move forward with a bill that sets up a new insurance entitlement, as some of the Republican plans wanted to do? We can't pay for the current entitlements. As we look forward today to the solution, what I would say is that there are alternatives. We really shouldn't question the motives of those across the aisle, and they shouldn't question ours. I want more people to have insurance at a lower cost. We should have a disagreement on how it works. I think capitalism works better than socialism. I think we should minimize government's involvement because government is not very good at distributing anything. Just look at the mail. I also think there are exciting opportunities for saying how we could insure the 27 million who are not insured currently. Twenty-seven million people under ObamaCare are without insurance. The question shouldn't be about debating over the past. It should be over debating the future. The future should be about trying to figure out how we insure those 27 million. I think there are a lot of opportunities that involve more freedom of choice, more freedom to choose your doctor, more freedom to choose what insurance works for you. My goodness, that is what this debate is about. It is not about healthcare policy. It is about freedom of choice, and I hope every Senator today will vote for freedom of choice. Thank you.

Mr. PAUL

Mr. PAUL. Mr. President, the question is, Should we sell arms to Saudi Arabia--a country that many suspect was involved in 9/11; a country that many suspect gave weapons to ISIS, the people we are fighting in the Middle East; a country that imprisons the victims of rape because it is apparently or presumably the fault of the woman who is raped in Saudi Arabia? One woman, the girl of Qatif, was given a sentence of 70 lashes and 6 months in jail. They increased her penalty to 200 lashes, and finally, only when we protested, was it reversed. They sentenced a poet to 1,000 lashes. Sometimes you don't survive 1,000 lashes. So they gave him 100 at a time. He is going to be imprisoned for 10 years. They are not the kind of persons we should be sending your weapons to. These weapons were funded and supported by the American taxpayer, and we should not be willy-nilly giving them to people who imprison their people for protesting. Currently, a young man, 17 years old, named Ali al-Nimr is on death row. But it is not enough just to kill him for protesting for free speech and free press. They will behead him and crucify him. This barbaric nation should not be getting our weapons. We should not sell them weapons. Currently, there is a blockade of Yemen, and 17 million people risk starvation. We should not be supporting this effort. There is probably no greater purveyor of hatred for Christianity and Judaism than Saudi Arabia. We should not be giving them weapons. They have madrassas across the world teaching hatred of us, preaching hatred of the West, hatred of Christianity, hatred of Judaism, and these people want to give them weapons. I don't get it. It makes no sense. Some will argue that it is a jobs program. Well, isn't that swell. We are going to give money to people who behead you and crucify you to create jobs. That should never be the way we make a decision about arms sales in our country. A famous Republican and general, General Dwight Eisenhower, said he worried that someday we would make decisions not based on our defense but based on the military industrial complex. I am embarrassed that people are out here talking about making us some money and making a buck, while 17 million people live on a starvation diet and are threatened with famine. I am embarrassed that people would bring up trying to feather the nest of corporations in order to sell these weapons. This should be made, pure and simple, on our national defense. Saudi Arabia is not a reliable ally. Saudi Arabia should not get these weapons. For every supposed good thing they do, they do five things that are bad for America. They are the biggest purveyor of hatred of Christianity and Judaism. I request a ``no'' vote, and I reserve the remainder of my time.

Mr. PAUL. Mr. President, Saudi Arabia bombed a funeral procession. There was no mistake here. There was no cloud cover. There was no growth or coppice of trees and they accidentally bombed a funeral procession. They bombed them and killed 125 civilians in a funeral. They wounded 500. This was no mistake. This was no error. This was them, pointedly dropping bombs on civilians. They put protestors in jail. They have a 17-year-old--he is now 20-- who has been in jail for 3 years. He will be beheaded and then crucified. We should not be giving these people weapons. They supported ISIS. They are on the wrong side of the war. They are the greatest purveyor of hatred for Christianity and Judaism. They do not deserve your weapons. They are going to give your weapons. They belong to the American people. They are going to give them to people who behead and crucify protesters. You can't take a Bible into Saudi Arabia. You can't visit their major cities. We can't make them be like us, but we don't have to encourage their behavior by giving them weapons that may well fall into the hands of people who are our enemies. I urge a ``no'' vote. I think we should not be selling arms to Saudi Arabia.

Mr. PAUL

Mr. PAUL. Mr. President, pursuant to the Arms Export Control Act of 1976, I move to discharge the Foreign Relations Committee from further consideration of S.J. Res. 42, relating to the disapproval of the proposed foreign military sale to the Government of Saudi Arabia.

Mr. PAUL. Mr. President, today is an extraordinary day. Today is an auspicious day, for we will be discussing issues of war and peace. Believe it or not, we rarely discuss such important issues. We have been at war for 15 years. There have been a handful of debates--most of them indirect, most of them forced only under duress, and most of them would have been avoided if the leadership of both parties could avoid them, but today they cannot avoid this debate because this is what is called a privileged motion. Today we will discuss the involvement of the United States in the Middle East, and we will also discuss whether we should engage in a new war in Yemen. Today we will discuss an arms sale to Saudi Arabia that threatens the lives of millions of Yemenis, but we will discuss something even more important than an arms sale, we will discuss whether we should be actively involved. Should the United States be actively involved with refueling the Saudi planes, with picking targets, with having advisers on the ground? Should we be at war in Yemen? If you remember your Constitution, it says no President has that authority--only to repel imminent attack--but no President alone has the unilateral authority to take us to war. Yet here we are on the verge of war. What will war mean for Yemen? Seventeen million folks in Yemen live on the brink of starvation. I think to myself, is there ever anything important that can happen in Washington? Is there anything I can do to save some of the millions of children who are dying in Yemen? This is it. This is this debate today. It isn't about an arms sale, it is about children like Ali, who died. Why are they dying? Because the Soviets have blockaded the ports. Ninety percent of Yemen's food comes in from the ocean and they can get no food and they are starving and dying of cholera because of war. We think of famine being related to the weather. Sometimes it is, but more often than not famine is related to man, is manmade, and the most common cause is war. How bad is it in Yemen? Seventeen million people live on the edge of starvation. Some, like Ali, have already died. What are people saying about it? They say that the humanitarian crisis in Yemen may be worse than Syria. Let me repeat that because nobody in America is listening to this. Everybody is paying attention to some silly show trials and silly stuff going on in committees. Nobody is talking about this at all. They say it is worse than Syria. Millions of people have fled Syria. Hundreds of thousands have died, and people are now predicting Yemen may be worse. One refugee group said this: The impending famine in Yemen may reach Biblical proportions. Think about that. It is astounding what is going on there, and it is being done without your permission but with your weapons. Today I will force a vote with the help of Senator Murphy, who has been a prime mover in this, to tell you the truth, and has done a great job in bringing people together, but we will force this vote for these children in Yemen because we have a chance today to stop the carnage. We have a chance to tell Saudi Arabia we have had enough. The question is, Should we give money or arms to Saudi Arabia at all? What has Saudi Arabia done over the last 30 years? They have been the No. 1 exporter of jihadist philosophy, the No. 1 exporter of let's hate America, let's hate the Judeo-Christian ethic, let's hate the Judeo- Christian tradition. It is coming from Saudi Arabia. They teach it in the schools in our country. They teach it in the schools in Indonesia. They corrupt the religion of Islam throughout the world, and we are going to give them weapons? I think it is a huge, huge mistake. If you say: Well, I doubt that. There is no way they are that bad. Don't they share intelligence with us? Don't they help us in the war on terror? Yes, every time they help us, they hurt us twofold worse. I will give you an example directly from Hillary Clinton. When she is writing honestly and not talking to the public, she sends an email to John Podesta. This is one that was leaked through WikiLeaks. Writing to John Podesta, Hillary Clinton said: We must put pressure on Saudi Arabia and Qatar because they are supplying logistical and financial support to ISIL. ISIS is the group we are fighting in the Middle East again, and Saudi Arabia was supplying them. This is according to Hillary Clinton, not indirectly but directly. Who in their right mind would give money, arms, or share our technology with a country that has been supporting ISIS? Who would do that? Who would think that is a good idea? Yet they will come here and say that it is about Iran, and we have to combat Iran everywhere. Guess what. This may make the situation with Iran worse. What do you think Iran thinks when Saudi Arabia gets weapons? They think to themselves, well, if the Saudis are getting more, we need more. What do you think Israel thinks? If the Saudis get more, we need more. Have you ever heard of an arms race? That is what this is. We are fueling an arms race in the Middle East. Every side wants more. You say: Well, we have to do this. We have to combat Iran. Do you know how much the Gulf sheikhdoms, Saudi Arabia, and all their allies--the ones who are bombing the hell out of Yemen--do you know how their military spending compares to that of Iran? It is 8 to 1. All of the money is in the Gulf h. All of the power, all of the weapons are in the Gulf sheikhdoms. They have more weapons and spend more on weapons-- 8 to 1--than Iran. We are going to vote on Iran sanctions this week, and they say that they don't want ballistic missiles Iran. Well, I don't either. The best way to do that is to put pressure on Saudi Arabia. How would you put pressure on Saudi Arabia? Maybe we wouldn't sell them arms. Maybe we would withhold the sale of arms until they come to the table and we get a ballistic agreement with Iran. It is a naive and foolish notion to think that Iran is going to give up on their ballistic weapons. They are never giving up on their ballistic weapons unless Saudi Arabia did the same thing. People don't talk about this, but Saudi Arabia has ballistic missiles. They have Chinese missiles. They are called the Dongfeng-21 N-3. They have dozens of these. Do you know where they are pointed? Tehran and Tel Aviv. Saudi Arabia is no friend of Israel. Do they cooperate with Israel some? Yes, but their missiles are pointed at Tel Aviv, Israel. Saudi Arabia's other missiles are pointed at Tehran. Are these missiles nuclear capable? Yes. They are not thought to be nuclear tipped, meaning they haven't been armed with nuclear missiles, but everyone who is in the arms community acknowledges that these missiles could carry a nuclear payload if they were altered. They have the ability to do it. Should we send arms to Saudi Arabia? Here is another quote from Bob Graham, and this is a paraphrase. He says that there is an abundance of evidence that the Saudis were complicit in 9/11. Have we forgotten that 15 out of the 19 hijackers were from Saudi Arabia? Have we forgotten the missing 28 pages that they kept from the American public for over a decade? When you read those missing 28 pages, which have now been released, they tend to implicate Saudi Arabia. They tend to indicate that the attackers, particularly in San Diego, were befriended by a government agent for Saudi Arabia. There is an abundance of information that implicates Saudi Arabia in 9/11. In fact, less than a year ago, this very Congress voted unanimously or virtually unanimously to let American citizens--the victims of 9/11, their families--sue Saudi Arabia. This is an extraordinary thing. We almost never let people sue governments, particularly foreign governments, but we voted nearly unanimously. Why? Because people still have sympathy for the 9/11 victims and their families and because people obviously believe there is some information that may implicate Saudi Arabia. You say: Oh, no, they have changed. Well, how much could they have changed? It was only a year or two ago Hillary Clinton was writing that email saying that the Saudis are giving financial and logistical support to ISIL. Who in their right mind would sell arms to Saudi Arabia under those circumstances? If it doesn't persuade you that the Saudis are supporting ISIL and terrorism and may have been part of 9/11, perhaps we should look not only at the humanitarian disaster in Yemen--what they are doing to the public and that their goal basically is famine, to bring them to submission--but perhaps we should also look at Saudi Arabia as a country. Perhaps we should look at the human rights record of Saudi Arabia. I will give you a couple of instances of what it is like to live in Saudi Arabia. There was a young girl who was 19 years old. They haven't named her because her story is so traumatic. She was 19 years old. They call her the Girl of Qatif. She was 19 years old, and she was raped by 7 men. The men were punished, a couple of years in prison. You know what happened? They arrested the victim because, you see, in Saudi Arabia it is your fault if you are raped. In Saudi Arabia, rape victims are arrested, put in prison, and publicly whipped. She was given 6 months in prison and 200 lashes. That was her sentence. Ultimately, it did not come to the fore. Do you know why? Partly because the United States stood up and said it was wrong and partly because, perhaps behind the scenes, we said: Maybe we are not going to sell you weapons if you behave like a bunch of barbarians. I will tell you another story about Ali al Nimr, a Shiite. The Middle East is somewhat divided between Sunni and Shia. He is a Shiite. They are about 10 percent of the public in Saudi Arabia. They are the minority. They are treated like dirt. His uncle was a sheikh. And by all accounts, he was one who called for peaceful elections, who wasn't an advocate of violence. He never was known or seen to have a weapon but was executed by the Saudis for leading protests. He was executed for standing up in front of people and saying: We should have elections. We should not have this authoritarian government that lords it over us and does not allow us even to practice our religion in public. Ali's uncle was beheaded. Ali was 17 at the time. It was the beginning of the Arab Spring, and Ali got excited and motivated. If you see the pictures of him, it is heartbreaking. You see pictures of him in western clothing. He liked poetry. He liked music. He was, by all means, the kind of person that we wish would come to leadership in Saudi Arabia. At 17, he went to a rally and he chose to be part of the Arab Spring to say: We don't want authoritarianism. We don't want despots. We don't want Kings and all of their lording over us. We want elections. For that, he was arrested and put on death row. Death row in Saudi Arabia, being Saudi Arabia, includes beheading and crucifixion. That will be his sentence--beheading and crucifixion. This is the regime that you are being asked to send weapons to. People say: Oh, they are buying them. The technology is ours. It is American technology that was developed for the defense of this country, and the companies would never have the technology had we not paid them to have it. The American taxpayer has a right to that technology, and while for almost every other good in the marketplace the government has no right to tell you how who to sell it to, arms are different because they are all developed by the U.S. taxpayer. I do believe there should be rules about who gets our arms. I don't think we should sell them to Saudi Arabia if they might wind up in the hands of ISIS. I don't think we should sell them to Saudi Arabia if they punish people for protests, if they punish people for speaking out by beheading them and crucifying them. I am not for selling them a rifle, much less precision-guided missiles. Some will say: Oh if we give them more accurate missiles, they will kill civilians. That presumes they are not targeting civilians. Do you think it was a mistake? Do you think they accidently bombed a funeral procession? Do you think their intelligence was so bad they didn't know it was a funeral procession? They killed 125 people at a funeral. They wounded 500. We wonder about why we have so much terrorism. Yes, maybe some hate us inherently, but some of it is blowback to policy. Do you think the people who died or the people who survived or the relatives of those who died in that funeral procession will ever forget it? They will remember it 100 years from now. The problem we face is that terrorism goes on and on as long as we keep supporting despots who treat their people like crap, who sentence them to beheading and crucifixion, who are starving their neighboring country, which is one of the poorest nations on the planet Earth. We are not getting better. We are not getting any closer to peace by supporting the Saudis. It is a huge mistake. The Girl of Qatif, a rape victim, was sentenced to prison and 70 lashes. Ali al Nimr, still on death row, was sentenced to beheading and crucifixion. Raif Badawi, who is he? I don't know much about him, but he is an outspoken blogger. He is somebody who writes his opinion and may have opinions that may not be orthodox. For that, the Saudis arrested him, and he is in jail for 10 years, and he is sentenced to a thousand lashes. I don't think you can survive a thousand lashes, so the Saudis--in their great humanity--are dividing his treatment into 10 doses. He has already had 100 publicly applied. He has 900 more to go. Shouldn't we think a little bit about supplying arms to this country? If the human rights aspect of this is not enough, I think we should probably think about the region. There is a problem in the Middle East. There is conflict. Some of it goes very deep. Those who live in the Middle East member the Battle of Karbala in 680 A.D., when a grandson of Muhammad and Khalifa came together and had a battle. They still remember, and they are still unhappy about a battle from 680 A.D.; they have long memories. I am reminded of what one Afghan told a reporter or a soldier recently. He said: You have all the watches, but we have all the time. They live there and have for centuries and will be there when we are gone. They have to fix their own problems. We can occasionally say that we are going to help some people destroy an evil empire or an evil group like ISIS, yes, but the people fighting--the people on the ground--need to be the people who live there. It cannot be foreigners, and it cannot be people whom they consider to be pagans or it is never going to work. Yet we are foolish if we do not look at the repercussions of what it means to sell arms to Saudi Arabia. How will Iran react? I was in a committee hearing the other day, and one of the Senators said: We do not care how Iran reacts. We do not care what it thinks. By golly, we ought to if we are going to put sanctions on them. Doesn't that mean we care enough that we are trying to modulate and change their behavior? The whole idea of sanctions means that we do care about what Iran thinks. It does not mean we agree with it, it does not mean we condone it, and it does not mean we say Iran is right. But, certainly, we do care about what it thinks. What do you think Iran thinks about supplying arms to Saudi Arabia? It thinks: We need more. Saudi arms alone are the third biggest in the world now. It is the United States, which is as big as the next 10 combined. Then, it is China. Then, it is Saudi Arabia. Saudi Arabia has these other gulf sheikhdoms, despots. They are all allies of ours. There are about five or six of them, and, altogether, they have eight times more weapons than Iran. So we are complaining--I think, justifiably so--because we worry about the mischief of Iran in the Middle East. We are complaining about that, and we want them to change their behavior. What do you think is the prime reason they create weapons and are creating the ballistic missiles? Some of it is because they fear our invasion, like in Iraq, but I think a great deal of why Iran develops weapons is its fear of Saudi Arabia. In fact, when you look back at Iraq and the whole weapons of mass destruction that never existed, one of the interesting stories is that--it may be a theory, but I think it has some evidence--Saddam Hussein pretended, valiantly, that he had weapons of mass destruction not to deter us but to deter Iran. Here is Saddam Hussein, sending all of these smoke signals up that he has weapons of mass destruction because he wants to keep Iran at bay. We think everything is about us, and we never acknowledge that maybe some of it is about the regional politics. When we give weapons or sell weapons to Saudi Arabia, there will be, for every action, a reaction. There will be significantly more pressure for Iran to come forward and have more weapons. What does it do to our ally Israel? There have been at least a few reports that say Israel believes that, every time we give a dollar to Saudi Arabia, they need to respond with a dollar and a half. There was a quote from one of their government ministers on this, which reads that he worries about their qualitative edge. I have a quote here from a colleague of mine--a friend of mine--who is a rabbi and a friend of the Constitution. Rabbi Nate Segal writes: While I understand the President's intentions, we must proceed with great caution due to the challenges and the history of the region. At this time, I don't see the benefits of the arms deal for the United States or Israel. This is coming from someone who believes, with every fiber of his being, that Israel should be defended. He is worried that, by giving weapons to Saudi Arabia, it detracts from the qualitative edge that Israel currently has. Imagine what would happen if the Government of Saudi Arabia were overthrown. They have billions and billions of dollars of weapons. Many of these weapons are the most sophisticated weapons we have. Is there a chance that they could be overthrown? I don't know. They behead their citizens and crucify them. Do you think anybody who lives in Saudi Arabia might have some pent-up anger for the regime? William Wilberforce once said of slavery: ``In having heard all this, you can choose to look the other way, but you can never say that you didn't know.'' I love that statement because so many people at the time of slavery looked away. They just said: It is something we do. It is part of our time. It is part of our age. So many people knew the horror of slavery. So many people knew the horror of what was happening to a people, and they looked away. I think, in having heard of the impending famine in Yemen, in having seen Ali, and in having heard of the impending famine, you can choose to look away. Many in this body will, today, choose to look away. They will say: Do you know what? Saudi Arabia gives us some benefit sometime, and we hate Iran more. So let's just give some more weapons to Saudi Arabia. They will be looking away from the human rights tragedy that is central to Saudi Arabia's whole being. They will be looking away from the fact that Saudi Arabia was supporting ISIS in the Syrian civil war. They will be looking away from the fact that the Saudi blockade is starving Yemeni children. Do you know what? I choose not to look away. Today I stand up for the thousands of civilians who are being killed in Yemen. Today I stand up for the millions of voiceless children in Yemen who will be killed by the Saudi blockade. Today I stand up for saying that we, the United States, should no longer be fueling the arms race in the Middle East. It has come to no good. The wars and the rage and the anger are thousands of years old. We will never get to the bottom of it. We should defend ourselves at all costs. We should be very careful as to whom is admitted into the country, and we should not get involved in every civil war in every misbegotten part of the planet. It is my hope and my prayer that enough Americans will wake up and say that we are tired of war, that we are tired of funding every war on the globe, and that we are tired of sacrificing our young in every civil war. Today this will be a bipartisan vote. There will be a large contingent from the other side of the aisle and a small contingent from this side. This is important. This is a rare day in Senate history, when we actually have the chance to stop an evil, but we will stop this evil by sending a loud message to the President and a loud message to Saudi Arabia that we are not going to blindly support the arms race. We are not going to be blind to your human rights transgressions, and we are not going to blindly give you weapons in the face of beheading your citizens and crucifying them. Today I take a stand for those who do not have a voice, and I hope the Senate will think long and hard and will vote against this arms sale to Saudi Arabia.

Mr. PAUL

Mr. PAUL. Mr. President, it is important to know what just happened. We closed off the debate, and as far as a filibuster goes, we are having a debate and a vote. What they wanted was a rubberstamp and an easy passage without debate. We are having a bit of a debate, and that is good. Unfortunately, we will not be allowed to amend the bill. My amendment is germane to the bill. It has to do with what article 5 means in the treaty we are signing. What it says is that we will not necessarily take article 5 to mean that we are going to war, that we would do the constitutional duty, and that is to vote about whether we go to war. So the amendment is very clear that we would obey the Constitution. By blocking the vote, we have to realize that those blocking the vote have decided that really it should be automatic, that your sons and daughters will be sent to war automatically without a vote, without a declaration of war. You say: Well, maybe they don't mean that. Maybe they would obey the Constitution. They don't now. So everything in evidence shows us that the chance that in the future they will obey the Constitution is about zero. But so ashamed are they of the fact that we will fight more wars without a declaration, without a vote--they won't allow a vote on the amendment because they would be voting against the Constitution. So, instead, they will block the amendment. That is essentially what this debate is about: Are we automatically obligated to go to war without a vote by Congress? That is what the vote is about. It is incredibly germane. It goes to the heart of the bill. It goes to the heart of the NATO treaty. Does article 5 mean you automatically go to war, or would you go through the normal processes of going to war? Now, some will say: Oh, well, we would never go to war. It might not be so bad, but it would be difficult. Do you know when we have gone to war? We have actually gone unanimously when we have done it the right way. When we were attacked on 9/11 and they came to Congress, do you know what the vote was? Unanimous. We are not about letting people attack us as a country, and I would have voted for that. When we were attacked in Pearl Harbor, what did FDR do? The thing that great leaders would do--and I am not a huge fan always of FDR, but he did the right thing. He came to Congress the next day. I think it was on December 8 that they voted unanimously to go to war. That is the way it was done once upon a time. When you are attacked, people do rally to the country and they rally to the flag, but we shouldn't have an automatic stamp that says: We are going to war anywhere without any restraint, without any control or separation of power. So I object strenuously to this, and I wish we were more open in this body and in our country to a debate about when we are going to go to war.

Mr. PAUL. Mr. President, President Trump said in his inaugural address that we have defended other nations' borders while refusing to defend our own. I think he was right. Today, the question is, Will we add another commitment to defend yet another foreign country? For decades, NATO has been an organization in which the United States disproportionately spends our blood and our treasure. The other NATO countries have largely hitched a ride on a U.S. train that subsidizes their defenses and allows them to direct their revenues to their own domestic concerns. In short, Uncle Sam is the Uncle Patsy for the rest of the world. The question today is, Will adding to NATO another country with fewer than 2,000 soldiers be in our self-interest? It has fewer than 2,000 soldiers and is a small country in a distant part of the world. Will they make you sleep safer at night? The answer is an emphatic no. There is no national security interest that an alliance with Montenegro will advance. If we invite Montenegro into NATO, it will be a one-way street, with the United States committing to defending yet another country and with you, the taxpayer, being stuck with the bill. Even the advocates of Montenegro's joining NATO admit as much. The Senate hearing on admitting Montenegro to NATO was really just a punching session about Russia. Not one word was said about allowing Montenegro into NATO or how it would advance our own national security. We were going to send a message to Russia. Even the citizens of Montenegro are divided on this. About half of them want to be in NATO, and the other half does not want to be in NATO. But it is not really about them; it is about us. Is admitting Montenegro to NATO good for us? Our national security is our national security. Is Montenegro going to defend the United States? Are they of any importance to our national security or, perhaps, will they entangle us in local, historic, regional conflicts in the area? We must ask: Is Montenegro an asset to the defense of the United States? That is the question at hand. The answer is a simple one. Admitting Montenegro to NATO will do nothing to advance our national security, and it will do everything to simply add another small country to NATO's welfare wagon. Advocates for expanding NATO believe that, unless the whole world joins NATO, Russia will conquer the world, but the truth is more nuanced. During the Cold War, the myth of Russian might was endlessly circulated here at home, and the effect was the production of endless munitions and ever-expanding debt. You are still paying the tab for that. The Cold War ended, and the Soviet Union failed, not because our military might overcame them but because our economic system outlasted them. They were defeated. Capitalism defeated socialism. If there is one message that Americans should get, it is that capitalism is stronger than socialism. We should not flirt with political leaders in our country who promote what caused the Soviet Union to fail. Now we are told we must fear Russia again--fear the Russian bear. Yet, if you look closely, you will see that Russian aggression around the world and particularly around the former Soviet satellites is an attempt to mask a weak economy that runs the same risk of overextension that caused the Soviet Empire to collapse. Russia is weak. Russia is weak because of corruption, oligarchy, and human rights abuses. If Russia continues on this path, it may well encounter the same cataclysm that brought down the Soviet Empire. Without question, Russia is an adversary, a country that ignores international norms, does not respect the territorial integrity of its neighbors. Yet someone must ask: Is it in our national interest to insist that countries of the former Soviet Union be in NATO? The debate today is not just about Montenegro. The same cheerleaders for Montenegro's being in NATO want Ukraine in NATO and want Georgia in NATO. This is about NATO's expansion in general, and this is a chance to have a real debate. If both Ukraine and Georgia were in NATO today, we would be involved in a world war with Russia. Shouldn't someone speak up? Shouldn't we have some sort of national debate before we commit our sons and daughters to war in a faraway land? One thing is for certain: Russia will always care more about those lands than we will. Does that make Russian aggression right? Absolutely not. Our decision--the decision at hand--is: Are we willing to send our sons and daughters to fight in border disputes over Montenegro? Most Americans couldn't find Montenegro on the map. Are you willing to send your kids there to fight? That is what this is about, and this is sluffed over. They are going to forbid amendments. I forced this debate. Nobody wanted to have this debate. They want to rubberstamp it. They want no debates, and they want to send your kids to war with no debate. Today, they will pass this over my objections, but they will allow no amendments. When I finish this speech, I will ask for an amendment, and it will be denied because they do not want to debate whether your sons and daughters go to war. I find that appalling. I am ashamed of a Senate that will not have a debate and will not have a vote. From the very beginning, our Republic was founded on a deep suspicion of entangling alliances. Our Founders wanted to do everything possible to avoid the endless, chronic wars in Europe. In Europe, for centuries, Kings from one nation fought their brothers and their cousins in other nations. This meaningless fratricide continued even into the 20th century. The Founding Fathers were emphatic in their desire to avoid endless war. Washington wrote that our true policy was to steer clear of a permanent alliance with any portion of the foreign world. Jefferson echoed this when he famously wrote of peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations and of entangling alliances with none. Even in modern times, such military heroes as President Eisenhower opposed intervention in Hungary, even when the naked aggression of the Soviets was appalling. Eisenhower likely may have had no real opportunity, though, because the Soviet Union had rolled in with 200,000 troops and 4,000 tanks. At least part of the decision not to go into Hungary in the fifties was not for a lack of sympathy for freedom, not for a lack of sympathy for self-determination of a country. It was the real politic decision of a nuclear confrontation with a nuclear Russia. Fast-forward to today. For 16 years, we have been at war in the Middle East--16 years. If I had been here, I would have voted for going after the people who had attacked us on 9/11. Our justified response, though, has drug on and on. There are people who are fighting in the war who were not born on 9/11. The Congress voted after 9/11 to go to war. It voted to go after the people who planned and plotted the attacks on the World Trade Center. That vote from 15 years ago is used to justify all war that is everywhere on the planet. There has been no meaningful debate on the wars we are currently involved in in the Middle East. We currently fight illegally and unconstitutionally in the Middle East because your representatives are afraid to have a public debate. They will stifle debate at all costs, and they will broker no amendments. They will allow no amendments to occur. Our unrestricted, unvoted-upon involvement in war everywhere informed my opposition to expand NATO. Everyone likes to talk about NATO's article 5 obligation to come to the defense of any NATO allies that are attacked. That is in the treaty. If Montenegro is attacked, we will have to respond, but my concern is that many in Congress believe that article 5, in saying that we have to defend Montenegro, farms out to an international body this power to declare war, and they do not think they have to vote again. You don't believe me? They have not voted for 15 years for war, and we are still at war. We continue to go to new countries for war with no vote. Do you think that Montenegro will not be attacked and that there will not be a war without a vote? This is their history. Their history is one of not obeying the Constitution. David Fromkin puts it this way: ``If it is now agreed by treaty that an attack on a . . . NATO ally is deemed an attack on the United States, then it can be argued that the President is empowered without congressional authorization to send us to war.'' Don't believe me? We have been at war for 15 years. We have been at war with dozens of new tribes, dozens of new countries, with no votes on war. The most important vote a legislator will ever take is whether to go to war. Yet today we will vote for an automatic war if somebody invades Montenegro. And mark my words--they won't obey the Constitution. They will say: We voted to put them in NATO. Article 5 says we have to defend them. That is not the law of the land, and we should have to vote in Congress. But nobody obeys the law. So if you are worried about whether your kids will be sent to the Balkans or whether your kids will be sent to Ukraine or Georgia, call your representative and tell them: Stop. This is the crux of the debate. Congress has abdicated its role in declaring war. For 16 years, we have been at war in the Middle East with dozens of different tribes and dozens of countries and yet no vote. People say: Well, we should fight ISIS. Well, let's vote on it. Let's declare war or not. But you can't tell me that ISIS has anything to do with 9/11. They don't. Many of their fighters weren't even born then. The authorization for war in Iraq was specific to a specific enemy in a specific place. So was the authorization after 9/11. The authorization for war in Afghanistan was specific. It says: necessary and appropriate force against those who planned, authorized, committed, or aided the September 11 attacks. It was actually put in the authorization for force that it was about 9/11. None of what is going on is about 9/11 anymore. They are not the same people. Some of the people we are fighting now didn't like those people. There is a whole confusing set of religious wars that have been going on for 1,000 years in the Middle East. Yet your representatives will say: Send me your son, send me your daughter, but we don't have time to vote on whether it should be a declared war. This vote is now used to justify a war around the globe, a vote from 9/11--from 15 years ago. It is a lie, and it is a disservice to our young men and women to have them fight under false pretenses where the Senators don't seem to have time to have a debate. No active war anywhere around the globe that the United States is involved with has been authorized by Congress. We dropped more bombs the other day in Pakistan. We sent a man right into Yemen. Raise your hand if you know what the hell is going on in Yemen and who is fighting whom and who is our enemy. The one we killed the other day was al-Qaida--probably a bad guy. He was actually fighting against the Houthis, whom we are also fighting against. Who are the good guys? Shouldn't we have a debate? Shouldn't we decide whether we are going to war in Yemen? Should we be giving the Saudis bombs? They bombed a funeral procession. They killed 150 civilians and 500 people. We just let it go on. We keep giving them weapons. I have tried to stop selling bombs to the Saudi Arabians, but the majority up here says: Keep giving them to them. Keep giving them the weapons, and let them indiscriminately kill whoever the hell they want. So NATO--should we expand it? Perhaps what we should do is make it clear that the NATO treaty is not a blind, open-ended promise to go to war anywhere, anytime. Before we go to final passage, I will offer one amendment. This amendment will be blocked because they do not want debate and because they will be embarrassed if they have to vote against this amendment. But realize what this amendment asks. My amendment states that nothing in the NATO treaty--particularly the article 5 promise to come to the rescue of anyone attacked--none of this can happen without an official vote to declare war. So what is my amendment stating? The Constitution--article I, section 8--says we don't go to war without a vote and a debate. Do you know what they will do to get around it? I think we can assume that they are against the Constitution because they are not going to allow the amendment. How long would it take? It takes 15 minutes to vote around here. I am about done speaking. We could have one 15-minute vote on an amendment. I would grant back the time if we would have a vote, but they don't want to debate it because they are embarrassed that they are sending your sons and daughters to war without ever debating or voting on it. This, to me, is a tragedy. It is sad to me. It makes me ashamed of the body that we will do this. Probably what is worse is then they clamor to the floor, their mouths agape, ajar, calling other people traitors, acting as if I care less about your sons and daughters because I want to have a debate on war before we go to war, preventing an amendment from happening and then having the gall to come to the floor and accuse their philosophic opponents of being traitors and being allies with the Russians. Is this what we have come to? Is this where we are as America, that you can't take a principled stand against war; that you can't stand up on principle and say: Are we really going to go to war over Montenegro, over Ukraine? Are we really going to go to war over Georgia? And then you are accused of not being patriotic to your country. I care as much as anybody about our soldiers. When I talk to our young men and women who serve, do you know what they tell me? They want someone to stand up and have a debate. They will do what they are told. Our soldiers are brave, and they will go where they are told, and they will obey orders. But the people here who are these mouthpieces for war, who think every soldier wants to go to war, I suggest they go out and meet the soldiers and ask them whether they want the civilian Senators to debate and have a formal declaration of war. That is all I am asking for--15 minutes and an amendment that says we will obey the Constitution. If article 5 says we need to go to war and Montenegro is attacked, we will do the proper thing. We will come to the floor of the Senate. We are not sending troops to Montenegro without a vote on the floor of the Senate. Is that too much to ask for? We will see. Mr. President, I call up my amendment No. 199 that says we should obey the Constitution and that we should declare war before we go to war.

Mr. PAUL

Mr. PAUL. I object.

Mr. PAUL

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

Mr. PAUL. Mr. President, tonight we will vote on a conservative budget that balances within about 5 years and saves the country from trillions of dollars of new debt. This budget that will be presented as an alternative also allows us to repeal ObamaCare at the same time. We have taken the identical language from the underlying budget, put it into the replacement budget, but we have done something different. Instead of allowing spending to continue to grow unabated, instead of allowing spending to grow at such a rate that we will add $9.7 trillion to the debt, we do something novel--something that I consider to be the conservative vision for our country. We actually freeze spending. We just say: no more spending. Interestingly, the budget will balance. The country's budget would actually balance, and we wouldn't add $9.7 trillion if we simply freeze spending. I think there is something in my version of the budget for both Republicans and Democrats because mine calls for a freeze in spending but would allow the different Appropriations subcommittees to decide where the spending would be cut. So, for example, if you decided that we needed more military spending but you thought that maybe we could spend less on corporate welfare, you might cut out the Department of Commerce. You might not know it once we did it. You might not know that the Department of Commerce really could be eliminated and you really wouldn't notice that it was gone. We look at the budget and we look at the spending every year, and we recount all of these terrible wasteful episodes of spending. Yet they never get fixed. Why? Because we continue to give government more money. The current budget that we will vote on will increase spending at about 5 percent a year. You will hear from people this ``Washingtonese''--this language that says: Well, we are just holding to the baseline. All this is the baseline. Son, just vote for the baseline. Jump on the team and vote for the baseline. The problem is that the baseline is not flat. The baseline is inclined, and that increase in spending every year is what is bankrupting the country. Spending is going up 5 percent a year. That is what the baseline is. So when people say that we are going to cut trillions of dollars or this is a frugal budget, they are talking about cutting spending from the proposed increases in spending. To illustrate that, the budget I am offering isn't even a cut of any kind. It is a freeze. Has anybody in America ever had their income frozen? Has anybody in America ever had to take a cut? Why shouldn't government? Why shouldn't we force government to look at their finances and say: You know what, this spending is good, and this is not so good. I will give you an example. We spent $700,000 last year studying Neil Armstrong's statement on the moon. Neil Armstrong landed on the moon and said: ``That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.'' Your government, in its infinite wisdom, spent $700,000 to study that to determine whether Neil Armstrong said ``one small step for a man'' or ``one small step for man.'' After spending $700,000, your government concluded that they still don't know. They spent $500,000 studying selfies. If you take a selfie of yourself and you smile, will you feel better later? They spent $2 million studying whether or not if you are standing in a food line at a buffet and the guy in front of you sneezes on the food, are you more or less likely to eat the food. You can't make this stuff up. Yet the budget that we are being offered does nothing to fix any of that. It just puts a stamp down and says: We are going to keep doing things the same way we have always done them. Well, my friends I think we should do things differently. I think a $20 trillion debt is alarming. I think it is the No. 1 problem we face as a country, and someone ought to do something about it. So I didn't have much luck saying: You know what, guys, we should produce a balanced budget. So what we got is $9.7 trillion, and I can't support that. So I offer an alternative for people who believe that debt is a problem. They can vote for my alternative, and it still maintains the exact same language that the underlying budget has for repealing ObamaCare. You can do both. Why should it be an either/or? Why should it be that, well, we have to vote for a crummy budget, but that is the only way we can get to ObamaCare. Why don't we vote for a budget that balances? I thought that was what we were for. I remember a time when Republicans talked about not only freezing spending, but some actually said we should reduce the size and scope of government. That is what Ronald Reagan said. Yet government grows inexorably. Over and over, year after year, government grows. We had Republicans in charge about 10 years ago. Remember? George W. Bush was President. We controlled, I think, both branches for at least one period of time, and yet the debt doubled under George W. Bush's administration from $5 trillion to $10 trillion. Under President Obama, it has gone from $10 trillion to $20 trillion. Now you have Republicans saying: Put us in charge. Put us in charge of the House. You did, in 2010. Put us in charge of the Senate. You did, in 2017. Put us in charge of all three branches, and we will make a conservative vision for the country. We will balance budgets. We will reduce spending. Yet this is an all-Republican Congress where only Republicans will vote on the budget today, and yet we will be voting on a budget that will add $9.7 trillion. I am told by some: This really isn't a budget; we are going to call it the vehicle to repeal ObamaCare. That is not what it is called. It is sitting right here. It is called the concurrent resolution on the budget for 2017--because, whoops, we didn't get to it last year, but we are getting to it this year. This is the budget. It does have numbers in it, and I think the numbers in the budget are of significance. I think, when we look at the numbers, we should make them mean something. But people say to me: Well, numbers don't mean anything. Just vote for it so we can repeal ObamaCare. We have to repeal ObamaCare. So just vote for the numbers, no matter what they are. I guess my response is this: If the numbers don't mean anything, why don't we put good numbers in there? If the budget is inconsequential and means absolutely nothing and only Republicans are going to vote for it, why don't we put numbers in it that lead to balance, because then we can go home to the people who voted for us and said they wanted us to balance the budget and wanted us to restrain ourselves and we can say we did what you told us to do. Instead, I have to go home and tell people that the Republicans introduced a budget that allows $9.7 trillion. I am told that we are going to do a better job, and 3 or 4 months from now we will do it again. I fear that in 3 or 4 months, when we come back, they will say: Well, you already voted for it once. Why don't you vote for it again? It is the same thing you voted for last time, and it is just a baseline. Well, the baseline is not flat. The baseline is increasing at 5 percent a year, and that is a problem. We have to look at spending across the board. All of the spending has to be looked at. The great thing about what I offered as an alternative is that, whether you are a liberal or conservative, it doesn't define exactly where you have to have the cuts come from. It says what the overall number will be, and it will keep us from increasing spending. What you could do to get to a freeze is you could cut or eliminate some parts of the government, like maybe the $700,000 we spent studying Neil Armstrong's statement, which could be eliminated completely, and maybe the $30 billion we spend on corporate welfare in the Department of Commerce. Maybe that can be eliminated and not one poor person would go hungry. Maybe a couple of rich CEOs will have to fly in their own jet instead of flying in a taxpayer jet when they are flying around the world. You could eliminate the Department of Commerce and you could keep spending for other items. If you think the military is bloated, you can actually cut money in the military and spend it on other items in the budget. The bottom line is, if you vote for this amendment, you will be voting for fiscal conservatism that says: Enough is enough. We have a $20 trillion debt. We are borrowing $1 million a minute, and enough is enough. If you are a fiscal conservative, if you are worried about the debt of the country, I hope you will support my amendment, which replaces the underlying budget with a Federal on-budget spending freeze and actually leads the budget into balance in the near future. Thank you, Mr. President.

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

Mr. PAUL. Mr. President, I propose the Senate vote for this budget because it leads to balance, it is fiscally conservative, it allows the Senate and the Congress to decide where money will be spent and where it will not be, it will eliminate waste, and--above all--will get us on the right track toward eliminating or at least staying the expansion of a $20 trillion debt. I think this is the biggest problem we face as a country. As much as I think ObamaCare is a mistake, just ignoring the debt to get to ObamaCare is also a mistake. For those who are or claim to be fiscally conservative, I ask that you will consider voting for a budget that actually balances and continues to have the underlying language in it that would also allow us to repeal ObamaCare.

Mr. PAUL

Mr. PAUL. Mr. President, the more things change, the more they seem to stay the same. Republicans won the White House. Republicans control the Senate. Republicans control the House. What will the first order of business be for the new Republican majority? To pass a budget that never balances, to pass a budget that will add $9.7 trillion of new debt over 10 years. Is that really what we campaigned on? Is that really what the Republican Party represents? Our first order of business will be a budget that never balances, a budget that adds $9.7 trillion to the debt, and they tell us: Oh, but it is not a budget. If you listen, they will say: No, no, it is a vehicle to repeal ObamaCare. Yet I have the title in front of me, which says a concurrent resolution for the budget of 2017. We have special rules when you pass the budget so that we may be able to repeal ObamaCare, and I am all for that. But why should we vote on a budget that doesn't represent our conservative view? Why would we vote on a budget that adds $9.7 trillion to the debt? Because we are in a hurry, we can't be bothered. It is just numbers. I was told again and again: Swallow it. Take it. They are just numbers. Don't worry. It is not really a budget. Yet the legislation says it is a budget. The numbers say we will add $9.7 trillion of new debt. So I say: If they are only numbers, and if the numbers that are in the budget don't matter, why don't we put numbers in that balance? Why don't we put a vision into the budget that represents what Republicans say they are for? Republicans say they are the conservative party. Are we? When George W. Bush was President for 8 years, the national debt went from $5 trillion to $10 trillion. The debt doubled under a Republican President and a partially Republican Congress. Yet the words were these: Well, he had Democrats to deal with, and if we could ever take all three branches of government, things would be different. The Republicans took over the House in 2010. They still didn't control the Senate, but they said: If we only controlled the Senate, we could be the conservative party again. We have had an election. The conservative party--the supposedly conservative party--won. Republicans control the House, the Senate, and the Presidency, and the first item of business for the Republicans will be to pass a budget that never balances--a budget that will add $9.7 trillion to the debt over 10 years. This sign could have been put up for Obama's first budget. Every Republican railed and said: $10 trillion--President Obama will add $10 trillion. And he did. President Obama doubled the debt again. It went from $5 trillion to $10 trillion. The national debt went from $5 trillion to $10 trillion under George W. Bush, and then it doubled again under President Obama. It went from $10 trillion to nearly $20 trillion. What are we looking at here? More debt, under a solidly unified Republican Congress and a Republican President. So you might scratch your head and say: The more things change, the more they stay the same. Is it all smoke and mirrors? Is there really a difference? Are Republicans different than Democrats? It is a pretty important question. We are in such a hurry to repeal ObamaCare. I am all for it. As a physician, nobody thinks that ObamaCare has been worse for the country. Nobody more than me thinks it is a terrible piece of legislation that has not helped the country and that has inflated our costs and not helped. Yet do we have to add nearly $10 trillion of debt in order to get at it? So as this moves forward, I will offer a replacement. I will offer my own budget. I will offer to strike and remove $10 trillion worth of debt, and I will offer my own budget that balances within 5 years. How do we do it? We give the authority to make the cuts where they should be, where they are most wasteful in government, and we offer this budget by simply freezing expenditures. You don't have to cut any expenditures. Every department of government could get what they got the last year. If you think some departments of government need more money, cut other departments of government. Frankly, there are some departments of government you could eliminate and you would never know they were gone. If the Department of Commerce were gone, a few corporate executives would not be able to fly around on government jets. They could fly around on their own jets. You would never know the whole entire Department of Commerce was gone. You can cut spending. You can actually get to the balance by not cutting anything. So here is what happens. If you freeze the on-budget spending, within a little over 5 years, your budget balances. I remember a time when there were the moderates who were for freezing spending, and the real conservatives were for cutting spending. Now nobody is for cutting spending. When I bring it up that you can absolutely not balance the budget if you are not willing to look at entitlements, do you know what I am told by many well-meaning Republicans? Don't write it down. Don't put it on paper because people will be upset with you if you explain that to save Social Security, to save Medicare, you will have to reform these entitlement programs. They say: Let's just talk about waste. Let's just talk about fraud and abuse. And I do, and we should eliminate all of those. But guess what. If you eliminate all of the budgetary spending that we vote on--this is called the discretionary spending. This would be the military and all the rest of the nonmilitary. It is about $1 trillion, not including the entitlements--Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. If you did just the military and the nonmilitary and you reduced it 10 percent a year for 10 years, and you virtually wiped out all discretionary spending, you still don't balance the budget. So, really, you are not a conservative if you are not willing to look at all government spending. The budget cannot be balanced and the budget will never balance unless we look at entitlements. What does that mean? It means that because of demographics--we had big families 60 years ago, with three, four, five kids to a family. Now we have less than three kids to a family--probably two kids to a family. So you had all the baby boomers born right after World War II, and they are all retiring--60 million of them. So we have this huge population boom, and you don't have as many workers. So the demographics aren't working. Then you add to that the fact that we are living longer. When Social Security was started, the average life expectancy was 65. It worked pretty well as a pension plan because you died. But now it is great. We are living on average to 80, and if you make 80, you may well make 90. What a great thing--longevity. But it is not working. Social Security is not working. We spend more on recipients than we bring in with the tax. Medicare is even worse. The average taxpayer pays about $100,000 over their lifetime in Medicare taxes. The average recipient takes out $350,000. How big a problem is this? Medicare is $35 trillion to $40 trillion in the whole. It is inexcusable that we are not talking about how we fix Medicare. It is inexcusable that we are not talking about how to fix Social Security. If we don't fix them, there is going to be a cliff. Within about a decade, the cliff is so severe that everyone on Social Security will suffer a 20-percent decline in their monthly check. It will happen all at once if we don't fix it. Can we fix it? Yes, we have to talk about it. What we are doing today is kicking the can down the road. We have our focus on ObamaCare, but we are taking our focus off the debt. As bad a problem as ObamaCare is, as much as it has disturbed, destroyed, and distorted the health care market, it may be that the debt is a bigger problem. So it is not a popular stand that I take today. I will be the only Republican to vote against the Republican budget. That won't be popular. But I ran for office. I left my medical practice. I am away from my family. I spend long hours traveling here because I am concerned about the debt. We borrow $1 million a minute. The debt threatens the very foundation of our country. Yet here we are. The Republican Party controls the House, the Senate, and the White House, and in their haste, they put forward a budget that is going to add this much debt. This is what the debt has been doing. Here is 1980. We see the growth. It has become exponential--the growth of the debt. This should worry every American. But here is the Republican 10-year budget that we are getting ready to pass. It is virtually a vertical line of accumulation of debt. People will say: But how could we ever cut any spending? I will give you a couple of examples of where your government spends money and you tell me whether or not we ought to look long and hard at cutting spending. There was a grant given for autism. I have a great deal of sympathy. I know children with autism. The grant was for $700,000. But do you know what they spent it on? They spent it on studying Neil Armstrong's statement. Remember Neil Armstrong? He landed on the moon and said: ``That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.'' Well, your government, in its infinite wisdom, wanted to know: Did he say ``one small step for man'' or ``one small step for a man''? Your government spent $700,000 studying the preposition ``a.'' Did he say ``a man'' or just ``man''--$700,000. Money that should have been spent on autism was spent on something frivolous. Is anybody going to fix it? No. Every year, all of the spending bills are globbed together in a 2,000-page bill--and not one iota of reform. My colleagues may remember that Senator Proxmire from the 1970s used to have something called the ``Golden Fleece Award.'' Every one of those things he complained about in the 1970s happens now but tenfold greater. Nobody fixes it. We don't pass individual spending bills. We do continuing resolutions, which means we continue doing the same thing we have done over and over. Again, $700,000 was spent studying Neil Armstrong's statement. Do you know what their conclusion was? We are not sure. They spent $700,000, and they are still not sure whether he said ``a man'' or ``one small step for man.'' We spent $500,000 studying whether or not, when you take a selfie, if you are smiling in the selfie, does it ultimately make you feel better? We spent $500,000. So what do we do? Do we give these people less money? Teach them a lesson. Give them less money, and maybe they will conserve the money. Maybe they will eliminate waste if they have less money next year than they had this year--or what I am proposing: Freeze the spending. Is anybody proposing that? No. We say: They spend a half a million dollars on selfies; give them more next year. So the Republican budget will increase spending every year. It increases spending at about 5 percent a year. So spending goes up. They say it is the baseline, and they say we are cutting off the baseline. No, no. The baseline goes up 5 percent a year. Spending will increase over the 10-year period. The red line is spending. Part of that is what the Republicans are proposing. They are going to stay on the spending curve. If we stay on the spending curve, they will continue to spend $700,000 studying Neil Armstrong's statement; they will continue to spend half a million dollars on selfies. They spent another half a million dollars on a climate change game. They spent $45 million to build a natural gas station in Afghanistan--$45 million. The first problem: Nobody in Afghanistan has a car that runs on natural gas. They discovered this after they built the gas station. The gas station was 86 times cost overrun. The original estimate was about half a million for the gas station, but lo and behold, somehow it cost $45 million. If your government had 86 times cost overrun, would you give them more money or give them less money? I, frankly, think we should give them less money. If you give them more money, they will not waste it less; they will waste it the same or worse. They should be given less money. Mazar-e Sharif is a city in northern Afghanistan. We built an $85 million embassy there and we signed a 10-year lease, and then somebody looked at the place and decided that since there were tall buildings surrounding the entire entity, people would shoot down into the courtyard and kill our diplomats, and they said the building could never been occupied--after they spent 85 billion, after they signed a 10-year lease. How will they get better? Were the people who made this decision fired? No. They are Federal employees, and you never fire Federal employees. Will they make wiser decisions because we give them less money? No. We give them more money. You would be excused for being upset if you went and voted and said ``I am going to vote for the conservative party'' and if you went and voted and said ``I am going to vote for the party that is going to balance a budget.'' Wouldn't you be upset? Wouldn't you wonder which party that is? This is the spending curve. We are going to add $9.7 trillion in 10 years, and yet they say: Oh, no, this isn't really a budget. I have it in front of me, though. It is a budget. There is no reason why Republicans couldn't have put forward a budget that doesn't add all the red ink. We are at $20 trillion. We are going to nearly $30 trillion under the Republican plan. My goodness, what happened? Where is the conservative party? Where are the conservatives in Congress who would say enough is enough? Now they say: We just have to be done with this. Don't distract the little people. Don't let the people of the country know we are voting on a budget. We are going to call this the vehicle to repeal ObamaCare. Well, that is not what it is. It is a budget. And we have special rules for dealing with the budget that allow us to repeal ObamaCare, which I am all for, but this is a budget. They say: Well, how can we get the votes? No Democrats will vote for this budget. This is a Republican blueprint. Not one Democrat will vote for this. So this is what Republicans are for. This is the blueprint the Republican Party says they are for--$10 trillion worth of new debt. I am not for it. That is not why I ran for office. That is not why I am here. That is not why I spend time away from my family and my medical practice. It is because debt is consuming our country. There is a time and a place to debate ObamaCare, and I am more than willing to debate that. But this is a budget. This is the vote on a budget. They say: Oh, it is just a gimmick. It is just a game. The numbers don't mean anything. Well, if the numbers don't mean anything, put honest numbers in there or put conservative numbers in there. I, for one, will put forward a conservative opposition to the Republican majority's budget. I will put forward a budget that freezes spending and balances the budget over a 5-year period. Would there be some agencies that would get less money? Yes. But it would force us to go through the government and pick and choose what is good spending and what is not good spending. We have a waste report that we put out. If you look on our Facebook, you can find our waste report. I listed four or five of the most egregious. There are hundreds and hundreds, if not thousands, of things we shouldn't be spending money on. I will give another example. We have sold $100 billion worth of weapons to Saudi Arabia. They were wanting to spend money giving F-16s to Pakistan. You pay for them and give them to them. There is riddled throughout the Pentagon--look, the Pentagon has never been audited. You are surprised? The government has never been audited. The Federal Reserve is not audited. The Pentagon is not audited. So what is the Pentagon's response to being audited? The Pentagon says to us: We are too big to be audited. I don't know about you, but that makes me kind of angry, that a part of our government, even a necessary part such as national defense, says they are too big to be audited. Meanwhile, we have $85 million embassies built that will never be occupied and $45 million gas stations that will never be used. I think it is time that we say enough is enough. Don't give government more money; give them less. The government hasn't been a good steward of your money. The question is often asked: Are the people who spend your money, are the people involved in government inherently stupid? It is kind of a debatable question. I think they are mostly well-intentioned. I don't think they are inherently stupid, but I do think they don't get the right incentives. Because there is no profit motive in government, because there is no rationale or motive to conserve, money is spent, and because of sheer laziness and ineptitude, we continue to pass the spending bills--glommed together, thousands of pages--without reform. But I won't be party to that. I won't vote for spending bills that are not individualized and don't have reforms in them. I won't vote for budgets that never balance. So while I may be a lonely voice on this issue, I will continue to bring up to the American people that it is important not to add more debt, that it is important to slow down the accumulation of debt. It is important that we have a $20 trillion debt, and I am not willing to add $10 trillion more in debt. So at the appropriate time, I will introduce an amendment that will strike and replace this budget, and in its place I will put forward a conservative vision for the country--a vision of a balanced budget that balances within 5 years. Every Republican in the Congress who has been here for a while has voted for a balanced budget amendment. Interestingly, the balanced budget amendment--which would be an amendment to the Constitution--has within it a provision that the budget would balance within 5 years. And even when Republicans get around to saying ``Oh, we will have some gimmicks to balance in 10,'' 10 is not what the amendment says. Why bother voting on an amendment if you are not serious about it? Republicans are completely in charge. It is a Republican document; it is a document I disagree with; and at the appropriate time, I will be introducing a replacement that will balance within 5 years and provide a conservative view for the country.

Mr. PAUL

Mr. PAUL. Mr. President, today the Senate will discuss questions of war and peace. Today the Senate will do its constitutional duty for a change. Let's be very clear, though. The Senate does this under duress. The Senate has abdicated its role in foreign policy for too long. We have been at war nearly continuously for 15 years and the initiation, conclusion, and resumption of war has not had debate in this body. The last time we voted on whether we should be at war was the Iraq war, which was a very emotional vote. It is a war that has long been over. There is now a new war in Iraq and Syria, but there has been no congressional authorization. Therefore, it is illegal and unconstitutional. Today's debate will attempt to debate whether or not we should initiate war in Yemen. It is an indirect vote because they won't allow a direct vote. In fact, they would not have allowed this debate had I and several others not forced it. But this is a bipartisan coalition that has brought this issue to the floor and said: We should debate issues of war. I know young men who have lost limbs in the war. I know young men and their families who have sacrificed their lives. They deserve to have the country debate when and where we should be at war. It should never be something that we slide into. Now, some will say: No, we are debating over whether to sell arms to Saudi Arabia. Yes, but I would also argue that we are at war in Yemen. Whether or not we sell arms to Saudi Arabia for the war in Yemen is something that should be debated because it is not just about selling arms. It is about whether we will be complicit in a war in Yemen. If there is no debate in Congress, if there is no debate in the public, are we ready to spend lives, money, and treasure on another war in Yemen? People will say: Oh, no big deal, we are not really at war in Yemen. Well, yes, we are. We are refueling Saudi bombers that are dropping bombs in Yemen. There is said to be over 3,000 innocent people who have died in Yemen from Saudi bombs. What do you think happens to those families when 100 people die in a wedding in Yemen? What do you think happens to those families? Do you think they have a warm, fuzzy feeling for Saudi Arabia and the United States, which is helping to pick the targets and fuel the planes? Don't you think we as a country ought to have a debate before we go to war? Don't you think we ought to read the Constitution? Our Founding Fathers had a significant, detailed, and explicit debate over war. They explicitly took the power to declare war, and they gave it to the legislature. Madison wrote that the executive is the branch most prone to war. Therefore, with studied care, the Constitution took the power to declare war and vested it in the legislature. This is repeated throughout the Federalist papers. It is repeated by all of our Founding Fathers that the power to initiate war was too important to place in the hands of one individual. But over the last decade and a half, we have been at war in Libya without the permission of the American people or Congress. We have been at war in Syria and Iraq without the permission of the American people. Now we are at war in Yemen without the approval of Congress or the American people. So this is a twofold debate today. It is a debate over whether the United States should be at war without a vote of Congress. I think our Founding Fathers were clear on this. It is absolutely certain that it was supposed to be a prerogative of Congress, but there are also practical concerns. Some have come to the floor and said: Well, Saudi Arabia is an imperfect ally. Well, I would go a little bit further. Saudi Arabia has often done things that have not been good for America, have not been in our national interest, and have not been consistent with our understanding of human rights. Let's give a few examples. The girl of Qatif was raped by seven men. Saudi Arabia put her in prison for the crime of being alone with a man. You see, it is the woman's fault because women don't get to testify. The testimony comes from her attackers, and the woman of Qatif was given 7 years in prison and 200 lashes. There is a poet who was writing in Indonesia who is Saudi Arabian and who was picked up by Interpol and taken home to be given the death penalty for possible criticism of the state religion. There was a young 17-year-old man who is a Shia, a minority, who was a protester at a rally. I think he is 21 now. He has been in prison for 4 years. His uncle was beheaded by the government 1 month or 2 ago and was, by all appearances, a religious leader, not a collaborator, not an espionage perpetrator. The man is now 21, has been in prison for 4 years, and faces beheading in Saudi Arabia. You might say: Well, human rights just aren't important. We need to do what is right for us in the region. We have given Saudi Arabia $100 billion worth of weapons--$100 billion. OK, we didn't give it to them; we sold it to them. But you know what. I think the taxpayer owns our weaponry. We have an ownership interest in our weaponry. This is not the free market. The weaponry was developed with taxpayer money and with explicit reservations that we in Congress can control who it is sold to. So we do need to ask, and it is an important debate, and we should be having it here in this body instead of leaving it up to the President. Let's have the debate. Is Saudi Arabia a good ally? Well, we have had this war in Syria for some time now. It is a messy war, a sectarian war. Most of the rebel groups are Sunni Muslims and the government is more allied with the Shiites. In this war, there have been hundreds and hundreds of tons of weapons--some by us, but maybe 10-fold more by Saudi Arabia and Qatar. There has been public report after public report after public report saying that these weapons that are being poured into the country by Saudi Arabia have been given indiscriminately. They have been weapons about which some would say: Oh, they are being given to the pro-Americans. One group said that when they were done with Assad, they would go after Israel. It doesn't sound like people who are necessarily our friends. According to public reports, many of these weapons that Saudi Arabia has bought from us and channeled into Syria have gone to al-Nusra, an off-branch of Al Qaeda. They used the justification to go to war in Syria--the 9/11 justification that said we would go after those who attacked us. I thought that was Al Qaeda. Are we now giving arms to Saudi Arabia, which is giving arms to Al Qaeda and al-Nusra? There have been some reports that the arms have gone directly to ISIS. I think it has been indiscriminate, inexcusable, and not in our national interest. How do we know what is in our national interest? We have to have a debate. Instead, Congress wants to be a lap dog for an imperial Presidency--Republican or Democrat, rubberstamped. Here you go--not even a rubberstamp. There is no vote, no discussion, nothing. We are forcing this debate against the wishes of both parties, because both parties are complicit in this. This is not a Republican versus Democrat issue. This is a bipartisan foreign policy consensus that says that we should always give weapons without conditions, indiscriminately. It is $100 billion of weapons to Saudi Arabia--more than any other President. President Obama has given more. You say: Why does he do this? Well, because we released about $100 billion worth of Iranian assets, and the Saudis bug him and say: Well, Iran is getting all this money. We need weapons, too. So it fuels an arms race over there. But here is the great irony of this. It is something that is so ironic that this body cannot overcome it. Unanimously, this body voted to let 9/11 victims sue Saudi Arabia. Now, why would we let them do that unless the people who voted unanimously actually believe that there is a possibility Saudi Arabia had something to do with 9/11? So the body that voted unanimously that there is a possibility that Saudi Arabia had something to do with 9/11 is now going to vote overwhelmingly to send weapons to the country they think might have had something to do with 9/11? Is Saudi Arabia an ally or an enemy? I sometimes call them ``frenemy.'' I am not arguing that they never do anything that is good for us. They do on occasion. They also do many things that aren't good for us. As we look through the list of things and we look to the arms that have been channeled into this region, we wonder: Will we be better off? Will our national security be better off or worse off? For example, as to the weapons that Saudi Arabia poured into Syria, they pushed back Assad, and there occurred a vacuum in the Syrian civil war. Guess who came to occupy that vacuum? Guess who grew stronger and stronger in the absence of Assad and in the chaos of the civil war? ISIS. In Yemen, you have several factions fighting. It is maybe not quite as complicated as Syria, but you have Salafis, people who believe in the primitive, intolerant form of Islam that Saudi Arabia practices. These people are allied with Saudi Arabia. They are fighting against rebels they call the Houthi rebels. The Houthi rebels are allied with Iran and in all likelihood are supplied by Iran. They fight each other. It is somewhat of a proxy war between Saudi Arabia and Iran. You say: Don't we hate Iran so much that we have to be involved everywhere to stop Iran? I don't know. Saudi Arabia funds hatred around the world. Does Iran fund madrassas in our country? That is a really good question. I don't think I heard anybody ask it. I am not apologizing for Iran, by any means, but Iran, to my knowledge, does not fund madrassas in our country. Saudi Arabia does. Saudi Arabia funds madrassas around the world that teach hatred of America, hatred of the West, and hatred of Christianity. By the way, if you are a Christian, don't bother trying to go to Saudi Arabia. You are not allowed in Mecca, you are not allowed in Medina, and God forbid you bring a Bible into their country. This is whom we want to send more weapons to? What of the Yemen war? What happens as the weapons pour into Yemen? Is it possible that ISIS and Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula sit by laughing and rubbing their hands, watching the war between the Houthis and the Salafis, and then step into the breach? It is what happened in Syria. Are we not to learn the lessons of the Middle East? Are we to completely stick our heads in the sand and say: We must always give weapons, and if we don't give weapons, that is isolationism. That is, literally, what people are saying. It is isolationism not to send $1 billion worth of weapons. To send $1 billion less would somehow be isolationism. Well, perhaps it would send a message. There have been people who have described Saudi Arabia as both arsonists and firefighters--throwing fuel and adding fuel to the flames and at times being our friend and being helpful, maybe giving us some information or some intelligence. As to the Syrian civil war, nothing good has come from that civil war. Arms have been plowed into that country from both sides, and there is nothing good. But one concrete thing has come from the Syrian civil war--millions of refugees, millions of displaced people. They have flooded Europe, and they are wanting to come to America also. What do you think will happen in Yemen if we put more weapons in there? What do you think happens in Yemen if we put more arms into Yemen? More or less refugees? There will be millions of refugees coming. They will be flooding out of Yemen, if they can get out of there, as the war accelerates. Does Saudi Arabia help with the refugees? Does Qatar help? Do any of the Gulf States take any refugees? Zero. Saudi Arabia has taken zero refugees. So while they fan the flames, while they send arms into Syria and arms into Yemen and bombs into Yemen, they take zero refugees from Yemen or from Syria. Somehow it always seems to be America's responsibility to pay for everything and to absorb the brunt of the civil wars throughout the Middle East. I think there is another answer. I am not saying that we can't be allied with Saudi Arabia, but I am saying that they need a significant message sent to them. I am saying they need to change their behavior, and I am saying there needs to be evidence that Saudi Arabia has changed their behavior. This evidence needs to be that they quit funding madrassas that preach hate; that they come into the modern world and quit beheading people when they don't like what they say; that they quit beating and imprisoning the victims of rape. I think we should think long and hard about war. I think war should always be the last resort, not the first resort. I don't think it should be easy to go to war. I think our Founding Fathers understood that. They did not want to give one man or one woman the power to declare war, the power to initiate war. That power was specifically and explicitly given to Congress. There is something to be said about the corrupting influence of power. Lincoln said: If you want to test a man, give him power. The true test is whether a man can resist the allure of power. I think this President has, on many occasions, failed that allure, whether it is privacy or whether it is issues of war. President Obama once was a defender of privacy and once was a defender of the Constitution, but for some reason, the power of the office has caused him to forget the constitutional restraints that disallow even him from creating, causing, engaging in war without our permission. But there is blame to go around. For partisan reasons, we want to blame the other party sometimes, but if you look at the blame and who is to blame, there is a great deal of blame to go around--the President for taking us to war without our permission, but even more so, Congress for its abdication of our role, our responsibility. The last vote on going to war was for the Iraq war in 2002. We have not voted to go back to war. We have abdicated our responsibility. There is a young man in the military currently who is actually suing over an order he was given to go to war because he said it is not constitutional for him to go to war without the permission of Congress. The President once understood this. This is a proxy debate over whether Congress has a role, whether we are relevant in foreign policy, and whether we will stand up and do our duty. We should be debating on this floor with every Member present whether the President will be authorized to fight a war in Syria and Iraq. We should also have that same debate on Yemen because we are involved in the war in Yemen, and everyone who loses their life there believes that it is not only Saudi Arabia that is bombing them, they believe it is us. We are refueling the bombers in midair, we are helping to choose the targets, and we have people embedded within this war zone. So make no mistake, we are at war in Yemen. We are at war illegally and unconstitutionally and without the permission of Congress. We should immediately stop everything we are doing and debate a use of authorization of force for the Middle East. Everybody says they are for it on both sides, yet it never happens because it is messy. It is messy also because I think the American people might wake up to the facts. They might wake up to the fact that ISIS grew in the midst of a Syrian civil war. They might wake up to the fact that our involvement in the Yemen war may well make Al Qaeda stronger, may well make ISIS stronger. This is a twofold debate. It is a debate over whether you can go to war without the authority of Congress, but it is also a debate over selling arms and whether that will be in our national interest. I think we still do own these arms. Those arms are not privately owned by a company. We paid for the research for them. They are owned by the taxpayer, and by law there are restrictions as to where they can be sold. I don't believe Saudi Arabia is an ally we can trust. The fact is, they continue to support schools in our country--schools that preach hatred of our country, preach hatred of Israel, and preach hatred of civilization, as far as I am concerned. I just don't see how we send them the correct message by saying: You can have unlimited arms from us. Some say this is too far. I say this is too little. But I think there will be something that occurs today. It will occur despite what the majority wants. This is a debate, but this is not the end of the debate. If we lose the battle on the vote, we will have begun the debate over whether Congress is relevant. Whether or not we go to war without the permission of Congress, this is the beginning of the debate. Part of the victory is that we are having this debate, but mark my words--we are having this debate only because it has been forced upon Congress. No one on either side of the aisle wants this debate. If they could, this would be shuffled under the rug. It has occurred only because the law mandates that they allow it to occur. But this should be occurring on moments of war, on issues of war, and I regret that we don't do it. I hope in the future this will be a lesson to the American people and to the Senate that it is our duty, and there is no duty above our duty to decide when and where we go to war.

Mr. PAUL. Madam President, there is probably no greater issue before Congress at any time in our lives or any time in our service than whether we should go to war. I think it is a mistake to slide into war. I think it is a mistake to allow the power to declare war to default to one person. Our Founding Fathers were very clear throughout the Federalist Papers, explicitly in the Constitution, that the power to declare war shouldn't go to one person; that the power to declare war should be determined by a vote of Congress. We have abdicated that role, and the vote today is a vote over whether we should try to reclaim that power. Some will say: Well, it is just arms, and if we don't sell them, somebody else will. Well, you know, I don't think of national security as a jobs program. I don't think of whether we create jobs here at home. I think about the young man who lives down the road from me who lost both legs and an arm, OK? I think about the human toll of war. I think about whether there is a national security interest, but I think nothing at all about whether any jobs are created. If we make weapons and we have a weapons industry, that is good for our country when we make them for ourselves, but when we are selling weapons around the world, by golly, we shouldn't sell weapons to people who are not putting them to good purpose. What we have found is that Saudi Arabia is an irresponsible ally. One of the great ironies that nobody here can quite explain is that this body has voted unanimously to let the people of 9/11 sue Saudi Arabia. So we are going to let the person who we think might have had something to do with Saudi Arabia have more weapons? What kind of signal is that to Saudi Arabia? Would Saudi Arabia be bereft of weapons if we held $1 billion out? No. We have already sold them $99 billion worth. They have enough to blow up the Middle East 10 times over. I think it might send them a message. Do you know what. Stop the sale, send them a message. Do you know what the message might be? Quit funding madrasas that teach hate in our country. Don't tell us you are going to stop doing it. Saudi Arabia, tomorrow, stop funding madrasas in America that teach hatred, that teach intolerance. Stop putting Christians to death. Stop putting people who convert to Christianity to death. Stop beheading protesters. The one young man who is a protestor in Saudi Arabia is scheduled to be beheaded and crucified. Does that sound like somebody who is a great ally with a great human rights record? The young woman who was raped by seven men--she was put in prison. She was told it was her fault for being alone with the man. She was publicly whipped. Poets have been picked up around the world and brought back to Saudi Arabia to be whipped for what they write. Do you trust Saudi Arabia to do the right things with your weapons? These weapons are owned by the American taxpayer. We built them. We did the research into them. Private companies make money off of them, but it isn't about them making money. It isn't about them getting to sell the weapons instead of Russia selling the weapons. It is about our national security. Saudi Arabia's indiscriminate placement of weapons into the Syrian civil war has led to the rise of ISIS. ISIS grew stronger as Saudi Arabia was flying weapons to al-Nusra, Al Qaeda, and likely some of them to ISIS. We now have a war in Yemen. Yes, we are directly involved in the war. Yes, this is a vote not just about weapons, this is a vote about whether we should be at war in Yemen. We are refueling the Saudi bombers in midair. Our military planes are, in a sophisticated fashion, refueling their planes. Do you think the Yemenis think: Oh, no big deal. You know, 3,000 citizens have died. When you go to a wedding in Yemen and you get a bomb dropped on you from Saudi Arabia, do you think you have warm, fuzzy feelings for our great ally, Saudi Arabia? Absolutely, we should be telling Saudi Arabia what to do. These are our weapons. Do you know when they are willing to listen? It is when we argue from a position of strength. Do you know what is the ultimate weakness? Give them what they want. Giving the arms industry what they want is the ultimate weakness. We look weak, and we look bowed before and cowed before the Saudi Arabians. As they sit back in their long robes sipping tea, refugees bob about the Mediterranean. People are starving and displaced in Yemen. Not one of them will come to Saudi Arabia, not one of them will be allowed in the country. Yes, this is a debate about war, and this is a debate about whether you want to be at war in Yemen. It is not just a debate about sending and selling another $1 billion of weapons, it is about should we be at war in Yemen. It is about should we be at war anywhere without the permission of Congress. This is not a small occurrence. This is not a small happening. This is a big deal. This is the most important vote that any legislator will ever have. Should we be at war or shouldn't we be at war? Those who want to make this about a jobs program, about we are going to get some sales of tanks--no, it is not a jobs program. It is about young men and women dying in a war. It is about whether it is in our national interests. It is about whether we are going to be safer. Shouldn't we have a debate over whether the war in Yemen is making us safer? We certainly should have had a debate about the war in Libya. Did that make us safer? Once Qadhafi was gone, chaos ensued. ISIS controls one-third of Libya after the war as a result of the war. We are now bombing in Libya. We are bombing the replacement to the government we bombed. So we bombed Qadhafi into oblivion. We don't like the people who replaced him either so we are bombing them. Does anybody think that maybe it is a mistake? This is what this debate is about. What should American foreign policy be? Should Congress lie down and be a lapdog for the President-- let him do whatever he wants? That is what a vote on this will mean if you let the President have what he wants, if you let the arms industry have what they want because they can make a buck selling tanks into a war that is a catastrophe. In the Wall Street Journal, Simon Henderson wrote that the chaos and violence in Yemen is such that it would be an improvement to call it a civil war. It is hard to know who is friend and foe. Even our former Ambassador to Syria has said, in Syria, it is almost impossible to know friend from foe. People have repeatedly written that Saudi weapons in Syria have gone to the wrong people. It is not like: Whoops, Saudi Arabia is sometimes wrong, and they are not that bad. They have a horrific human rights record. There are people who believe them to be complicit in 9/11. This body voted unanimously to let the 9/11 victims sue them, and now this body wants to give them weapons? Does no one sense the irony? As we move forward on this vote, everyone should understand that this is a proxy vote for whether we should be at war in the Middle East because neither side--the leadership on neither side--will allow a vote on whether we should authorize force. Neither side will let the constitutional debate occur on whether we should be at war. I see my colleague from Connecticut. Would he like to have the last word?

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

Mr. PAUL

Mr. PAUL. They could still be held as an enemy combatant.

Mr. PAUL. Let me clarify in a followup question. If an American citizen goes to Syria and fights with ISIS and is captured on the battlefield, this amendment would not mean they get a trial.

Mr. PAUL. Four years ago we passed legislation under the Defense authorization that allows the American Government to detain an American citizen without a trial. Think about that. One of our basic rights, one of our most important rights is the right to a trial, to be represented, to have a jury of our peers. You say: Well, it will never be used. Well, President Obama recognized this. He said: This is a terrible power, and I promise never to use it. Any power that is so terrible that a President says he is not going to use it should not be on the books. As the Senator from Utah said, it is not about having laws that require angels to be in charge of your government. Someday there will be someone in charge of the government who makes a grievous mistake, like rounding up the Japanese. So we have to be very careful about giving power to our government. That is what the challenge is here. Many will say: Well, we are at war, and when at war you have to have the law of war. What is the law of war also known as? Martial law. But this is a war that does not seem to have an end. They are not asking for a 1- or 2- year period in which there won't be trials; they are asking you to relinquish your right to trial for a war that may have no end. I want you to imagine this. Who could these enemy combatants be who may not get trials? Imagine you are an Arab-American in Dearborn, MI, and you send an email to someone overseas. Maybe that person is a bad person and maybe there is a connection, but shouldn't a person in Dearborn, MI, have a right to defend themselves in court and say: I was just sending an email to them and I said a few stupid things, but I am not a terrorist. Shouldn't they get the right to defend themselves? We need to be very careful that, as we fight this long war, we don't wake up one day and say we won the war, but we lost what we stood for. We lost the Bill of Rights. We lost it to our soldiers. I know soldiers who lost two arms and a leg fighting for us, and they come back and say they were fighting for the Bill of Rights. That is what this should be about--protecting the Bill of Rights while they are gone. So the question I have for my esteemed colleague is--some will say: Well, they get a hearing. They get a habeas hearing. They go before a judge. Isn't that due process? Is a habeas hearing equivalent to due process?

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

Mr. PAUL. Let's also be clear on what we are talking about. People who have been defined as enemy combatants are not always holding a weapon. You can have a propagandist. We have had propagandists who have been killed overseas who were propagandists for the enemy. So it is conceivable that an American citizen could be exchanging information and saying something derogatory about us or something in favor of the enemy, and that could be considered to be--that person is now a propagandist. My point is, shouldn't they have a day in court to determine the facts and have representation as opposed to being plucked up and saying: You are going to Guantanamo Bay for the rest of your life because you made some criticism, and now the state has deemed you an enemy.

Mr. PAUL. Is it currently true that this amendment is being blocked by one Senator from gaining a vote?

Mr. PAUL. One concluding point I would make would be that we have time in the Senate body to vote about which rockets we are going to use, made in which State and in which country. Shouldn't we take time to vote about the abrogation or possible abrogation of the Bill of Rights, of the right to a trial by jury? I think this is an eminently important issue, should not be pushed under the rug, and that no one should be afraid to take a stand. Not everyone will agree, but we should be allowed to take a stand on the Senate floor, openly debate, and have a vote on whether you will have your right to trial by jury or whether we are going to abbreviate that right and say we are at war. But realize that if you think your rights can be abbreviated in times of war, this is a war--that the people who tell you they are going to abbreviate your rights are also telling you that this war has no end, that there is no conceivable end to this war, and that the diminishment of your liberty, the loss of your right to trial by jury, will go on and on without end. I wholeheartedly support the amendment by my fellow Senator from Utah, and I advocate for having a vote on the Senate floor.

Mr. PAUL

Mr. PAUL. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Small Business and Entrepreneurship be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on June 8, 2016.

Mr. PAUL. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Foreign Relations Subcommittee on Africa and Global Health Policy be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on June 8, 2016, at 2:15 p.m., to conduct a hearing entitled ``U.S. Sanctions Policy in Sub-Saharan Africa.''