Rand Paul

Mr. PAUL

Mr. PAUL. Mr. President, I rise today in support of the balanced budget amendment. In fact, it is beyond me to imagine how anybody in this body could oppose a balanced budget amendment. I ran my election last year primarily on this fact--that government spending was out of control and the debt was consuming our country and that we needed new and more serious rules to bring the budget under control. We have tried in the past. This body passed Gramm-Rudman-Hollings with bipartisan support in the 1990s and immediately began to evade it. This body passed pay as you go and then proceeded to disobey their own rules 700 times. And we wonder why 9 percent of the people approve of Congress? It is because we cannot even obey our own rules. So we need new rules. We need a balanced budget amendment that would be an amendment to the Constitution because we do not adhere to the rules we pass. This body is literally out of control. Now, the other side says: Trust us. Trust us. We can balance the budget. The other side hasn't passed a budget this year or last year-- not just a balanced budget, the other side can't pass any budget. So I think we need new and stronger rules to force us to do what is right, do what every American family has to do; that is, balance their family budget. A nation is no different. A nation has a printing press and can run deficits for longer, but there are ramifications. The enormous debt we are accumulating as a country--we are borrowing $40,000 every second. During the time of my 5-minute speech, we will have borrowed millions of dollars. So there are ramifications. We have to pay for our debt in some way. We can either tax people or we can borrow--we are at the limits of both--or we can simply print the money. But as we print money to pay for our debt, we destroy the value of the existing currency. So those who have savings, those who are on fixed incomes--senior citizens, the working class--those who use every penny of their paycheck to pay for their needs are being robbed on a daily basis by inflation. Inflation is the end result of debt. If we look at the approval of Congress being 9 percent, and we contrast that with how much of the public is for a balanced budget, 75 percent of the public--Republicans, Democrats, and Independents--would vote in favor of a balanced budget amendment. Yet this body is out of touch because we can't get anybody from the other side even to talk to us about a balanced budget amendment. We worked for months to see what it would take to make one acceptable to the other side, and we got nowhere. We need to balance our budget because the debt is a threat to our country. This is not just me saying this. The Chairman of the Federal Reserve has said our debt is unsustainable. Admiral Mullen, part of this administration, has said our debt is the greatest threat to our national security. Erskine Bowles, who led the deficit commission and has been known as a Democrat, said we are approaching the most predictable crisis in our history, and it will be a debt crisis. All throughout Europe there is a debt crisis: Italy is having trouble paying its debt; Greece is underwater; Portugal, Spain, and Ireland are all tenuously holding on and trying to pay their debts. That European crisis, that destruction of the Euro, is coming this way. Our debt now equals our economy. Senator Hatch mentioned we have a $15 trillion debt and a $15 trillion economy. Many economists say when our debt approaches 100 percent of GDP--where ours is now--we are losing 1 million jobs a year. So this is having a drain on the here and now. It is not just that this debt is being passed on to our kids and grandkids. The debt is affecting jobs. When I talk to college kids, I say: The chance of you getting a job depends on what we do with the debt. If we continue to finance our spending through debt, you will not have a job. You will have less likelihood of getting a job. Now, some say it would be too hard to balance the budget. It is just too far out of whack. We can't do it. It is pretty bad. We are borrowing 40 cents on every dollar. If we look at the spending, borrowing 40 cents on every dollar is remarkable. When we look at our budget, the revenue coming in is being consumed by entitlements and interest. Everything else we spend--national defense, roads, everything else--the rest of the 40 percent of the budget is being borrowed. It is out of control. Can you imagine any business or any family in this country borrowing 40 percent every year, year after year after year? It can't be done. There are ramifications and a day of reckoning is coming. Some say: How could we ever balance our budget? I will tell you how. If we cut 1 percent of spending--this is called the penny plan--cut one penny out of every dollar in Federal spending for 6 years and freeze spending for 2 years, the budget will balance in 8 years. If we were to pass a balanced budget amendment and send it to the States, there is a 5-year window in the amendment, plus it takes a couple of years to pass, so it would be about 8 years. So we could balance the budget in 8 years simply by cutting one penny out of every dollar. One might ask: How could that be, when they are cutting trillions of dollars and not balancing the budget? The reason is, when they talk about cutting spending around here, they are always talking about cutting proposed increases in spending. They are never talking about real cuts in spending. What I am talking about is a real cut. We spend $3.8 trillion in our budget this year. One percent is $28 billion. Next year, we would spend $3.8 trillion minus $38 billion. A real cut of 1 percent each year for 6 years balances our budget in 8 years. It could happen, but it is going to take some resolve. People need to understand the alternative. The alternative, if we do nothing, is that our debt is going to consume us as a nation. We have been warning about this for some time. Senator Hatch has been active. The last time we voted on this was in 1997. Fourteen years later we have had a significant revolution at the polls, and people are anxious to say: Do something, protect us from this mountain of debt. Yet there is still great resistance in this body. I would say people in this body who vote against the balanced budget amendment do so at their own peril and do it against the will of the people. If they think it is so important to continue to accumulate debt, and that debt is fine, they should vote against this amendment. But they are thumbing their nose at the people. They are thumbing their nose at the American people who are very worried about our Republic and very worried about this debt. So, Mr. President, I rise today in support of the balanced budget amendment and encourage my colleagues to give serious thought to voting for this amendment.

Mr. PAUL

Mr. PAUL. People maintain that they are for jobs, for getting the economy growing again. If we were to pass a balanced budget amendment and send it to the States this year, it would create more jobs and create a better psychology than we have had in this country in decades. I think we would see a rise in the stock market like we have never seen before if we said to Wall Street and said to investors worldwide: We are going to balance our budget; we are not going to spend more than we take in. I think we would see an economic recovery begin as we have never seen in this country. I think we would see millions of jobs created. That is why we have to do this. That is what the American people want. What amazes me about this debate is we are going to have this debate and have this vote and the vast majority of the other side said they will not vote for a balanced budget amendment. I say take that home. Tell your people at home that you are opposed to balancing the budget, and let's run on that. Let's see who wins the elections in the future because our country's future depends on balancing our budget and controlling the debt. I hope we do not wake up when it is too late.

Mr. PAUL. I think Congress has failed. We have not passed a budget in 2 years, much less a balanced budget. We cannot even pass a budget under the normal procedures, and we are showing no signs of being able to balance our own budget. They say the American public, when we ask them are they for a balanced budget, 70 to 75 percent of the people are for it-- Republicans, Democrats, and Independents. Congress currently has about a 10-percent approval rating. My thought is maybe our approval rating is so low because we are not listening to what the people want. The people want us to balance our budget. They want us to do the responsible thing. But they also do not want to say: Oh, Social Security, we are going to put that off to the side. They want the Social Security fund to be sound too. What are we doing right now? We are reducing the funding to Social Security. We are doing exactly the things we should not be doing. So it is important, as my colleague said, that the balanced budget amendment include all spending, and we need to balance our budget.

Mr. PAUL. The big driving force here is the entitlements. If we look at the revenue coming into the government, it is all being spent on entitlements and interest. Forty percent of every dollar is borrowed, but that means we have to borrow all the money for national defense, for our roads, all the rest of government. Forty percent of every dollar, $40,000 a second, is being borrowed. Why don't we come to an agreement? I have been asking many people on the other side that, and they say we will not fix entitlements until we have a $1 trillion tax increase. If that is the starting point, we are never going to fix entitlements because many of us think raising taxes is a mistake, in the middle of a recession, and we think more money left in the private sector would be better spent for jobs. We have the balanced budget debate as part of this debate on how to reduce spending on the entitlement programs because they consume 60 percent of the budget. But there is this unwillingness up here. I think people would like us to find solutions. When I go home to my State, it doesn't matter whether they are a Republican or Democrat or Independent; they want us to fix the entitlement programs. They don't want it to be dependent on increasing taxes on everyone also.

Mr. PAUL. In the last year, I spoke before my State legislature to a joint session of the House and Senate, and there was overwhelming support for a balanced budget amendment. I think there is actually a movement out there to do it if we do not do it. There is so much feeling among the public that this enormous debt is hurting us. When I go home and talk to people, I say: Look, the people the debt hurts the worst are those on fixed incomes, senior citizens, and those in the working class. Those are the people who are being hurt by this debt because it causes rising prices. As we print the new money, those people are hurt every time they go buy gas at the pump, every time they go to the grocery store. The rising prices are hurting senior citizens and the working class. The only way we are going to fix it is to have rules that must be obeyed.

Mr. PAUL. The problem is, in the past we have had rules--as the Senator mentioned, Gramm-Rudman-Hollings, pay as you go. I think pay as you go, which was passed in the late 1990s, was broken 700 times. There doesn't seem to be the spine or will power here to say no. Everybody wants something from government, but they do not realize that by getting things from government we do not pay for has ramifications. Admiral Mullens said last year that the biggest threat to our national security right now is our debt. Erskine Bowles, head of the Debt Commission, said the most predictable crisis in our history is going to be a debt crisis. For those on the other side who will oppose a balanced budget, they will need to explain to the American people when chaotic situations come and we are having trouble paying for those things that come from government, when the value of the money is destroyed and when prices are rising dramatically, they will have to explain to the American people why they thought it was not necessary to balance the budget. I have seen no willpower to attack entitlements. There are simple ways. We could gradually raise the age of the entitlement eligibility and means test the benefits. We could fix Social Security tomorrow. We could fix Medicare tomorrow. But the other side is unwilling to talk about entitlement reform unless--they believe they are owed some obligation of raising taxes by $1 trillion. That would be a disaster for the economy, and it is beyond me why the other side will not say let's fix Social Security. What would it take to fix Social Security? What would it take to fix Medicare? I think we could fix all of these problems, but I do not think the dialog is there. I have been trying to ask questions to the other side for months now, and we are not getting anywhere.

Mr. PAUL. I think because so much of government spending is considered to be mandatory, so it just keeps enlarging and expanding. Also, because people have great big hearts and they want to help everyone, but they do not realize the ramifications of accumulating such a massive debt. As we accumulate this debt there are ramifications. There are higher prices and the threat of an economic collapse. Greece is going under. Italy is behind them. Portugal, Spain--they are struggling under this burden of debt. They say when a country's debt equals its economy, when it is about 100 percent of its gross domestic product, it is losing 1 million jobs a year. Our debt is stealing American jobs, it is making us weaker as a country, making us vulnerable, making our national security vulnerable. But we have to do something. There is no evidence in this body we can even pass a budget, much less a balanced budget. I think everything about this body shows a failure to be fiscally responsible and we need stronger rules.

Mr. PAUL

Mr. PAUL. I object. I ask for the yeas and nays.

Mr. PAUL

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

Mr. PAUL

Mr. PAUL. With regard to releasing prisoners, I am not asking that we release them. I think there probably have been some mistakes with people who have been let go. What I am asking only is for due process, and we released some of those people without any kind of process and a flawed process. So we did make a mistake. Due process does not mean, and believing in the process does not mean necessarily that we would release these people. Due process often convicts. Jose Padilla was given 17 years in prison with due process. So I do not think it necessarily follows that I am arguing for releasing prisoners. I am simply arguing that people, particularly American citizens in the United States, not be sent to a foreign prison without due process.

Mr. PAUL. My question would be, under the provisions, would it be possible that an American citizen then could be declared an enemy combatant and sent to Guantanamo Bay and detained indefinitely?

Mr. PAUL. Mr. President, James Madison, the father of the Constitution, warned: The means of defense against foreign danger historically have become instruments of tyranny at home. Abraham Lincoln had similar thoughts saying: America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter, and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves. During war there has always been a struggle to preserve constitutional liberties. During the Civil War, the right of habeas corpus was suspended. Newspapers were closed down. Fortunately, these rights were restored after the war. The discussion now to suspend certain rights of due process is especially worrisome given that we are engaged in a war that appears to have no end. Rights given up now cannot be expected to return. So we do well to contemplate the diminishment of due process knowing that these rights we give up now may never be restored. My well- intentioned colleagues' admonitions in defending provisions of this Defense bill say we should give up certain rights: the right to due process. Their legislation would arm the military with the authority to detain indefinitely, without due process or trial, people suspected of association with terrorism. These would include American citizens apprehended on American soil. I want to repeat that. We are talking about people who are merely suspected of terrorism or suspected of committing a crime and have been judged by no court. We are talking about American citizens who could be taken from the United States and sent to a camp at Guantanamo Bay and held indefinitely. This should be alarming to everyone watching this proceeding today because it puts every single American citizen at risk. There is one thing and one thing only that is protecting American citizens, and that is our Constitution, the checks we put on government power. Should we err today and remove some of the most important checks on State power in the name of fighting terrorism, well, then, the terrorists have won. Detaining citizens without a court trial is not American. In fact, this alarming arbitrary power is reminiscent of what Egypt did with its permanent emergency law. This permanent emergency law allowed them to detain their own citizens without a court trial. Egyptians became so alarmed at that last spring that they overthrew their government. Recently, Justice Scalia affirmed this idea in his dissent in the Hamdi case saying: Where the government accuses a citizen of waging war against it, our constitutional tradition has been to prosecute him in Federal court for treason or another crime. Scalia concluded by saying: The very core of liberty secured by our Anglo Saxon system of separated powers has been freedom from indefinite imprisonment at the will of the Executive. Justice Scalia was, as he often does, following the wisdom of our Founding Fathers. As Franklin wisely warned: These who give up their liberty for security may wind up with neither. Really, what security does this indefinite detention of Americans give us? The first and flawed premise, both here and in the badly misnamed PATRIOT Act, is that our pre-9/11 police powers were insufficient to stop terrorism. This is simply not borne out by the facts. Congress long ago made it a crime to provide or conspire to provide material assistance to al-Qaida or other foreign terrorist organizations. Material assistance includes virtually anything of value: legal, political advice, education, books, newspapers, lodging, or otherwise. The Supreme Court sustained the constitutionality of this sweeping prohibition. We have laws on the books that can prosecute terrorists before they commit acts of terrorism. Al-Qaida adherents may be detained, prosecuted, and convicted for conspiring to violate the material assistance prohibition. In fact, we have already done this. Jose Padilla, for instance, was convicted and sentenced to 17 years in prison for conspiring to provide material assistance to al-Qaida. The criminal law does require and can prevent crimes from occurring before they do occur. Indeed, conspiracy laws and prosecutions in civilian courts have been routinely invoked after 9/11 to thwart embryonic international terrorism. In fact, in the Bush administration, Michael Chertoff, then head of the Justice Department's Criminal Division and later Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, testified shortly after 9/11. He underscored: The history of this government in prosecuting terrorists in domestic courts has been one of unmitigated success, and one in which the judges have done a superb job of managing the courtroom and not compromising our concerns about security and our concerns about classified information. We can prosecute terrorists in our courts, and have done so. It is the wonderful thing about our country, that even with the most despicable criminal, murderer, rapist, or terrorist our court systems do work. We can have constitutional liberty and prosecute terrorists. There is no evidence that the criminal justice procedures have frustrated intelligence collection about international terrorism. Suspected terrorist have repeatedly waived both the right to an attorney and the right to silence. Additionally, Miranda warnings are not required at all when the purpose of the interrogation is public safety. The authors of this bill errantly maintain that the bill would not enlarge the universe of detainees, people held indefinitely. I believe this is simply not the case. The current authorization for the use of military force confines the universe to persons implicated in 9/11 or who harbored those who were. This new detainee provision will expand the universe to include any person said to be part of or substantially supportive of al-Qaida or the Taliban. But, remember, this is not someone who has been concluded at trial to be part of al-Qaida. This is someone who is suspected. If someone is a suspect in our country they are usually accorded due process. They go to court. They are not automatically guilty. They are accused of a crime. But now we are saying someone accused of a crime can be taken from American soil. An American citizen accused of a crime, a suspect of a crime, could be taken to Guantanamo Bay. These terms are dangerously vague. More than a decade after 9/11 the military has been unable to define the earmarks of membership in or affiliation to either al-Qaida or other terrorist organizations. It is an accusation and sometimes difficult to prove. Some say to prevent another 9/11 attack we must fight terrorism with a war mentality and not treat potential attackers as criminals. For combatants captured on the battlefield, I agree. But these are people captured or detained in America, American citizens. Mr. President, 9/11 did not succeed because we granted terrorists due process. In fact, 9/ 11 did not succeed because al-Qaida was so formidable but because of human error. The Defense Department withheld intelligence from the FBI. No warrants were denied. The warrants were not even requested. The FBI failed to act on repeated pleas from its field agents who were in possession of a laptop that may well have had information that may well have prevented 9/11. But no judge ever turned down a warrant. Our criminal system did not fail. No one ever asked for a warrant to look at Moussaoui's computer in August, a month before 9/11. These are not failures of our law. These are not failures of our Constitution. These are not reasons we should scrap our Constitution and simply send people accused of terrorism to Guantanamo Bay--American citizens. These are failures of imperfect men and women in bloated bureaucracies. No amount of liberty sacrificed at the altar of the state will ever change that. A full accounting of our human failures by the 9/11 Commission has proven that enhanced cooperation between law enforcement and the intelligence community, not military action or not giving up our liberty at home, is the key to thwarting international terrorism. We should not have to sacrifice our liberty to be safe. We cannot allow the rules to change to fit the whims of those in power. The rules, the binding chains of the Constitution, were written so it did not matter who was in power. In fact, they were written to protect us and our rights from those who hold power with good intentions. We are not governed by saints or angels. Occasionally, we will elect people, and there have been times in history when those who come into power are not angels. That is why we have laws and rules that restrain what the government can do. That is why we have laws that protect us and say we are innocent until proven guilty. That is why we have laws that say we should have a trial before a judge and a jury of our peers before we are sent off to some prison indefinitely. Finally, the detainee provisions of the Defense authorization bill do another grave harm to freedom. They imply perpetual war for the first time in the history of the United States. No benchmarks are established that would ever terminate the conflict with al-Qaida, the Taliban, or other foreign terrorist organizations. In fact, this bill explicitly says that no part of this bill is to imply any restriction on the authorization of force. When will the wars ever end? When will these provisions end? No congressional view is allowed or imagined. No victory is defined. No peace is possible if victory is made impossible by definition. To disavow the idea that the exclusive congressional power to declare war somehow allows the President to continue war forever, at whim, I will offer an amendment to this bill that will deauthorize the war in Iraq. We are bringing the troops home in January. Is there any reason why we should have an open-ended commitment to war in Iraq when the war is ending? If we need to go to war in Iraq again, we should debate on it and vote on it. It is an important enough matter that we should not have an open-ended commitment to the war in Iraq. The use of military force must begin in Congress. Our Founding Fathers separated those powers and said Congress has the power to declare war, and it is a precious and important power. We should not give that up to the President. We should not allow the President to unilaterally engage in war. Congress should not be ignored or be an afterthought in these matters and must reclaim its constitutional duties. These are important points of fact. Know good and well that someday there could be a government in power that is shipping its citizens off for disagreements. There are laws on the books now that characterize who might be a terrorist: someone missing fingers on their hands is a suspect according to the Department of Justice, someone who has guns, someone who has ammunition that is weatherproofed, someone who has more than 7 days of food in their house can be considered a potential terrorist. If someone is suspected by these activities, do we want the government to have the ability to send them to Guantanamo Bay for indefinite detention? A suspect? We are not talking about someone who has been tried and found guilty; we are talking about someone suspected of activities. But some of the things that make us suspicious of terrorism are having more than 7 days' worth of food, missing fingers on their hand, having weatherproofed ammunition, having several guns at their house. Is that enough? Are we willing to sacrifice our freedom for liberty? I would argue that we should strike these detainee provisions from this bill because we are giving up our liberty. We are giving up the constitutional right to have due process before we are sent to a prison. This is very important. I think this is a constitutional liberty we should not look at and blithely sign away to the Executive power or to the military. So I would call for support of the amendment that will strike the provisions on keeping detainees indefinitely, particularly the fact that we can now, for the first time, send American citizens to prisons abroad. I think that is a grave danger to our constitutional liberty. I advise a vote to strike those provisions from the bill. I yield the floor.

Mr. PAUL

Mr. PAUL. Mr. President, I rise in support of bringing the Iraq war to a formal end. President Obama has ordered troops home by January 1. We should rejoice at the conclusion of the war. No matter whether one favored the Iraq war or not, there is a glimmer of hope for democracy to now exist in the Middle East in Iraq. War is a hellish business and never to be desired. As the famous POW and war hero John McCain once said: ``War is wretched beyond description, and only a fool or a fraud could sentimentalize its cruel reality.'' This vote is more than symbolism. This vote is about the separation of powers. It is about whether Congress should have the power to declare war. The Constitution vested that power in Congress, and it was very important. Our Founding Fathers did not want all the power to gravitate to the Executive. They feared very much a King, and so they limited the power of the Executive. When Franklin walked out of the Constitutional Convention, a woman asked him: What have you brought us? Was it going to be a republic, a democracy, a monarchy? He said: A republic, if you can keep it. In order to keep a republic, we have to have checks and balances. But we have to obey the rule of law. Madison wrote: The Constitution supposes, what the History of all Governments demonstrates, that the Executive is the branch of power most interested in war, and most prone to it. The Constitution has, therefore, with studied care, vested the [power] to declare war in [Congress]. When we authorize the war in Iraq, we give the President the power to go to war, and the Constitution gives the power to the President to execute the war. All the infinite decisions that are made in war--most of them are made by the executive branch. But the power to declare war is Congress's. This division was given to make there be a division of powers, a separation of powers, to allow there to be a reluctance to go to war. We have this vote now to try to reclaim the authority. If we do not reclaim the authority to declare war or to authorize war, it will mean our kids or our grandkids or our great-grandkids could be sent to a war in Iraq with no debate, with no vote of Congress. We have been at war for nearly 10 years in Iraq. We are coming home. And we should rejoice at the war's end. But we need to reclaim that authority. If we leave an open-ended authority out there that says to the President--or any President; not this particular President, it could be any President--if we leave that authority out there, we basically abdicate our duty, we abdicate the role of Congress. There are supposed to be checks and balances between Congress and the President. So what I am asking is that Congress today reclaim the authority to declare war and at the same time we celebrate that this is an end to something that no one should desire. As Senator McCain has pointed out, as many have pointed out, Dwight Eisenhower pointed out the same thing: If you want to know the hellish of war, talk to someone who has been to war. But that is why this power is too important to be given to one person and to be left in the hands of one person--a President of either party. So the vote today will be about reclaiming that authority, reclaiming the authority of Congress to declare war. I would recommend that we have a vote and that the vote today be in favor of deauthorizing the war in Iraq. It is not just I who have pointed this out. The first President of the United States wrote: The Constitution vests the power of declaring war in Congress; therefore, no offensive expedition of importance can be undertaken until after they shall have deliberated upon the subject and authorized such a measure. This has been recognized by Presidents from the beginning of the history of our country. The problem is that if we do not give it up, that power is left out there, and it is a power lost to Congress. Frank Chodorov wrote: All wars come to an end, at least temporarily. But the authority acquired by the states hangs on; political power never abdicates. This is a time to reclaim that power. It is an important constitutional question. I hope those Senators will consider this seriously and consider a vote to reclaim the authority to declare war. I reserve the reminder of my time and temporarily yield the floor.

Mr. PAUL. It disappoints me that President Obama opposes a formal end to the Iraq war, but it doesn't surprise me. As a candidate, he was outspoken against the war and for ending the war: He will be bringing the troops home. But this vote in this debate is not necessarily just about bringing the troops home. This is a debate over power. The executive branch wants to keep the unlimited power to commit troops to war. This is about who holds the power. The Founding Fathers intended that Congress should hold the power. This vote is about whether we will continue to abdicate that power and give up that power to the Executive. That allows for no checks and balances. We need to have checks and balances. It is what our Founding Fathers intended. With regard to defending ourselves, there is authorization for the President to always defend the Nation using force. There is authorization for every embassy around the world to defend the embassy. That is why we have soldiers there. We have agreements with the host country that the host military is supposed to support the embassy. If that fails, we have our own soldiers. We have these agreements around the world. There is nothing that says we cannot use force. This says we are reclaiming the power to declare war, and we will not have another war with hundreds of thousands of troops without a debate. Should not the public and Congress debate it before we commit troops to war? This war is coming to a close. I suggest that we should be proud of it. I hope people will support this amendment. I yield to the Senator from Oregon.

Mr. PAUL. Mr. President, is it appropriate to call for the yeas and nays at this point?

Mr. PAUL. I ask for the yeas and nays on the amendment.

Mr. PAUL. I will yield back my time.

Mr. PAUL

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

Mr. PAUL. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to set aside the pending amendment and call up my amendment No. 1064.

Mr. PAUL. Yes.

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

Mr. PAUL. Mr. President, this amendment will call for a formal end to the war in Iraq. Our Founding Fathers intended the power to commit the Nation to war be lodged in Congress, and that is what the Constitution says. The power to declare war is one of the most important powers given to Congress, and it should remain in Congress. James Madison wrote at the beginning in the Federalist Papers that ``[t]he Constitution supposes what history demonstrates, that the Executive is the branch most prone to war . . . therefore the Constitution has with studied care vested that power [to declare war] in the Legislature.'' We are calling for a formal end to the war in Iraq as the troops come home, as the President has planned by January 1. This will reclaim the power to declare war that is vested in Congress. It allows for checks and balances and is an important milestone and an important retaining of power for Congress. So I will ask very careful deliberation of a formal end to the war in Iraq by supporting this amendment. At this time, I would like to yield the floor to Senator Merkley. Mr. McCAIN addressed the Chair.

Mr. PAUL

Mr. PAUL. Mr. President, I rise in support of the Republican jobs plan. I think it is very important that the American people know there are different visions about how we would create jobs in this country, whether the jobs should be created by the private sector or the jobs should be created by borrowing money from China, taxing us more, and then redistributing that money into government-created jobs. There are different visions in this country about how we create jobs. The one thing we know is, we need millions of jobs--not tens of thousands of jobs but millions of jobs. What I ask the President to do is to come in from the campaign trail and talk to us. I think he needs to be here, not raising money, not out fundraising for his campaign, not bashing Republicans on the campaign trail. He needs to be in Washington. He needs to be engaged with the committee, the supercommittee. He needs to be engaged with Republican counterparts. I have told the President, personally, I will work with him. I will come from the Republican side of the aisle, and we can figure out areas in which we agree. There are many aspects of the Republican jobs plan that some Democrats have said they might support: Reducing the corporate income tax, lowering the rates, and eliminating loopholes. The thing is, on the campaign trail, we are told Republicans are unwilling to eliminate loopholes for millionaires who don't pay taxes. The truth is, we are very willing. This has been offered in the supercommittee. It has been offered by our side. It is offered in the Republican jobs plan. We are willing to eliminate loopholes that make the Tax Code unfair, that allow either millionaires or corporations to pay no taxes. But we want to do it in the context of tax reform. There are a couple things historically that government has done that has created jobs. In the 1960s, President Kennedy reduced the top rate from 90 to 70. Unemployment was cut in half. In the 1980s, Reagan lowered the top rate from 70 to 50. Unemployment was cut in half. Reagan again lowered the top rate from 50 to 28, and unemployment was cut in half. Interestingly, through all these rate cuts of the top taxpayers, as we cut the rates, tax revenue didn't go down. Tax revenue has stayed about 18 percent of GDP no matter what the rates are. But what lowering the top rates does is it spawns economic activity. So I ask the President to come in from the campaign trail, to come in from his Canadian bus tour, and talk to us on the Hill--talk to us about ways we could create jobs again. We need millions of jobs. Fourteen million Americans are out of work. Two million Americans have lost their jobs since this President came into the White House. They say the definition of ``insanity'' is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result. We need conversation on Capitol Hill between Republicans and Democrats, but we also need leadership from the White House. Continuing to bash us on the campaign trail is getting us nowhere as a country. A couple things I have heard from the President as he has campaigned around the country: One, he said Republicans are too stupid to understand his plan, so he is going to break up his jobs plan and give it to us in pieces because we can't understand the whole thing. In diplomacy, they sometimes talk about the stick and the carrot. I am sure feeling the stick from the President, but I am not seeing a carrot. What we need to have is conversation where we can bridge these differences and find some common ground. We have a corporate income tax higher than anybody in the world. We keep heaping new regulations onto our businesses. We need to lower our corporate income tax. How can they compete? We worry about jobs going overseas?

Mr. PAUL

Mr. PAUL. Mr. President, I rise in support of clean air, clean water, electricity, and jobs. Interestingly, the other side hasn't read the EPA v. North Carolina opinion that says the regulations were not overturned. We are arguing for keeping in the current regulations. We are just arguing that we not be overzealous and that we not add $2 billion in new regulations on top of the current regulations. We have $2 trillion worth of regulations heaped on our economy, 14 million people out of work--2 million new people out of work since this President came into power. We cannot allow this administration to continue with its job-killing regulations. We can have a clean environment and we can have jobs. We are arguing for the existing regulations. We are arguing against placing additional burdens. We are arguing for the existing regulations. They don't seem to get it, so they make up all these numbers. All of their numbers are completely fictitious because they don't account for the current regulations that would still be in place if we don't increase these regulations. This is about whether we can have a balanced approach in our society, whether we can have a clean environment and have jobs. What I am arguing for here is some reasonableness.

Mr. PAUL

Mr. PAUL. Madam President, I rise in support of clean air, clean water, electricity, and jobs. We need to, if we are going to maintain our economy, discontinue and not overreach with job-killing regulations. We are asking for the continuation of the existing regulations. This action would allow for the continuation of the existing regulations. If we look at EPA v. North Carolina, it says remand without vacating the order. The other side claims we are for no regulations. We are asking for the continuation of the existing regulations on pollution. The rules are working, but if we keep increasing the burden, we are going to cause increased joblessness. I reserve the remainder of my time.