Rand Paul

Mr. PAUL

Mr. PAUL. I won't be interrupted, Mr. President. I have the floor.

Mr. PAUL. I have the floor.

Mr. PAUL. Mr. President, it is important that the truth be told and that people aren't allowed to stand and lie without challenge. The bill last week to give immediate aid to North Carolina was objected to by the Senator from North Carolina. I agreed to let it go immediately by unanimous consent as long as it was paid for. The Senator from North Carolina objected. These are the facts. This is the Senate record. The people of North Carolina can read this in the Senate record. He objected to his own bill because he was annoyed that I had the audacity to say we have a $2 trillion debt, and we should pay for things. We had $4 trillion worth of Green Energy New Deal boondoggle spending subsidies to big green energy company, big corporations. He objected to taking money from green energy boondoggle budgets and spending it in his own State. He objected to his own bill. So what I would say is: The truth is important. The facts are important. We have had a very important debate here, and there is a general philosophical debate about whether or not we should spend money in Ukraine or in our country. We have had flooding problems in Kentucky. I haven't met one person who suffered from this who didn't say it was more important to spend the money in Kentucky than Ukraine. It is a debate that is worth having. The decisions we make over here should be about prioritizing spending. Where do we spend it? Do we borrow it? Where do we spend the money? This is what it is about. And the fact that the Senator from North Carolina wants to rewrite history and say he didn't object to his own bill when he did is a lie; just simply untrue. Just simply untrue.

Mr. PAUL. Thank you. I would regain the rest of my time. How much time do I have left?

Mr. PAUL. You said 6\1/2\ minutes?

Mr. PAUL. This side of the debate which has--

Mr. PAUL.--30 minutes will relinquish the remaining time on our side.

Mr. PAUL

Mr. PAUL. I don't think we have--we have an objection. You know, I have asked for a unanimous consent. He either objects, or he doesn't object.

Mr. PAUL. I don't have the floor.

Mr. PAUL. I have made a motion.

Mr. PAUL. You have got to respond to the motion.

Mr. PAUL. I have made a motion to pass the bill.

Mr. PAUL. Mr. President, in reserving the right to object, I lived for 4 months in Asheville and worked at the VA hospital, so I have fond feelings for western North Carolina. I have an uncle who lives just up the road from Asheville. I know about the devastation. One of my best friends from my wedding lives in Asheville as well. But the thing is, the reason why we won't do this in a responsible way is because the Senate voted to send all of your money to Ukraine. The Senate voted to send $200 billion to Ukraine. I have been all over the mountains of Appalachia. When I ask people, ``Would you rather your Senators take care of you here in Asheville or here in Pikeville or here in Appalachia or would you rather them send your money to Ukraine?'' I don't get anybody wanting to send a penny to Ukraine. Look, you can have all kinds of sympathy in the world for Ukraine and hostility toward Russia being the aggressor nation, but we don't have the money. We are $2 trillion in the hole. Interest this year is going to be $1 trillion. As far as passing this, I am willing to let it pass today. He is going to object to passing his own bill today simply because it gets paid for. How crazy is that? He will not even let the other side object to it. He is going to object to his own bill. I am willing to let the bill pass, but take some of the fluff and boondoggle subsidies from the Green New Deal and put it into here. The money is sitting here. We put it into here for disasters. We help Asheville today. ``Oh, no. It is not the time or the place to pay for things.'' The question before the Senate is whether, on behalf of the American people, we should borrow and spend an additional $810 million for small business loans. Do you know who gets small business loans right now? Ukraine. We are funding--``60 Minutes'' did a special on this--a purse and dress store in Ukraine. We fund the Ukrainian Government's pensions. Look, half of our State governments are short in pensions. Our U.S. Government is short in pensions, and we are funding them in Ukraine. So some of the same people who want this immediately--now, now, now, now; we don't want to pay for it--are happy to pay for crap all over Ukraine, including government salaries and pensions and small business loans to Ukraine. Do you know what? The job of legislators is to make decisions to set priorities. We don't have an infinite amount of money, but we do have enough money to take care of them in Asheville and in Virginia. Simply pay for it, but realize the people assembled will object to their own bill today. I am offering their bill. All we have got to do is take some money that is laying around in a pot of money--Green New Deal boondoggle money going to big corporations--and put it in for a disaster. We can do that today. If you still want to subsidize green energy, come back and do that next year. Pay for it now. We don't have to borrow hundreds of millions of dollars to bail this program out, but Congress has a habit of refusing to do what you and I would do if faced with a new and large expense: Congress refuses to cut elsewhere even when saying yes to every new spending proposal and program that has led to record high inflation. Americans have been forced to learn the hard way that they are the ones who have to pay for Congress's addiction to spending. So I offer a fiscally responsible path to pay for the bill and spare Americans from increasing the hidden tax of inflation. My amendment would rescind $810 million from the Department of Energy's boondoggle green new energy deals. It is a $4.75 billion program that has had repeated bankruptcies in it previously. It is absurd to force taxpayers to subsidize rich companies--with vast resources of their own--to gamble on energy projects that the private sector finds too risky. And, actually, it should be about priorities: the people in Asheville or the Green New Deal. No. This is the best time to put them in contrast, not some other time when people are not hurting, when people can't see the contrast. Everybody in Asheville should wake up today and find out their Senators are going to reject the disaster money because it is paid for. That is it. They are going to reject taking it from the Green New Deal boondoggle and sending it to Appalachia. It can go today. It can go in 10 minutes. I approve of the money. Just take it from somewhere where it is being wasted. Ideally, I would take it from Ukraine, but that is not available right now, but a lot of the money went to Ukraine also. A 2015 report from the Government Accountability Office found that when five companies defaulted on these Green New Deal loans, the government--the taxpayers--lost $800 million. It is not a good program to begin with, but it is an easy place to go looking for something that is more important, like the people of Asheville in North Carolina. This money would have nearly covered today's disaster loan funding, but it was needlessly squandered previously, but there is still money in the fund today. I offered this identical amendment to pay for another bill a month ago, and every Republican voted for it. So I don't understand why Republicans would rise today and object to a pay-for they all voted for last month. If the Small Business Administration must have this additional money, the least we can do is respect the taxpayers and act as good stewards for their money. Therefore, I ask the Senator to modify his request to include my amendment, which is at the desk, as this would allow the bill to pass if my amendment is attached to it; that the amendment be considered and agreed to; that the bill, as further amended, be agreed to; and that the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table.

Mr. PAUL. Mr. President, reserving the right to object.

Mr. PAUL. The insinuation is made that there is a better time--we will vote on this at another time; maybe, you know, young man, it is just not the time. It is not the time nor the place. Actually, it is the time or the place, and the only vote against the disaster bill today will be the Senator from North Carolina. He will, today, vote to kill the disaster aid. He says: Well, there aren't enough votes. We won't know because he is objecting. He isn't allowing the Democrats to object because they always object to anything that is pay- for. But, by his objection, he is not allowing the system to play out. If the Democrats want to object, we will find out that they are opposed to pay-fors, and we will further the definition of who is for not for paying for stuff and who is. But to say that we, as Republicans, are never for paying for disaster relief is to say that we are equally--or the Republicans who are for this--are equally complicit in the accumulation of $35 trillion worth of debt. So no matter how good the cause is--I don't care whether it is a fire or aid or a flood or rain or all the damage--it all should be paid for. It is the responsible thing to do, no matter how terrible the disaster is. And it is not like I am saying: Well, let's just wait 2 years until we can earn enough money to pay for Asheville. We have the money. We are a rich country. It is sitting here. I just simply ask: Take it from something here--that is a wasteful corporate bailout to green energy companies--and put it over here. But the fact is that the Senator from North Carolina is going to kill his own bill today. He is going to vote not to allow it to be heard. And we have no idea whether there are enough votes or not. He can say there aren't enough votes, but he is now the vote that stops the spending from getting easy passage. What we are going through is a procedure of easy passage. This is allowing things not to go to committee, not to be deliberated but to easily pass. And I am in favor of doing that because of the emergency, because of the tragedy. We allow this to easily pass by simply taking some money from a pile of money over here. If he weren't to object and the Democrats don't stand up, it passes like this. But then it is not on me; it is on them. They decide that they don't want to pay for anything. And disasters should never be paid for? Well, that is how we have this disaster of a $35 trillion debt, because nobody pays for anything. Nobody cares. It is never the right time. Well, now is the right time. So if you want easy passage, you have to hear what the problems we face are. So I object.

Mr. PAUL

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

Mr. PAUL. Mr. President, I move to proceed to Calendar No. 502, S. Con. Res. 41.

Mr. PAUL

Mr. PAUL. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to modify the order of September 24 so that following my allotted time, Senator Whitehouse be permitted to speak for up to 5 minutes, followed by myself for an additional 5 minutes, prior to being recognized to make the motion to proceed to S. Con. Res. 41.

Mr. PAUL. Mr. President, this year the United States will spend over $6 trillion while only bringing in $4 trillion in revenue. That is a profound gap; $2 trillion will be borrowed this year. To add insult to injury, Congress spends like drunken sailors without even bothering to pass a budget. There is no budget. The Democrats have passed no budget in the Senate, and the Republicans have passed no budget in the House. We are going to spend $6 trillion without anybody even thinking about where the money comes from out of budget to afford a $6 trillion government. In fact, over the past 20 years, Congress has passed a budget less than half of the time. So today, I will attempt to do what both parties have failed to do; and that is, pass a budget. They didn't ask me to do this. In fact, they would probably prefer I not introduce a budget because it embarrasses the status quo of both parties. I am only allowed to introduce this budget because they didn't do their job, and once upon a time, someone wrote privileged rules into the Senate that say: If the parties fail to produce a budget, anyone can. So I have leapt at the chance because I think the American people would like to see us do something responsible, like balancing our budget. The penny plan that I offer today will balance the budget in 5 years. The Federal Government passed an ignominious landmark this year. Our national debt now stands at $35 trillion and grows with each passing second. To put that in perspective, each taxpayer's share of the debt is about $270,000. The government now spends more on interest to service our Federal debt than it spends on our national defense. While we spend about 850 billion on the military, we will spend about 890 billion on interest. We should heed this fact as a warning. As historian Niall Ferguson points out that ``any great power that spends more on debt service than on defense will not stay great for . . . long.'' We must act now if America is to once again be a rising nation. Well, we are currently on a path toward decline. Right now, we spend nearly $2 trillion more per year than we bring in in revenue. This level of spending imposes a tax on every American. This tax is called inflation. When we borrow $2 trillion, somebody has got to buy it. Someone buys the debt. When the Federal Reserve buys the debt, they create currency, create new money, out of thin air, which, when it begins to circulate, causes your prices to rise. This is the tax of inflation. And Americans have felt the pain of inflation tax significantly over the last 4 years. Every day for the last 4 years, American people's purchasing power has decreased for even the most basic items. Since this administration took office, prices have risen nearly 22 percent, and feeding and providing for a family has become more expensive. For example, the price of bacon and eggs increased by nearly 30 percent. If you would like some toast with your breakfast, bread will cost you 11 percent more since the Biden-Harris administration took office. The price of butter is up by 30 percent. When Biden and Harris took office, a gallon of milk cost on average $3.25; today, the price has increased by 25 percent and costs just under $4. Gas prices have risen 22 percent. And what kind of answer do you get from the administration? What type of answer do you get from the other side of the aisle? They say: Greed is causing prices to rise; that the grocery stores are greedy and are raising the prices; and we must have government come in and fix the prices. Even on CNN, the mouthpiece for the Democrat party, economists appear to say: My goodness, have they not heard of Venezuela? Have they not seen what price controls do in Venezuela? They lead to shortages and famine. What they did to the Soviet Union, what they did to Communist China. And yet that is what they are proposing here because they misinterpret why the prices are going up. It isn't that things are more precious; it is that your dollar is losing its value. Your dollar loses the value through inflation because we run a $2 trillion debt. It is a Ponzi scheme. It is a bait and switch. The politicians come to you and say: Here, we will give you this for free. It is free. It won't cost you anything. We will give you free college. We will give you $25,000 for a house. It is free. There is no cost. But it is a lie--the lie, the trick, the ruse. It is a lie on the American people because it is paid for through borrowing. And when we borrow, the Federal Reserve will buy the debt, and you will get inflation. So you are going to pay for it through inflation. There is no free lunch. You can't get anything for free. Something for nothing is a charade played on the American people by politicians who just want to gain power over your lives. Americans will pay dearly for Congress's insatiable appetite for more and more spending. The high level of spending that is currently crushing the American family is just the beginning. If we continue down this unsustainable path, American families will be forced to deal with even higher inflation, confiscatory tax rates, rising interest rates, and a weak economy. It will be harder to find a job and provide for a family because the deals made in the Halls of Congress will always stick the taxpayer with the bill. Right now, the average American family--their paycheck buys a thousand dollars less of stuff. You have lost a thousand dollars. If you make the same income you made 4 years ago, you are a thousand dollars poorer because of inflation. Inflation came from these politicians offering you something for nothing. We have to wake up. As spending under the Biden-Harris administration weakened, every American family's purchasing power is also less. At $35 trillion, the Federal debt is nearly twice what it was 10 years ago. That is larger than the entire $25 trillion economy of America--the next five largest economies combined. So you take America's GDP, and you add the next five countries, it still doesn't equal our debt. Our debt is bigger than our economy, plus five more countries. Whose fault is it? Well, really, frankly, both parties. During the previous administration--during the Trump administration--$8 trillion in debt was added. During the Biden administration--Biden-Harris administration--about $8 trillion is going to be added. It is going to be almost exactly the same when you compare 4 years of a Republican administration to 4 years of a Democratic administration. So really, there is blame that goes around. But there are alternatives. I am offering an end to the inflation, an end to the debt, and a gradual balance to the budget over 5 years. How much is $35 trillion? How do you even get your mind around it? Well, to put it in more tangible terms, $35 trillion is enough to fill 34 NFL stadiums with hundred dollar bills. So you take hundred dollar bills, and you just keep piling them into an NFL stadium until you reach the brim; and then if you fill 34 of those NFL stadiums, that would be 35 trillion. Government spending is so out of control that even if President Biden emptied the bank account of every individual in the United States, it would only cover half of the debt. Think about that: $35 trillion debt and then all of the savings of all of America--if you took all of their savings, which I am not proposing--but if you took it all, you only pay for half of the debt. This is an unsustainable course, and many smart people have been saying this. We are headed for a calamity if we don't do something. Yet both parties just keep plowing on. They call what we are going forward with a continuing resolution. I will have none of it. It is continuing the status quo. It is continuing to borrow $2 trillion a year. We have had a couple of periods in the last year where we borrowed a trillion dollars in a 3-month period. This is alarming, and it is out of control. America is in a historic state of financial disarray. Right after the end of World War II--the world's most expensive war--our cumulative Federal debt was 18 percent larger than the GDP, the entire economy. Now, in a period of relative peace, the debt is 22 percent larger. There are no excuses for this. Our debt now is worse than it has been at any time as a percentage of GDP. Are we certain that if a crisis erupts--if there were a war that we were participating in, another pandemic, God forbid, or some other catastrophe--that we will be able to borrow enough to meet the challenge? Without a drastic change of course, fiscal ruin is only a matter of time. America's leading financial minds have already sounded the alarm. The Chairman of the Federal Reserve said that Federal spending is on an unsustainable path, and it is past time for Congress to correct it. The CEO of JPMorganChase--America's largest bank--warned that the Federal Reserve must reduce its deficits before lenders finally say enough is enough and stop loaning the government money. Now, you ask: How will this occur? Will it occur suddenly or gradually? Will we gradually lose our dominance? Will we gradually no longer be the reserve currency of the world or will we show up on a Friday to sell the debt and no one buys it? The Federal Reserve will always buy it. The people say: The Federal Reserve will buy it. If the Federal Reserve buys all the debt, interest rates will go through the roof and so will inflation. Even the head of the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office cautioned that our financial situation is unprecedented and suggested the United States is now on an alarmingly weak fiscal footing. As interest payments on the national debt crowd out the rest of the government's budget, tax increases, inflation, and eventual default on the debt are what lie ahead for the American economy. Unfortunately, a debt crisis will not just stop with our economy. A threat to our financial security is also a threat to our national security. We must remember that the surest path to peace is leaving no doubt in your adversary's mind about your ability to respond to aggression. With increasingly dubious financial health and a large share of resources devoted to interest payments, the United States is sending the opposite message, a message of weakness. Yet Congress has repeatedly chosen to ignore the deficit, raise the debt ceiling, fund foreign wars we can't afford--just put it on our tab. That is what will happen today. They will vote on my budget to balance within 5 years, but there won't be enough votes. They will go merrily along with no budget, but they will also go merrily along at a spending clip that will borrow $2 trillion. And it will be all of the Democrats and about half of the Republicans who will go along with continuing to spend at this clip. Since entering the Senate, I have introduced several proposals to balance the budget. In 2017, I introduced a budget that would have simply frozen spending for 5 years. And it balanced because, as the economy grew and revenue grew, you didn't even have to cut spending. All you had to do was agree not to spend more than you spent last year. Most American people would tolerate that. But not in Washington, no. Republicans and Democrats said: No way will we ever freeze spending. What does a business do when they are short of money? They freeze spending. They downsize. They do whatever it takes to stay afloat so they can make their payments. But not in Washington. So they didn't pass my budget in 2017 to freeze spending. They kept doing the same: borrow and spend, borrow and spend. In 2018, I offered another plan to balance the budget. But by this time, a spending freeze no longer balanced it in 5 years because the spending had continued to increase. So I offered a one penny plan, cut 1 percent across the board. You can probably just cut waste and malfeasance and cut 1 percent. Cut 1 percent across the board, and it would still balance. That was the penny plan in 2018. But as things have gotten worse, as we got to the craziness of the COVID hysteria, where, once again, Republicans and Democrats shut the economy down and then said: Hey, you don't have to suffer. You don't have to work. We will just send you a check. This was one of the worst decisions that had been made in recent history: no work, free checks. It was all borrowed. So the spending grew at an alarming rate through the COVID years, through the Trump administration. And then we finally got beyond the urgency of it--people were no longer dying in significant numbers--and the Biden administration said that we are going to pave every road in the land, and we are going to borrow more money. So we borrowed $8 trillion under Trump. We borrowed another $8 trillion under Biden. And now you can't balance the budget with freezing spending over 5 years. You can't balance the budget with cutting one penny; you actually have to cut six pennies. You have to do a 6-percent cut over 5 years to balance the budget. Even the Biden-Harris administration's own Treasury has admitted that the current path is unsustainable. The math is clear. And I urge my colleagues, do not get in an argument with math. You will lose. It is plainly wrong to stick our children and our grandchildren with the bill for our reckless spending. Thankfully, America is still home to the world's most dynamic economy and resilient individuals. With revenue still expected to rise in the next 10 years, we are not beyond hope. The six penny plan that I am producing and introducing today will create conditions for growth and avert economic ruin. Right now, our interest payments eat away at our funds that are available for defense spending, and the budget leaves no room for emergencies. Our current trajectory weakens our national security and drains productivity from the economy. History will remember those who had the courage to make the hard choices now and who chose to leave their children with less of the burden. For just six pennies on the dollar, we can reverse this dismal trajectory. In just 5 years, we can restore trust in the U.S. dollar, the U.S. economy, and walk the U.S. Government off the fiscal cliff. Vote yes on this plan. Vote yes on restoring fiscal sanity. Vote yes on securing a future for our country.

Mr. PAUL. Mr. President, it has been proposed that there is no place to cut, that all of this spending is being used in such a noble fashion. I would propose that there are a couple of areas we might all agree on. We spend about $1 million studying Japanese quail to see if they are more sexually promiscuous on cocaine. Hmm. It seems like we could have just polled the audience on that one. It seems pretty clear. But we can't even cut things like that--$1 million studying Japanese quail on cocaine to see if they are more sexually promiscuous. We spend $2 million studying whether, when you go to Luby's and you go to the cafeteria and someone sneezes in front of you on the food, you are more or less likely to take that food. Could we not cut that? We spend about three-quarters of a million dollars studying selfies. If you take a selfie of yourself smiling and look at it later in the day, does it make you happy? One of my favorites comes from 40 or 50 years ago, but the organization still exists and still keeps getting more money. This was from a conservative Democrat. This was a long time ago when they existed. William Proxmire used to do the Golden Fleece Award. One of his favorites was, they wanted to determine which made you more aggressive--tequila or gin--so they got a group of fish, and they fed a group of fish gin, and then they fed the other group of fish tequila. I scratch my head and say: Well, gosh, everybody knows, right? It has to be tequila. So, I mean, the thing is, is there anyplace to cut? Sure, there is. Most of these things come from the National Science Foundation. I have been harping on them for years. Do you know what they did last year? Every Democrat and half of my Republicans, who are our fellow travelers, doubled the amount of money they give to the National Science Foundation. So when they say, ``Oh, well, that ludicrous thing? I would cut that,'' well, they are not going to cut it if you give them twice as much money. So there are lots of ways. There is lots of fat. There are improper payments to the tune of billions and billions of dollars. They write a check to the wrong person. They write a check to dead people. I came to the floor and tried to get unanimous consent to quit sending checks to dead people. When we had the pandemic and they sent all the free checks, a lot of them went to dead people, for goodness' sake. Do we ever cut any of the spending? Is there ever any remote slowdown in the spending? Every year, it goes up because they care about people, and they want to give you free stuff, but it is not free. There is going to be a $2 trillion deficit, and you are going to pay for it through inflation. There is no mystery to inflation. The Federal Reserve buys our debt. When they do and the new money enters the circulation, it dilutes the value of the currency. Instead, what do you hear from the other side? Oh, the grocery store owners are greedy. We must put price controls on. Well, they should remember the story from the Soviet bloc countries. A man goes into the store, and he says: Are you the store that doesn't have any butter? The guy behind the counter says: No. We are the store that doesn't have any toilet paper. That was an old joke of the Soviet bloc countries. That is what you get with price controls. That is what you get when you misunderstand what causes inflation. That is what you get when you want to pattern yourself after the phenomenon of disaster which is Venezuela. So what I am asking is, we should spend what comes in. It is what every American family does. It is what most States do. It is what most cities do and what most counties do--spend what comes in--even over half of the European Union. We think of them as socialist countries, and some border on it. But, guess what, they spend what comes in. Half of the European Union balances their annual budget. They are destroying this country by giving you free stuff. The stuff they are giving you is not free. There is no free lunch. You can't have free college. Somebody has to pay for it. There is no money up here. They are not giving you somebody else's money. They are not even taxing the rich. They are just borrowing it. It is all borrowed. They borrow to send it to Ukraine. They borrow to give it to you for free school. They will give you free cars. They will give you free houses. None of it is free. It is what causes inflation. When you go to the grocery store, think of these people masquerading as Santa Claus. They are the ones who have caused the price of your steak to double, the price of milk to go up, the price of gas to go up. It is not the greedy grocery store owner; it is the shrinking dollar and the politicians masquerading as Santa Claus who are causing this economic havoc and ruin. I recommend a ``yes'' vote on the only budget that will be presented this year because both parties have abdicated their roles. My budget balances it in 5 years. It is what we should do for the strength of America.

Mr. PAUL

Mr. PAUL. Mr. President, reserving the right to object, the Foreign Agents Registration Act was enacted in 1938 and requires individuals working on behalf of foreign governments to disclose their relationships and activities. Violations of the law are subject to criminal and civil penalties. Generally, a person who willfully violates these regulations may face up to 5 years in prison and a $10,000 fine. Now, many thought leaders have written about the overcriminalization of regulations, the fact that we add criminal penalties to people with paper violations. Ed Meese has written about this extensively. Justice Neil Gorsuch has written a new book, ``Over Ruled,'' talking about so many regulation crimes, paperwork crimes, having criminal penalties. A 2016 inspector general audit reported that, historically, the Department of Justice's practice has been to pursue voluntary compliance rather than the prosecution of agents who failed to register under the act. More recently, though, the Department of Justice has signaled that it is shifting from treating these violations as an administrative obligation to one that is increasingly an enforcement priority. In 2022, DOJ reported that it had charged a record number of criminal cases for this regulatory breach. In other words, what was once considered a mistake that could be rectified simply by encouraging voluntary compliance is now a weapon that can be used to silence dissent by threatening individuals with prison time. Just 2 weeks ago, four members of the African People's Socialist Party, two of whom are 82 and 78 years old, were convicted of conspiracy to violate a law similar to FARA by acting as agents of Russia. The Department of Justice press release states that the defendants ``face a maximum penalty of five years in prison.'' And what had they done to potentially lose their liberty? The specific acts they were accused of included attending an international conference in Russia, publishing a Petition to the United Nations on the Crime of Genocide Against the African People in the United States of America, accepting financial support for a speaking tour to discuss reparations, and speaking in support of the Russian Government. The African People's Socialist Party was founded in 1972. For decades, the party has criticized the United States and maintained the government owes trillions of dollars in reparations for the crime of genocide against Black Americans. While I don't agree with any of their policy statements or any of the things they are for, I really don't wish to put them in prison. Highlighting the disturbing nature of DOJ's prosecution of this minuscule fringe group, Patrick Eddington, of the Cato Institute, writes that the party ``and its related political movement can only be described as fringe, bit players on the American political scene whose previous statements and stances already mirrored the Kremlin's line'' for decades. Eddington continues: ``It makes one wonder why the FBI targeted such marginal groups with little to no impact on the broader political process, and whether an unstated goal of'' these DOJ raids and imprisoning people ``was to put the entire domestic political advocacy community on notice that a domestic group with foreign connections is considered fair game for FBI scrutiny even if legitimate First Amendment activity is involved.'' According to an article in The Nation magazine, ``Since its initial enactment into law, the DOJ has invoked FARA,'' the statute at hand, ``to stigmatize and criminalize political advocacy that is contrary to the interests of the US government. Early illustrative examples include the 1951 indictment of W.E.B. Du Bois, who was prosecuted as an agent of the Soviet Union for having promoted and circulated the Stockholm Appeal, calling for a ban on nuclear weapons.'' You can see how this gathers up political speech. You don't have to agree with the speech. But if the speech happens to represent the viewpoint of another country, the speech may be stifled and you may be arrested for it. I understand the Senate will be asked to pass unanimously two bills today that would allow the DOJ to retroactively require this registration or this paperwork and another that would, effectively, write an enemies list into law. Both give the DOJ prosecutors greater ability to selectively threaten disfavored groups by prosecuting activities that are otherwise protected by the First Amendment. Yet these bills have not been marked up by the committee of jurisdiction, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. At the very least, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, of which I am a member, should consider these bills before being rushed into passage. Therefore, I object.

Mr. PAUL

Mr. PAUL. As we have been discussing, the Veterans' Affairs is out of money. Now, this is not something that was unpredictable. I predicted this a year or two ago when we expanded benefits. I think it is the priority and it is the responsibility of America to take care of its veterans, but we still have to think about what we are doing. We can't say: Well, every veteran should have a Corvette and $200,000 a year because we don't have the money for that. So we try to link benefits to something we can afford and something within reason related to their service. When the PACT Act was passed, though, there were those of us saying: Hmm, if you allow something like high blood pressure to be associated with military service, you may have a problem. I am 61 years old. Sixty percent of people over 60 have hypertension. You think you might get too many people applying for things if you allow really common conditions like hypertension to be connected to these benefits. What we were talking about were burn pits. And burn pits you can convince me--and they have--that inhaling things from burn pits might damage your lungs, and you might have respiratory diseases or lung cancers. But saying hypertension is related to this allows Pandora's box, and now we have millions of people flooding through the doors to get benefits, and they are out of money. This is typical of Washington. This year, we will spend $6 trillion, and we will bring in 4. No American family can do that, no State does that, no city does that, no county does that. Washington's fiscal recklessness is putting the American dream out of reach for millions of Americans. Historically high rates of inflation from this debt have made every American poorer. As families across the country struggle to put food on the table, Washington seems content to spend money without regard to the consequences. But sometimes the consequences are too shameful to ignore. Congressional spending and mismanagement at the Department of Veterans' Affairs are the latest examples, with both resulting in a nearly $3 billion shortfall, threatening the benefits of millions of veterans. Our veterans shouldn't have to pay the cost for the Federal Government's incompetence. This is why I ask the Senate to adopt my amendment today. My amendment would just simply offset the new money they need for the Veterans' Affairs that they didn't calculate well and didn't appropriate by taking it from somewhere else in the budget. To me, it seems eminently reasonable. Rather than borrow more money and put ourselves further into debt--we have a $35 trillion debt--why don't we find something in the budget maybe that is not an emergency, take the money from there, and pay for the veterans benefits? My amendment would ensure the veterans receive their benefits without adding to the national debt. My amendment is simple. It pays for the veterans benefits by rescinding $2.9 billion in Department of Energy loan guarantees. The American taxpayer should not be asked to subsidize companies with vast resources, often multimillion-dollar owners, that are for this green energy that we are going to subsidize. Well, which is more important, subsidizing millionaire owners of green energy or paying for veterans' benefits? Why not take one to pay for the other? Unsurprisingly, these loans, these green loans that are out there, these gambles that have been taken by the Department of Energy, have come at an exorbitant cost. A 2015 GAO study revealed the extent of the Department of Energy's loan program failures. The report lists that five companies defaulted on similar Department of Energy loans, including Solyndra, Fisker, Abound Solar, Beacon Power, and Vehicle Production Group, costing the taxpayers $807 million. So these loans are not without risks. We cut these loans, we cut our risk, and we shift the money over to veterans. I think it is a pretty easy thing. It could be done in a few minutes. But if you will watch, if you will watch the vote, my guess is that nobody from the other side of the aisle will vote to transfer the money over to the veterans. They will just say: Borrow it, put it on my tab. Well, that is why you go to the grocery store and a steak costs $20 at the grocery store; this is why gasoline costs are up; this is why all your prices are up; this is why home prices are doubling, because they are diminishing the value of the dollar with all the borrowing. So today they will add another $3 billion. They don't care. They think money grows on trees. Here it is, $3 billion, take it. We care about the veterans, but we don't give a damn about the debt. You can care about both. I am for shifting money. Let's don't increase the debt today. Let's take $3 billion that would go to millionaires who own these companies and shift it over to the veterans. Pretty simple. How could anybody vote against it? But watch the vote. Everyone on the other side of the aisle is going to vote to borrow the money rather than pay for it by shifting the money. The VA shortfall was very foreseeable just as the failure of the DOE loans. The VA has been overwhelmed, receiving more than 2.4 million claims in 2023--the most ever, 39 percent higher. I warned them, when you pass this, when you allow hypertension to be associated with disability, you are opening Pandora's box, because everybody has got hypertension. You may recall, I stood here on the Senate floor and warned that the PACT Act would put veterans benefits at risk. Why? Because there truly are veterans that were damaged by burn pits. They inhaled the smoke, and they have chronic asthma, emphysema or cancer. But those deserving people are having the money taken by people who have high blood pressure. Everybody's got high blood pressure. So if you put them in there, what you are doing is stealing the benefits from the truly--the people who have lung damage from breathing in these fumes. It is always about, Oh, we care about everybody. Everybody should get money. It is free. No problem. We will just borrow it. Instead of saying: Why don't we try to conserve the resources for those who actually were injured by the burn pits? Instead, it is like: Oh, you got high blood pressure? Sign up. Come on down. We will get you some money. The PACT Act created a presumption of service connection for hypertension. The CDC estimates 116 million Americans have hypertension: 50 percent of men, 44 percent of women. Over 60 percent of all people have hypertension. If you include hypertension as a trigger for benefits, it broadens the category of recipients so much that it has contributed to the depletion of the funds. So instead of asking why we are short $3 billion--no one is asking why we are short. They are just, Put it on my tab. Put it on the Nation's tab. Borrow more money. Why don't we find out what the problem is? Why are we short on money? Because they decided to include hypertension as a trigger for disability. Because of Congress's inability to make difficult decisions, precious resources that ought to go to veterans exposed to toxic substances are at risk of going up in smoke. They are at risk of being diverted to people who weren't injured by the burn pits. Congress must take its oversight responsibility seriously, hold the VA accountable for fiscal mismanagement and corruption. In fiscal year 2023, the VA issued 3 billion in improper payments. So we have Veterans Affairs $3 billion short of money, but we found out they gave $3 billion to the wrong people. They made a mistake of issuing checks to the wrong people for $3 billion. Why wouldn't we ask the VA: Hey, we know you are short of money, but guess what. You have got to quit sending the money to the wrong people. Why wouldn't the people who are sending the money to the wrong people be punished, reassigned? Maybe they shouldn't work for the VA if they aren't competent enough to get the money to the people who are the right people. Over the past 3 years, it is estimated the VA has had $10 billion in improper payments. In May 2024, the VA's inspector general reported that the Department improperly awarded over $10 million in incentives to its own senior executives. So it has been determined by the inspector general that the VA paid their own executives $10 million in bonuses that shouldn't have been given to the executives, while the executives were overseeing $3 billion that went to the wrong people. There are resources that could have been devoted--these resources that were wasted and squandered could have been devoted to veterans, to their benefits. Instead, the VA shamefully squandered them. It is high time that the Members of this body face the incontrovertible fact that Congress's reckless spending has awful consequences. We have seen it in the form of inflation. This is what is happening to Americans. It is what is making all of us poor. And now we see that overspending threatens the benefits that were promised to veterans. We must use these failures as a warning. We must get serious about our spending and oversight responsibilities. I encourage my colleagues to vote for my amendment as a first step to ensuring our veterans receive the care they deserve. Amendment No. 3289

Mr. PAUL. Mr. President, I call up my amendment No. 3289 and ask that it be reported by number.

Mr. PAUL. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that there be 2 minutes of debate, equally divided, prior to each vote.

Mr. PAUL. Mr. President, this amendment is simply about paying for veterans' benefits. It doesn't stop veterans' benefits. It actually pays for them by moving money from wasteful programs over to Veterans Affairs to pay for their benefits. It does this so we don't add to the debt. I mean, our veterans fought for our country, our national security. Our biggest threat to our national security now is our debt. I think our veterans would want us to do this in a responsible manner. This amendment makes the veterans' benefits paid for by taking money elsewhere in the budget. It is a responsible way to go. Vote on Amendment No. 3289