Rand Paul

Mr. PAUL

Mr. PAUL. I rise in opposition to the amendment. President Trump wants the national security workforce to work for our security instead of any other agenda. Federal employees already enjoy more benefits and protections than the private sector. They don't need the ability to hold national security hostage to the union agenda. In February, we learned that over 100 intelligence officers were using an official chat room to discuss obscene, pornographic, and sexually explicit topics. Tulsi Gabbard quickly fired them. If they were a union, she would not have been able to. For the security of our Nation, support President Trump's reforms and oppose this amendment. Vote on Amendment No. 1466

Mr. PAUL

Mr. PAUL. Mr. President, I call up my amendment No. 1760.

Mr. PAUL. This budget resolution proposes to raise the debt ceiling $5 trillion. There is nothing conservative--absolutely nothing conservative--about adding $5 trillion in debt. This $5 trillion increase in the debt ceiling will be the largest increase ever in the U.S. debt ceiling in one moment. It is reckless and irresponsible. President Trump and DOGE are aggressively finding things to cut, but the big spenders in Congress don't want to make these cuts permanent. If we kick the debt deadline 2 years down the road, the cuts likely will never happen. I propose that we cap the debt limit so that we take 3 months to ensure that the cuts are real, then address the debt limit alongside the new cuts. I ask for a ``yes'' vote on my amendment.

Mr. PAUL

Mr. PAUL. Mr. President, I move to proceed to legislative session.

Mr. PAUL. I ask the Senate execute the order of March 26, with respect to S.J. Res. 37.

Mr. PAUL

Mr. PAUL. ``Taxation without representation is tyranny,'' bellowed James Otis in the days and weeks and years leading up to the American Revolution. This became the rallying cry of American patriots: No taxation without representation. The American Patriots thought that a distant Parliament in England where they had no representation had no right to tax them. This was the rallying cry: ``No taxation without representation.'' Our Founding Fathers believed so strongly in this, they embodied it in our Constitution. Our Constitution doesn't allow any one man or woman to raise taxes. It must be the body of Congress. Now, this wasn't new. This was part of maybe a thousand-year tradition from Magna Carta on. In Magna Carta, it is stated: No taxation without the common counsel of the realm. Even at that time they were chafing at one man, the King, determining the taxes for the land. One hundred years before our Revolutionary War, in the English Civil War, there was a debate over parliamentary supremacy versus supremacy of the King. They did not want to pay taxes that weren't approved by the Parliament. In 1683, the New York Charter on Liberties, the beginning charter for the colony of New York stated: No taxation without representation. And after this English Civil War, the English Bill of Rights embodied: No taxation without the consent of Parliament. This principle was longstanding. It was nonnegotiable. This was what sparked the Revolution. And, yet, today we are here before the Senate because one person in our country wishes to raise taxes. Well, this is contrary to everything our country was founded upon. One person is not allowed to raise taxes. The Constitution forbids it. The Constitution was so concerned with the power of taxes--which some have said the power of taxes is the power to destroy--but our Founding Fathers were so concerned with this, that they said: No, the President will not have the power to legislate. The President will not have the power to tax. Only Congress will be able to tax the people and only by originating tax bills in the House. It was that specific. They were so mortified. They were so worried by having a monarchy. They were so worried about having all the power gravitate to the Executive, that they said: We must split the power. They based a lot of their thinking on Montesquieu. Montesquieu wrote in the 1740s--40, 50 years before our Constitution. Montesquieu wrote that when the legislative and executive powers are united in one, there can be no liberty. This is something that our Founding Fathers took to heart. They said: We must separate the powers. We must, at all cost, limit the power of the Presidency. This isn't about political party. I voted for and supported President Trump, but I don't support the rule of one person. We are set--the President is set--to have a 25-percent tax on goods coming from Canada and Mexico. This is a tax--plain and simple--on the American people. But one person can't do that. Our Founding Fathers said: No, that would be illegal for one person to raise taxes. It has to come to Congress. It has to originate in the House. This has gone on for 200- and-some-odd years. You can't simply declare an emergency and say: Well, the constitutional Republic was great, but, gosh, we have got an emergency. The times are dire. The Supreme Court has repeatedly said: There are no exemptions for emergency. There was no exemption for a pandemic. There was no exemption for emergencies. The taxation clause stands. It is an important part of the Constitution: Taxes must originate in the House. They must be voted on in Congress. No one man can raise taxes on the people. They are set to do this through a process in which an emergency has been declared. But realize this: One person declares an emergency, the President. And even if we are successful, which I think we will be successful here today--a majority will vote to say: This is wrong- headed, and the emergency should end. It would have to go to the House. But even if we were successful in the House, the President would veto it. It would take a two-thirds vote in order to stop an emergency. That is such a burden that we need to consider reforming the emergency powers and reversing this. I think a President can have times that there are emergencies and the President can declare an emergency. But it should last 30 day, at most. At the end of 30 days, the emergency would be brought to the people's House--the House of Representatives and the Senate--and we would vote to affirm or uphold the emergency. Right now, the pretense of this emergency is fentanyl. I don't discount fentanyl. I know families who have lost kids to fentanyl. But there is more fentanyl going from the United States into Canada than there is from Canada going into the United States. There is no emergency. The Canadians have actually been cooperative with us and said they will try to do even more. The problem isn't in Canada. Even if the problem is valid, even if that is something that we all agree on, you can't have a country ruled by emergency. You can't have a country without a separation of powers, without checks and balances. Madison put it this way. Madison said that we would pit ambition against ambition; that all men--and, frankly, all women--are motivated by self-interest and the self-accumulation or aggrandizement of power; and so we would limit their power by pitting ambition against ambition. We would give some of the power to the House, some to the Senate, and some to the President. There would be checks and balances in a jostling of power, but we would check and balance each other. Part of the problem we face today with this emergency, though, is that Congress has abdicated their power--not just recently, not just for this President. This is a bipartisan problem. I am a Republican. I am a supporter of Donald Trump. But this is a bipartisan problem. I don't care if the President is a Republican or a Democrat. I don't want to live under emergency rule. I don't want to live where my representatives cannot speak for me and have a check and balance on power. One person can make a mistake. And guess what: Tariffs are a terrible mistake. They don't work. They will lead to higher prices. They are a tax, and they have historically been bad for our economy. But even if this were something that was magic, and there was going to be a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, I wouldn't want to live under emergency rule. I would want to live in a constitutional republic where there are checks and balances against the excesses of both sides, right or left. If one person rules, that person could make a horrible mistake. On things so important as war, it is the same thing. We don't want a President just to go to war because a President might get angry with some country or have a vendetta. We are supposed to vote. That is why there is a declaration of war. War originates also in Congress. But we have lost so many of these things and so much of this. It is Congress's fault for giving it. Over the last 70 years, there are probably a dozen pieces of legislation where Congress said to the President: Here, take this power. Create emergencies. Put on tariffs. Negotiate for us because we are too feeble-minded to do it ourselves. But the thing is, the Constitution doesn't let us give our power away. There is something called the nondelegation clause, and it says that we are not allowed to give power away. We can't just say: Here, Mr. President, take it. In this particular case, it is even worse. The rule of law--IEEPA is the acronym for it--has never been used for tariffs before and doesn't mention the word tariff. So this isn't something that was targeted in times of need: The President can have the power to put on tariffs. It never says that. This will be an extraordinary use of something never intended to be a way to have--unilateral--one single person invoke a tax on the people. With regard to tariffs, let's be very clear. Tariffs are simply taxes. Tariffs don't punish foreign governments. They punish American families. When we tax imports, we raise the price of everything from groceries to smartphones, to washing machines, to prescription drugs. Every dollar collected in tariff revenue comes straight out of the pockets of American consumers. Conservatives used to understand that tariffs are taxes on the American people. Conservatives used to be uniformly opposed to raising taxes because we wanted the private marketplace, the private individuals to keep more of their incomes. So we were always for lower taxes. And yet now the mantra that is coming is: We want higher taxes. What happened? Did we, all of a sudden, give up all of the things we used to believe in as conservatives? I, for one, haven't. I still think more taxes is bad for the economy. More money taken out of the productive sector, the private sector, given to the government is a mistake. To those who still call themselves conservatives but now support tariffs, let me remind them that Milton Friedman said tariffs ``raise prices to consumers and waste our resources.'' To those who still have a fond memory of Ronald Reagan on my side, Ronald Reagan said: Protectionism costs consumers billions of dollars, damages the overall economy, and destroys jobs. Ronald Reagan's vision for America can be seen in our trading relationships with Canada. In 1986, President Reagan said: Our trade policy rests firmly on the foundation of free and open markets. . . . I . . . recognize the inescapable conclusion that all of history has taught: The freer the flow of world trade, the stronger the tides for human progress and peace among nations. And it is absolutely true. If you look at a chart or a graph of world trade over the last 70 years, it has gone like this. We have been trading more with each other. If you look at a world map of prosperity, it is the same curve. It is a hockey stick. It is going up exponentially. If you look at a curve of poverty, 100,000 people are escaping poverty every day around the world, and it is because of international trade. Trade is good, not bad. Think about it. If you buy something, you are trading. If you go to the store and you buy a smartphone, and you give them $1,000, you want that smartphone, and you don't lose. It doesn't matter where the money went; you got your smartphone. You only give money to somebody for something if you want it. If it is a voluntary trade, it is always equal. Well, it is, actually, always mutually beneficial. And so when people say: Oh, we have lost, and China is winning, and China is winning, and we have a trade deficit with China--America doesn't trade with China. An individual buys a product. You are the trader. When you go to Walmart and you buy something at Walmart, and you say, ``My goodness, I can get this TV for $200 less than I can get it if there were only domestic TVs,'' you are the contractor. The U.S. Government didn't buy the TV; you bought the TV, and you did it because you saved $200. You are now $200 richer and can go somewhere. You can buy gas to go on a trip somewhere. If trade were bad, you wouldn't buy the TV. You made the decision; the government didn't. Our government doesn't trade with their government. Our individuals buy products from their individuals. If it is a voluntary trade, everyone benefits or the trade doesn't occur. It is perhaps no surprise, then, that the United States and Canada share the world's longest international land border and are continuously at peace. Canada is a great customer of ours. In fact, Canada buys more American goods than China, Japan, England, and France combined. So do we want the Canadians to buy less of our stuff or more of our stuff? It is a crazy notion to put a 25-percent tariff on this enormous amount of goods. There are predictions that cars are going to cost $10,000 more because the cars go in and out. We have cars made in Kentucky, but some of the parts go to Mexico. Some of the cars go to Mexico. Some go to Canada. They come back--a $10,000 increase. Do you love the idea of tariffs? Is it such a great word to pay $10,000 more for a car? Canada is also the leading provider of grain, livestock, meat, and poultry. The United States imported $97 billion worth of oil and gas from Canada last year. Canada is a major provider of cars, car parts, steel, lumber, aluminum. This amount of trading demonstrates that no American will be able to avoid the high taxes, the high prices. They will be forced to pay because of tariffs. The taxes on Canadian imports will come at a great cost to American families. The taxes on Canadian imports will make the cost of food, fuel, cars, and furniture more expensive. The former conservatives that now sing a populist tune know deep down that their advocacy of higher taxes will cause suffering for the American family. The converts to this protectionist faith cannot help but acknowledge that even they know that the tariffs will raise prices. They admit it readily. The tariffs that they put on in 2019 are still punishing the farmers in our country to such an extent that the farmers are still asking for more subsidies. When the Trump tariffs went on in 2018, 2019, the farmers immediately complained, and they were given $20 billion of taxpayer money. That is an acknowledgment that the tariffs hurt farmers. So we are going to do it again, and they are all lining up. People say we are going to have to bail them out. Are we going to have to bail out the car companies? Are we going to bail out everybody that is going to be hurt by these tariffs? It is not a good idea. The administration is currently considering a bailout for farmers. The idea that the American taxpayer will have to bail out an industry to dull the pain of tariffs is not a novel one. We have seen this one. We have seen this story. What our parents told us when we were kids is still true today: Actions speak louder than words. The supporters of tariffs know that their policies impose suffering, and they are willing to spend your money to alleviate that harm. So they know tariffs are going to hurt farm exports. So they are going to take your money and give it to the farmers. Well, what kind of policy acknowledges: Hey, I have got a terrible policy. I am going to hurt these people. We will just give them some of your money. It makes no sense at all. In addition to the previous costs, the Peterson Institute estimates that tariffs will cost the average family $1,200 a year. The Budget Lab at Yale University estimates that tariffs will cost the average family $4,200 a year. In fact, according to the analysis, tariffs could cost the least fortunate families on average $2,400. The middle class will likely pay higher costs of about $3,000. Tariffs are a cost. Taxes are a cost. If you tax a good, it is added on to the cost. This is what happens. It happens whether inflation is the tax or whether the tax is a tariff. It adds to the cost of goods, and it will be passed on to the consumer. The average American family won't get the bailouts though. If you are a special interest and the taxes hurt you, the tariffs hurt you, you will get a bailout. But if you are just an average person working for yourself, self-employed, and the tariffs cause all of your groceries to go up and cause your electronics to go up, no one is going to help you; you will just pay higher prices. If you think the cost of eggs is high, just wait until the tariff hits. Tariffs will raise the price of a car between $5,000 and $15,000. Despite arguments to the contrary, Americans know that tariffs are a tax they will have to pay. That is why vehicle sales jumped almost 13 percent last month--because people are trying to buy their cars before the tariff gets on their car and raises the price. People are smarter than politicians. That is nothing new. It is not just cars that will be more expensive as a result of tariffs; energy will be more expensive. Gas prices in some parts of the country could see a 15- to 30-cent per-gallon increase in price. According to the National Association of Home Builders, the building of a single-family home could become up to $10,000 more expensive. Why? Because we import lumber. We import steel. If we make it more expensive to import lumber from Canada and steel from Canada, the price of your house goes up. Look, people already can't buy a house because interest rates are so high. Young people are living in apartments. More and more, people feel stuck in their life, and we are going to add to the price of lumber and steel to make homes even harder to purchase? It is a terrible idea. Washing machines were already almost $100 more expensive as a result of the original tariffs 4 years ago. Here is really bad news: Even beer will become more expensive. A professor at Northeastern University states that a six-pack of Corona could go up by 45 cents, but a small craft beer could be increased by as much as $1 a pint. The former and never-were conservatives who try to sell tariffs as anything other than a tax cannot fool the American people, who know that their purchasing power will be weakened with every new protectionist measure unilaterally imposed by the White House. None of these tax hikes are necessary. The populists argue that the threat of tariffs is needed to force Canada to stop the flow of illicit drugs. In fact, one of the social media posts today said there was going to be a tariff on fentanyl. Really? You think the drug dealers are going to pay a tariff on fentanyl? Fentanyl is not being tariffed. That is some kind of mistaken notion. This isn't going to happen. As I have stated, there is more fentanyl going from the United States into Canada than there is coming from Canada to the United States. It is not a real emergency. It is being used to place a tax on the American people. But already we have seen a response from Canada. In response to the threat of tariffs, Canada announced a $1.3 billion plan dedicated to border security, to up border security on fentanyl. Yet the tariffs are still coming despite their help. They have also announced more tariffs as well. The threat of tariffs seems to have worked. We need not make Canada and America go through this when they have already responded to our request. The chaos of one day the tariffs are on, one day they are off, the next day there is a loophole for this industry or that industry, is chaotic and is leading to turmoil in our markets. A week ago, when the thought of tariffs came forward, the markets plunged to historically low levels. The tariffs on Canadian imports, the tariffs on Mexican imports, the tariffs on European imports--the chaos it creates in the marketplace makes it difficult to plan for businesses. The interesting thing also about the tariffs is--some have said: Well, you know, the people will see that we are standing up for them with tariffs and we are for America first. Yet, when we put tariffs on historically, it has been Republicans. In 1890, McKinley put tariffs on. He was all for it. So there were people lauding McKinley. In 1890, the big McKinley tariff goes on. Do you know what happened in 1892? Out of 170 Republicans, they lost 100 seats because prices went up with tariffs. Has this ever happened before? Yes. It happened in the 1840s when they put on the ``Tariff of Abominations'' under John Quincy Adams. He signed it. Once again, the ruling party lost seats. When is the last time this happened in dramatic fashion? Well, if you study history and you want to know when the Republicans went to their lowest ebb in the entire history of our country, it came after the Smoot-Hawley tariffs in the early 1930s. Hoover was President, a Republican. Republicans controlled Congress. They passed this dramatic tariff, which most historians and most economists now say prolonged the Depression for 10 years and caused the worst part of the Depression to actually be in 1937--7 years after the tariff and nearly 8 years after the stock market crash. Do you know what happened to the Republicans in 1932? The Democrats won the Presidency, and they won the House. Do you know when Republicans got back in charge after 1932? It was 1994 in the House and in the eighties in the Senate. They went 50, 60 years into the desert because tariffs were such a turmoil to the country that the country rejected Republicans for nearly half a century. The emergency declaration we are considering today is unprecedented. By declaring an emergency, the President invoked the International Emergency Economic Powers Act. They call it IEEPA, but it is an acronym. Don't get me started about government acronyms. It is a law that has been used to put sanctions on, like, Iran. That is what it was intended for. But it was never intended for tariffs and ``tariffs'' doesn't appear in the law. Using this bill to impose tariffs is attractive to a President. He doesn't have to work with the messiness of democracy, the messiness of Congress. But do you know what? That messiness is a check and a balance on power. Unlike most of our trade laws that require several procedural hurdles, IEEPA just says ``Declare an emergency,'' and it becomes very hard for Congress to overturn this. When the Trump administration first implemented tariffs on China, it took 11 months before the tariffs could take effect. By using IEEPA, the technique now, the tariffs have an almost immediate effect. We are not at war with Canada. I don't even think we have real disagreements with Canada. They are an ally that buys more of our stuff than almost any other country in the world. Expediency is not the same as legality, though. As legal scholars have pointed out, there is reason to believe that this bill--this IEEPA, this emergency bill--does not authorize the President to impose tariffs for at least two reasons. First, despite broad powers conferred to the President by this act, the plain, simple text does not mention the ability to impose a tax, tariff, or duty. It runs counter to Congress's habit of clearly referencing tariff authorities in other trade statutes. This may explain why no previous President has attempted to use emergency powers to impose tariffs. Second, it is difficult to see how using this emergency power, this IEEPA Act and a national emergency, to impose tariffs would comport with something called the major questions doctrine. Under this doctrine, the Supreme Court will reject claims of Executive authority on issues of vast economic and political significance. It is hard to imagine that a 25-percent tax on everything from Canada would not be considered to be of vast economic significance. Congress has not clearly empowered this administration. I think it is hard to even argue that it is ambiguous. The power was never granted. This question is ripe, and this power is ripe to be rejected by the Supreme Court. Hundreds of billions of dollars' worth of imports from Canada are at issue here. Clearly, this is a major economic question. Yet Congress has not expressly delegated the authority to impose tariffs to the President. We need to return to constitutional government. We used to abide by the ancient principle of ``no taxation without representation.'' One of the first acts enacted into the law was the Tariff Act of 1789, which sought to generate revenue by placing a 5-percent tax on all imported goods and was signed into law, after passage by Congress, by George Washington. Alexander Hamilton's ``Report on Manufacturers'' is well known. According to Professor Douglas Irwin of Dartmouth College, every tariff recommendation put forth in the report was adopted by Congress in 1792. But simply voting on tariffs does not convert them into a good idea. It could make them constitutional. It could make this legal if Congress voted on it. It would still be economically a bad idea. As we move forward in this debate, you will see that there are people on both sides of the aisle who question really whether we should be ruled by one person or whether the power should be separated. To me, this is not a partisan question. Some will try to make it a partisan question. To me, it makes no difference whether the President is Republican or Democrat. This is about the distribution of power. This is about the separation of power. This is about the admonition that Montesquieu gave us that when the Executive power and the legislative power are united in one person, there can be no liberty. Our Founding Fathers all believed that. They so feared the power of taxation that they gave it only to Congress. They so feared the power of taxation that they gave it specifically to originate in the House before it came to the Senate because the House was closer to the people, with elections every 2 years. This goes against the traditions of our country. I stand to speak against these tariffs. I stand to speak against these emergencies. I stand against the idea of skipping democracy, of skipping the constitutional republic, of rejecting our founding principles, not because I have any animus toward the President; I do this because I love my country, and I want to see the division of power enabled such that it protects us all from the amalgamation of power into one person such that it can be abused. Another name for ``emergency rule'' is ``martial law.'' Who would want to live under one person? That is the thing we all object to. In all the countries around the world that we object to is the idea that they don't have democratic rule. We should vote. This is a tax, plain and simple. Taxes should not be enacted by one person. So I will vote today to end the emergency. I will vote today to try to reclaim the power of taxation, the power of the tariff to where the Constitution designated it should properly be, and that is in Congress.

Mr. PAUL

Mr. PAUL. Mr. President, I call up my amendment No. 1266 and ask that it be reported by number.

Mr. PAUL. Mr. President, I compliment President Trump and DOGE for exposing waste and abuse in foreign aid spending. It boggles the mind to think that some in Congress defend spending $2 million on sex changes in Guatemala, thousands on an LGBT opera in Colombia, and thousands on a trans comic book in Peru. This is the low-hanging fruit. If Congress can't vote to cut this egregious, crazy, leftwing lunacy, will Congress ever have the courage to tackle entitlements? Yet there does remain a significant constitutional question as to whether these cuts need a congressional vote to give them permanence. Today, with my amendment, Congress can make these foreign aid cuts the law.

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

Mr. PAUL

Mr. PAUL. Mr. President, President Trump has pledged to balance the budget. I want to help him. I want to help him with this task. But to balance the budget requires much less spending than this current bill entails. Our national debt now exceeds $36 trillion. That is 124 percent of the size of our economy. That should not be a surprise. We are adding $2 trillion every year to the debt, this year included. Critics of excessive Federal spending have rightly argued that we should return spending to prepandemic levels. This is something I could support. The spending bill before us, though, spends $400 billion more than we were spending before the pandemic. Spending went through the roof during the pandemic, and it never came back down, and the deficits are out of control. In order for this bill to get back to prepandemic levels, it would have to be $400 billion less. That is something I could support. Three months ago, when the current continuing resolution was passed at the end of last year, we were told that we just needed to clear the decks. President Trump was going to come in, the Republicans would be in charge, and then everything would be OK. Just wait. Pass it. Pass it along in September. Come March, Republicans will be in charge, and something will happen. Yet the bill before us doesn't change anything. The bill before us keeps the same Biden spending levels. We were told with relentless fury that we would fight for the taxpayers come spring, and we were given a bill that doesn't change. It doesn't change the course of accumulating $2 trillion in debt every year. The powers that be, I believe, waved the white flag of surrender when they presented the American people with this bill that fails to make the cuts that are necessary to slow down the accumulation of our debt. The malpractice is made even worse this time around. Presidents of both parties pay lipservice to the idea that the national debt must be addressed. Despite tough talk, deficits and the debt inevitably keep rising. We now have over $36 trillion in debt. Unlike past Presidents, though, President Trump created the Department of Government Efficiency--affectionately known as DOGE--to identify wasteful programs and eliminate them. Despite DOGE working around the clock identifying appalling waste of taxpayers' dollars, this bill continues to fund the same programs that are funding the waste and fraud that have been located. How can that be? If we have located the waste and fraud, why are we not telling them to reduce foreign aid? If the foreign aid budget is full of all kinds of crazy, leftwing advocacy and nonsense, reduce the amount of money you give them. This bill will give them the same amount of money they got last year. This bill allows foreign aid to continue. It doesn't incorporate any of the DOGE cuts. It doesn't cut waste. This bill embraces the waste. It allows the waste to continue. This bill doesn't respect the taxpayer. It continues to throw their money away. This bill continues the Biden levels of spending that caused historic inflation, that caused prices to rise, that caused people to be outraged, to vote for a new President. Why in the world would we continue the same spending levels that led to the debt that led to the inflation that is plaguing us? This malpractice is compounded by the fact that President Trump and DOGE made it easy for Congress to fix. They actually told us where the waste was and where the waste and abuse was and told us how to root it out, how to remove it. The waste found by DOGE truly shocks the conscience. Taxpayers paid $25,000 for an LGBT trans opera in Colombia. They spent $2 million on sex changes in Guatemala. They spent $1.5 million advancing DEI initiatives in Serbia. They spent $6 million on tourism in Egypt. They spent $32,000 for a transgender comic book in Peru. Some of the USAID's programs have actually gone beyond woke absurdity into pouring money and support to people who are the enemies of the United States. The Agency provided millions of dollars to EcoHealth, which funded the dangerous research in Wuhan which, in all likelihood, created and caused the pandemic. From this account, also, millions of dollars went to support agriculture in Afghanistan, including fertilizer for the poppy fields grown by the Taliban. And yet, even after all that DOGE has uncovered--and I commend them-- Congress is still on the verge of passing a bill that fully funds foreign aid. Many in this Chamber think it is wasteful to do all these things, and they say: Well, why should we keep spending money on foreign aid that is paying for sex changes in Guatemala? And yet the funding levels in this bill stay the same. These are the same funding levels for the foreign aid that were occurring under the Biden administration. Let me say that again and clearly: This bill fully funds the outrageous foreign aid programs that Elon Musk and DOGE have exposed. Something doesn't make sense here. While Congress seems slow to open its eyes to waste and abuse, Secretary Rubio has acted. He recently said that the United States is canceling 83 percent of the foreign aid contracts. I am for that. In fact, that is what my amendment will do. My amendment will take the contracts--the dollar amount of the contracts--that President Trump and Secretary Rubio have canceled and put them into language so they don't get funded. Why in the world would we not be for getting rid of the funding for the crazy programs we are trying to get rid of? Something doesn't make sense here. President Trump and his team identified the cuts that need to be made, but it is ultimately Congress, not the Executive, that has the power of the purse. Congress has to act to make the cuts identified by the administration a reality. And on that score, the bill under consideration today is a disappointment. The bill is a disappointment to those who believe that congressional leadership should have used the 3 months since they came into office, since DOGE and Elon Musk have identified this waste--they should have used that waste and incorporated it into the spending bill. None of the DOGE cuts, none of Elon Musk's suggestions, have been incorporated into the spending bill. The spending bill continues spending at the Biden levels. When everybody wakes up and scratches their head and says, ``What happened here?'' the spending will lead to $2 trillion in debt. People will wake up and say: Well, what about all those cuts? What happened? I thought we were cutting out waste and fraud. And come September, the deficit for the year will be $2 trillion. Because we are not actually cutting the spending. Congress has to do the heavy lifting. We owe the American people an answer to this question: Exactly how many Republican seats are required in Congress to achieve a majority that will actually fight to lower government spending? I don't think the taxpayers need to wait for that fight any longer. I am not willing to say: Oh, just wait, young man. Wait for another day. We will be fixing this 6 months from now. It never comes. This is the story of this place: Wait until another day. Wait until the sun shines; we will finally cut some spending. It never comes. Someone must make a stand and fight. To that end, I offer a DOGE cuts 1.0 amendment that would codify the cuts in foreign aid, reducing USAID's budget by 83 percent and aligning with Secretary Rubio's recent decision to eliminate thousands of these programs. So what I am doing is not inconsistent with the Trump administration; what I am doing is in support of the Trump administration. What I am doing is taking the preliminary cuts that Secretary Rubio has given to foreign aid and making them law. Why? Because the whole judiciary is opposing the President. They are telling him he can't fire people, that he can't cut spending. He needs Congress to step up and do their job. The people who support the President need to be supporting the President's cuts. They need to be supporting an amendment--DOGE 1.0--that puts those cuts into law. I am not even talking about codifying all of the cuts. I am only taking a small sliver of them in foreign aid. This is the low-hanging fruit. This is the worst of the worst. This is $3 million for girl- centric climate change in Brazil. This is $4.8 million for social media influencers in Ukraine. This is hundreds of thousands of dollars spent sending Ukrainian fashion designers to the Paris fashion show. This is waste--utter and simple waste--and it ought to be cut. Why would people tell you publicly they are for it and then vote against it? It doesn't seem to make any sense. What my amendment does is put DOGE's findings into action, eliminating much of the funding for an Agency that spent tax dollars on woke entertainment and advocacy. It sets in law the reductions that the Trump administration has made known to be necessary. I applaud DOGE's work to uncover these many instances of abuse of taxpayer dollars, and it is now Congress's turn to make the cuts stick. If we do not adopt my amendment, then taxpayers will simply continue spending substantial amounts of money to defund components of the government rather than using savings to pay down our mounting debt. In other words, you might cut it and think it is cut one day; but what if the courts say you have to spend it somewhere else? It never comes back. The cuts are never real. The only way the cuts the administration is making will ever be real, will ever be counted, will ever lessen the debt in the country is to vote in Congress. That is what this is about. It would be the height of hypocrisy for Congress to pay lipservice to DOGE's exceptional work, support it on the superficial, and then vote against it when you have a chance to vote on it. Continuing to spend at this bill's level will add $2 trillion in debt. That is a fact. All the newspapers reporting yesterday--it was all over the news: record-setting accumulation of debt. We have accumulated over a trillion, and we are not halfway through the year. It is a record accumulation of debt. It only stops when people stand up and say: Enough is enough. The least we can do is make sure that it doesn't include the egregious spending that has come from the foreign aid, the craziness, the sex change operations in Guatemala, trans operas, trans comic books. All of these ludicrous things that no American supports will only go away and will only go away with permanence if we vote for it. Before us is a chance to enact about $16 billion worth of DOGE's cuts in foreign aid. These cuts are only real in the long term if they are reflected in congressional action. If we continue to fund the Federal Government at the Biden administration levels, which is what this bill does, then the money from DOGE's hard-found savings will just be spent somewhere else. I urge all of my colleagues who have praised DOGE's work to match their actions to their words and vote yes on this amendment. I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. PAUL

Mr. PAUL. Mr. President, what was the consent request?

Mr. PAUL. Two minutes? If it is going to take longer.

Mr. PAUL. If we can be done in 2 minutes.

Mr. PAUL. Mr. President, was there a unanimous consent request?

Mr. PAUL

Mr. PAUL. Mr. President, Senate Standing Rule XXVI requires each committee to adopt rules to govern the procedure of the committee and to publish those rules in the Congressional Record not later than March 1 of the first year of each Congress. On February 27, 2025, a majority of the members of the Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs' Subcommittee on Border Management, Federal Workforce, and Regulatory Affairs adopted subcommittee rules of procedure. Consistent with Standing Rule XXVI, today I ask unanimous consent that a copy of the Rules of Procedure of the Subcommittee on Border Management, Federal Workforce, and Regulatory Affairs be printed in the Record.

Mr. PAUL

Mr. PAUL. Mr. President, Senate Standing Rule XXVI requires each committee to adopt rules to govern the procedure of the committee and to publish those rules in the Congressional Record not later than March 1 of the first year of each Congress. On February 27, 2025, a majority of the members of the Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs' Subcommittee on Disaster Management, District of Columbia, and Census adopted subcommittee rules of procedure. Consistent with Standing Rule XXVI, today I ask unanimous consent that a copy of the Rules of Procedure of the Subcommittee on Disaster Management, District of Columbia, and Census be printed in the Record.

Mr. PAUL

Mr. PAUL. Mr. President, Senate Standing Rule XXVI requires each committee to adopt rules to govern the procedure of the committee and to publish those rules in the Congressional Record not later than March 1 of the first year of each Congress. On February 20, 2025, a majority of the members of the Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs' Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations adopted subcommittee rules of procedure. Consistent with Standing Rule XXVI, today I ask unanimous consent that a copy of the rules of procedure of the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations be printed in the Record.

Mr. PAUL

Mr. PAUL. Mr. President, things are not as they appear to be, and in Washington, that is not unusual. In fact, that may be the norm--that in Washington, things are often not what they appear to be. If you follow the news, you have been seeing reports of Elon Musk and DOGE and getting rid of waste and fraud and abuse by the billions, if not trillions, of dollars. And yet, we are meeting here today, though, because Congress, namely the Senate, wants to increase Federal spending. So on the one hand, you have Elon Musk and DOGE, and the Democrats complaining to high heavens, ``They are cutting too much; they are cutting too much,'' and Senate Republicans are coming forward today to pass a budget to allow them to raise Federal spending. What gives? Are Republicans for getting rid of waste, fraud, and abuse and reducing the deficit, balancing the budget, as the President says? Or are they really for increasing spending $340 billion? The budget that we will vote on will allow increased spending in the military by $150 billion; increased spending for the border, $175 billion; $20 billion for the Coast Guard. That adds up to about $340 billion. Well, if we were fiscally prudent, if we were fiscally conservative, why wouldn't we take the savings from Elon Musk and DOGE and move it over here and help with the border? Why would we be doing a brandnew bill to increase spending by $340 billion? That is because the Senate is acting as it always has. The Senate hasn't gotten the message. President Trump came to town--a new way of thinking. They are shuttering the Agencies. They are shutting people down. They are buying things like $2 million spent in Guatemala for sex changes, $2 million spent in Brazil for girl-centric climate change, $4.8 million spent in Ukraine for social media influencers. While you are at it, we spent--not we, but the people who voted for this. I voted against all of this. But the Members of the Senate who voted for this spent several hundred thousand dollars sending designers in Ukraine to the fashion show in Paris. It goes on and on: thousands of dollars for a trans opera in Colombia, more thousands of dollars for a trans comic book in Peru, hundreds of thousands of dollars spent studying rats to see if lonely rats use more cocaine than well-socialized rats. Guess what. Lonely rats love the cocaine. They spent hundreds of thousands of dollars of your money on this craziness. Why not take that crazy spending that DOGE and Elon Musk are finding and move it over to secure the border? Instead, fiscal conservatives are faced with a bill they are putting forward to just simply increase the spending. I am all for moving it around. I am all for saving it from the craziness and pushing it over into something more valuable. There is a procedure for doing this. It is a special procedure. It doesn't require any Democrat vote. It can happen through simple majority, and it has a fancy name. It is called rescission. So all the administration would have to do is bundle together several million dollars of savings--which it appears they are finding--bundle it together in one bill, send it back to us, and by simple majority, without any help from the Democrats, Republicans can cut spending. Instead, things aren't what they appear to be. You see all this great work being done to cut spending, to cut waste, fraud, and abuse, and then you see the Senate acting--we are going to vote all night long to set up a bill to increase spending by $340 billion. There is a true philosophical debate within the Republican Party--and really within both parties--about what the biggest threats to our country are. Are the greatest threats to America from within or from without? I would argue that they are from within. I don't lie awake at night fearing foreign invasion, that invaders are coming to our shores any moment. It doesn't mean we shouldn't be prepared, that we shouldn't defend ourselves. But it does mean that we don't have to have unlimited spending on our military. Look, many of my family served. Soldiers have to be paid. We should take care of them. But, at the same time, we shouldn't be everywhere around the world, all the time. We spent close to $300 billion in Ukraine. We have got soldiers all over Africa. We have got soldiers in Syria. We have got soldiers everywhere. We don't need to be doing that. If you want to put our military's money and spending in perspective, we spend more than the next nine countries combined. It is not that we are spending too little. We are spending a lot. But if you decide that you want more money for the military, take it from the climate change-- the girl-centric climate change in Brazil. Quit spending your money overseas. Over the years, we have given Egypt nearly $60 billion. Who runs Egypt? A general, where there are no elections, kind of like Ukraine, where there is a president, but he doesn't have to run for reelection because he has canceled the elections. Why in the world would we be giving money hand over fist to dictators and people who don't stand for election? In Egypt, we gave it to one family, the Mubarak family. When he was finally ousted from power, he had $20 billion on him. Well, it actually wasn't on him. A lot of it was in Swiss banks and all over the place, but he was worth 20 billion. That is nothing. Each of his kids was worth another 5 billion. So he basically was able to steal 30 billion of the 60 billion that American taxpayers sent to Egypt. That is foreign aid. That is the story of your foreign aid. It is that you have been being ripped off decade after decade. But while Elon Musk and DOGE are doing their job working overtime until late at night, finding us those savings for foreign aid, send them back. We spent 40 billion in foreign aid. You could send 30 billion back and America would be safer and stronger, and you could put the 30 billion toward either the military or to the border--your choice. There is money like that that can be saved and moved around, but it is going to have to come back. Ultimately, all the talk of the savings is ephemeral. It isn't real until Congress has the courage to vote on it. It has to be certified by a vote. If Congress doesn't vote, it sort of wishes and washes around in the ether and may or may not wind up being savings. Ultimately, Congress is going to have to do their job. But what we are doing today to vote on the budget is not doing our job. What we are doing today, which will be a Republican-led effort-- minus me--will be an effort to tee up a bill to increase Federal spending. I would say, let's take the savings that we are finding, move that over to any accounts, do it through a vote of Congress, do it through a simple majority. It can actually be done even without the budgetary process. A rescission package can be sent back without even going through the whole budget problem. What we are faced with, though, is come the end of the year--we are halfway through the year, so we are voting on a budget today that is really somewhat of a fiction because the year is already half over. We know what is being spent. We know that in the end, we are going to spend a little over $7 trillion this year. The problem is, we are going to bring in about $5 trillion, and we are going to spend about $7 trillion. We are $2 trillion short. They are getting ready within weeks to add a couple hundred billion dollars for California. It is appropriate to have sympathy for people in their plight, but it is not good for the country simply to borrow money to send it to anyone. If we are going to help people in need, we should be taking that money from the taxes that come in. We shouldn't be borrowing it from China and sending it to California. No matter how noble the purpose is, we should be spending what comes in. We should not be borrowing a penny. But come the end of the year, we are going to be over $2 trillion in increased debt for 1 year. What is our total? Our total is going to be over $37 trillion, maybe $38 trillion by the end of the year. Interest? The largest item in our budget is now interest--about $1 trillion in interest every year. One estimate is that over the next 10 years, it will be like $14 trillion in interest. Now, interest doesn't buy anything. Interest isn't feeding anybody. Interest isn't putting out fires in California. Interest is simply wasted because of the profligate ways of both parties. People voted for a change. They said: We are going to get a change. They like what Donald Trump is doing. They like what DOGE is doing. They like what Elon is doing. Yet here we are. The Republicans are acting like the Democrats. They are going to vote to increase spending by $342 billion. It is all going to be borrowed. Now, some will say: We are going to cut spending to equalize the money we are going to spend here. But none of that is listed in the budget. Now, the House has a budget. The House Republicans have passed a different budget, and in their budget, they list $1.5 trillion worth of savings. They have to get to this. They cannot do their special simple majority vote, the reconciliation vote, unless they find $1.5 trillion. In the Senate bill, there is $4 billion. Now, they will say, ``That is just a floor; we are going to find more than that,'' but all they would promise was the 4. In the House, they realized that is not really believable, that is not really comforting, so the House said: No, we are doing $1.5 trillion. So as this debate unfolds over the next 10, 12, 15 hours--we will be here for a long time. You know, get your popcorn. Turn your C-SPAN on. But as this unfolds, I will offer an amendment, and my amendment will say, let's alter the budget to not only say we are going to increase spending by $340 billion, my amendment will say we should cut spending to pay for it by $1.5 trillion. Ideally, we would do this simply by bringing a rescission package of the savings that Elon and DOGE are finding, but it would work this way as well to at least show that we are serious about this. I have seen this happen again and again, and I know how the story is going to turn out. I know that come September, which is the end of our fiscal year, we are about halfway through it. As we get to the end of the fiscal year, Republicans are going to be going: Uh-oh, I have to go home and explain to people that the deficit is $2.2 trillion--one of the worst years ever. I have to explain to people ``Republicans are in charge; we are taking care of it now'' when it looks like the problem is getting worse. We have to immediately start cutting spending. Every Republican needs to be voting to cut spending. There is a way to do it. It is called a rescission package. If you continue to borrow, though, if you think ``I am going to be nice to everyone and give everyone money,'' you can do it, but the borrowing is going to crowd out everything, because we have made many, many promises. We have promised people Medicare. We promised people Medicaid. We promised people Social Security. We promised people food stamps. Well, guess what, that equals all of our tax revenue. Those four promises--Medicare, Medicaid, food stamps, Social Security--that equals all of our tax revenue. We don't even vote on those programs. The programs that we vote on--that is the budget, that is military and nonmilitary--are a third of the spending. It is all borrowed now. Essentially, our debt equals our budget. Everything we vote to spend in the budget is borrowed. So things are out of whack. You can't help everyone and be everything to everybody. A way to look at this is, let's say you make $25,000 a year, and all of your money goes to your rent and your food and taking care of your family. You have nothing left over. You are working poor. You walk by somebody on the side of the street, and they are homeless, and you feel sorry for them. Would you immediately go to a bank and borrow $1,000 and give it to a homeless person? No, you wouldn't, because that would make no sense whatsoever. That is what we are doing. We look around the world, and we see homeless people. We look around the world, and we see hungry people. So we just simply go to China, the bank, and we borrow money from China and then we send it to Africa. Well, you know what, if you send your own money, it is charity. If you send your own money, it is noble. If you send somebody else's money or you borrow the money and you make the country go further in debt and you put us more in peril, that is not charity. That is what is destroying our country. That is what is eating us up from the inside out. The greatest threat to America is from within, not from without. What happens when the currency unravels? What happens when the value of the dollar doesn't lose 5 percent in a year but loses 5 percent in a week? That is what happens in the end stages of a currency being destroyed. People say it will never happen to America. Can't happen in America. We are the strongest dollar. We are the reserve currency of the world. Can't happen here. It can and has happened to great nations. It has happened to great civilizations that have lost their currency, that have destroyed their currency. Does it always unravel gradually enough that you can fix it? No. Sometimes it unravels in the space of weeks. When the German money lost its value in the early 1920s after the first war, in September, it took like 100 marks to buy a loaf of bread. Two weeks later, mid-September, it was 1,000 marks. At the end of September, it was 1 million. In the middle of October, it was 10 million. The currency, if you look at the currency and what it would buy in a 2-month period, was completely destroyed in a 2-month period. The pictures from the history books will show people putting the German mark into wheelbarrows and wheeling it up to fires to burn for warmth. It was worth more as fuel than it was to buy things. The workers were demanding that they be paid more than once a day because you had to go out and get your pay at noon and spend it then because it was worth half as much by the end of the day. That is what it looks like when a country destroys its currency. How do you destroy your currency? How does inflation occur? If you watch television, you see that these people are either dishonest or would fail basic economics. They are like: Well, inflation is transitory, and, you know, we are not sure where it is from, but maybe it could be--oh, greedy people owning grocery stores causes inflation. No. Inflation is an economic fact that comes from borrowing money, and the Federal Reserve prints up money to buy the borrowed money. Treasury--when we get behind on our payments, we spend more than comes in, so we have to borrow money. The Fed buys our Treasury bills. Well, the Fed doesn't have any money; the Fed creates that money. That is what inflation is. And so much of it gets passed on to government. Everybody knows that in the last 3 or 4 years--and part of the election was over the inflation of the Biden administration. Prices were up about 20 percent over 3 or 4 years. But in order to keep up with that, we built in inflation protection to most of our government programs. So Social Security has cost-of-living increases. So they keep up with inflation or try to keep up with inflation, but as they do, the programs just get larger and larger and larger, and we get more and more behind the eight ball. That is what is happening. But it is coming to a head. Social Security runs out of money in 2033. When it runs out of money, everybody gets 20 to 25 percent less in Social Security. What do you think is going to happen in our country when the poorest among us who live only on Social Security--when they lose the value of their check, they lose 25 percent of their check? What do you think is going to happen in this country? And nobody is preparing them for it. Nobody is doing anything to reform Social Security, reform Medicare, reform Medicaid. You know, people are just petrified of everything. What is so horrible and so hard to say about people who are able-bodied ought to work? I think everyone should work. I think everyone who is able-bodied should work not as punishment but as reward. We should have a work requirement on every check that goes out. Everybody should work. I mean, it is how you get your self-esteem. You can't give people self- esteem. You can't say: Here, Johnny, here is a trophy. We know you can't spell or add, but here is a trophy for being a mathlete. No, you have to earn your self-esteem. You earn it through work. Just adding work to Medicaid and saying: You want free health insurance from the government--adding a work requirement saves $100 billion. Having the States pay more for Medicaid. Why do I want the States to pay for more Medicaid? Because they don't have a printing press. Why are the decisions of this body so awful? Because there is a printing press. I had a conversation with one of my Democratic colleagues, and I said: We have to make a choice. You have to decide whether you want to help the poor in our country or help the poor in Ukraine or help whoever you are paying in Ukraine. He said: We shouldn't have to make a choice. It is like, you do have to make a choice. The fact that you think you don't have to make a choice is why we are $36 trillion in the hole. You have to make choices. Which comes first--Ukraine or America? You can't do both because we don't have enough money. We only have enough taxes coming in to pay for Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and food stamps. Everything else is borrowed. So maybe able-bodied people need to go back to work. Maybe there needs to be a work requirement. Maybe, for goodness' sake, food stamps shouldn't buy sugared drinks, chips, Ding Dongs, and Twinkies. Could we not reform our system such that we try to cure the obesity plague in our country by cutting back what the government buys as far as food? But today, the opposite will happen. Things aren't what they appear to be. Things are never, in Congress, really what they seem to be. We will pass a bill ostensibly by the conservative majority, but the purpose of this bill is to spend $340 billion in new spending. Instead, what we should be doing is taking the savings from the waste, fraud, and abuse that DOGE and Elon are finding--we should take those savings and use it to spend for things that people think are of higher priority, such as the border and/or the military. But I will oppose this budget because I am not for spending more money. I will oppose this budget because I want to have nothing to do with a $2.2 trillion deficit. At the end of the year, those who vote for this budget and those who vote for the new spending will have to explain to people at home: How about that $2.2 trillion deficit? How did that happen under a Republican watch? Until someone is brave enough to say no, it is going to go on and on, and there is a danger that if we don't stop it, we are going to destroy the country. So I will offer an amendment later on to cut spending, to actually put teeth into this budget resolution, to cut real spending, to balance our budget, and to do and complete the promises that the President had in the campaign. I yield the floor.

Mr. PAUL. I call up my amendment No. 999 and ask that it be reported by number.

Mr. PAUL. Mr. President, the budget bill before us instructs the Senate to find $342 billion in new spending. The budget bill, as written, is a spending bill. My amendment would add language to cut spending. The cuts would total $1.5 trillion. These cuts mirror the cuts from the House budget resolution that has been passed. This year, the deficit will exceed $2 trillion. It is a fiscal imperative that Congress begin to cut spending.

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

Mr. PAUL. Mr. President, I urge my colleagues to oppose this amendment. This amendment is unnecessary. We already have laws on the books to protect people's information. The most recent cases I can remember of leaking information like this involved an IRS contractor who illegally leaked the tax returns of President Trump, Elon Musk, and Jeff Bezos to the delight of many on the other side of the aisle. That person, fortunately, though, is now in jail, which proves the point that we already have laws in place to take care of this. This amendment is a thinly veiled attempt to prevent DOGE from doing the constructive job of finding waste. This is an amendment that says it is OK to spend $2 million in Guatemala on sex change surgery. This is an amendment that says it is OK, look the other way, transgender comic books in Peru are great. This is an amendment that says it is OK to do trans operas in Colombia. This is an amendment that attacks people who are looking to save our money and spend it on legitimate diplomacy, not crazy, looney, leftwing ideas. And I am done.

Mr. PAUL

Mr. PAUL. Mr. President, I have five requests for committees to meet during today's session of the Senate. They have the approval of the Majority and Minority Leaders.

Mr. PAUL

Mr. PAUL. Mr. President, rule XXVI, paragraph 2, of the Standing Rules of the Senate requires each committee to adopt rules to govern the procedure of the committee and to publish those rules in the Congressional Record not later than March 1 of the first year of each Congress. Today, the Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs adopted committee rules of procedure. Consistent with standing rule XXVI, I ask unanimous consent to have a copy of the rules of procedure of the Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs printed in the Congressional Record.

Mr. PAUL

Mr. PAUL. Mr. President, I call up my amendment, No. 3346, and ask that it be reported by number.