Rand Paul

Mr. PAUL

Mr. PAUL. There are emotions and there are facts. The facts are that emissions have been declining for six decades. The current rules are working. If you vote for increased regulations, you are voting to kill jobs.

Mr. PAUL

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 I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. PAUL. I urge support of the Republican jobs plan.

Mr. PAUL

Mr. PAUL. Senator, I would be happy to answer that question.

Mr. PAUL. Mr. President, I rise today in support of clean air, clean water, electricity, and jobs. I think we can have a clean environment and jobs, but not if we let this administration continue to pass job- killing regulations. These new regulations will cost over $2 billion, and over the course of a decade or more may well exceed $100 billion. We add these new regulations to over $2 trillion worth of regulations already on the books. The President is adding $10 billion worth of regulations every month, and we wonder--we have 14 million people out of work, 2 million new people out of work since this President took office. Yet we continue to add regulation upon regulation. So far this year President Obama has added $80 billion worth of new regulations. If this President is serious about job creation, he needs to cease and desist from adding new job-killing regulations. The vote today has nothing to do with repealing the Clean Air Act. I am sure we will hear hysterics on the other side. We will hear from environmental extremists. But this has nothing to do with repealing the Clean Air Act. We have rules in place to control emissions from our utility plants. We are not arguing against that. In fact, we are arguing for continuing the same rules that have been in place for some time. Over the decades our environment has become cleaner and cleaner. Emissions have gone down with each successive decade. We are simply asking that the clean air regulations already on the books stay in place and that we do not make the regulations so onerous that we put utility plants out of business so we have an inability to supply electricity to this country. Over 50 percent of our electricity comes from coal-fired plants. If we shut down the coal-fired plants or if we bankrupt them--as the President explicitly said in his campaign, that would be the desire of his policies--if that should occur, be prepared for brownouts in our big cities, be prepared for days when there will not be electricity, but also be prepared for rising unemployment as these job-killing regulations put a stranglehold on the economy. The question is, Can we have clean air and jobs? Absolutely. But to have clean air and jobs we must have balance. We are at the point of becoming so overzealous and of overreaching to such a great extent that we are killing jobs. We are killing industry. We are going backwards in time. Before we add new regulations we must ask, Are the current regulations working? The answer is an unequivocal yes. Emissions from utility plants have been declining for decades. In fact, while coal- based power has nearly doubled in the last several decades, emissions have been reduced by 60 percent. I need to repeat that because if we listen to the hysterics, we would think otherwise. We would think the Statue of Liberty will shortly be underwater and the polar bears are all drowning and that we are dying from pollution. It is absolutely and utterly untrue. All of the statistics--and these are statistics from the EPA--all of the statistics from government, from the EPA, show declining pollution. Everything about this argument shows that the environment has been improving for decades. In fact, John Stossel has done a program on this, and he asked fifth graders: Do you think the environment is cleaner now or 30 years ago? All of our schoolchildren have been brainwashed by these environmental hysterics who say, oh, it is a lot worse now. It is actually much better now. Here are some statistics. We are talking about regulating two emissions that come from utility plants. The first is sulfur dioxide. We can see in the midst of the range, the average has been going down every decade. We have reduced sulfur dioxide just in the last 6 years by 45 percent under the current regulations. If we look at the nitrous oxides, which are also regulated under this series of regulations, we can also see they have been in decline. The existing rules are working. Nitrous oxides, which can create ozone, are down 45 percent in the last 5 years. The existing rules are working. All we are arguing for is that we not become overzealous, that we not overreach, that the regulators and the regulations not become job- killing regulations. That is where we are headed. This administration has proposed a series of radical changes to our environmental law. These are regulations that are being written by unelected bureaucrats in which we in Congress are not having a say. What I am asking for today is that Congress vote approval or disapproval of these radical, extremist regulations, these job-killing regulations that are coming down the pike. If we look at jobs and look at what will happen to jobs, we will see that these regulations--simply this regulation alone--could cost as much as 50,000 jobs. Indirectly, the people who work for them who would be losing their jobs. As much as 250,000 indirect jobs could be lost. We do need to ask the important question: Are the existing regulations working or do we need to make the regulations more strict? This is a balancing act. On the one hand we have our environment, which we all care about. No matter what the other side will say, Republicans do believe in clean air and clean water. But we also believe in jobs. It is a balancing act in our country and in all of our communities to try to have both jobs and a clean environment. But we have to look at the facts. We cannot become hysterical and say the other side is for pollution. That is the kind of stuff we are hearing. We are all for clean air, we are all for clean water, and we are all--or we should all be for jobs. My concern is that the President has allowed radicals to take over the administration. He has allowed environmental extremists to take over policy. As a consequence, we are losing jobs. It is important to note that people think they will plug their electric cars into the wall and that has nothing to do with coal. Fifty percent of our electricity comes from coal. Does that mean it is perfect? No. But we have to look at the emissions from coal-fired utilities. The emissions have been declining decade after decade. While coal-fired power has nearly doubled in the last several decades--we are having to produce more electricity from coal in the last several decades--emissions have declined 60 percent. We are doing a good job with the current rules. Let's not kill off industry. Let's not kill off jobs. Let's not put our citizens at risk during the height of the summer and the height of a heat wave of not having electricity or during the height of cold waves in the winter of not having electricity to heat their homes. The alarmists, such as Al Gore and others, would have us believe everything is worse and the world is on the edge of some sort of cataclysm. If we allow them to control our debate, if we do not talk reasonably and rationally about the facts, if we do not look at the statistics of what has been occurring to control emissions, we are not going to get anywhere. I am asking we base our discussion on rational facts and not on emissions. To give an idea of where some of these extremists are coming from, there is one of them who is a prominent extremist in this debate. She has called for a planetary law, whatever that is. She wants a planetary law of one child per family because she is worried about the carbon footprint of the worst polluters in the whole world. But who do we think the worst polluters in the world are? Humans, for breathing. She says we have far too many breathers on the planet and the way we reduce breathers on the planet is we will have one child per family mandated worldwide. We know how China does that. I don't think we can let the debate get out of control. Today's debate is about overreach. I would like to give an example. Think about what cities looked like in 1900. We have a picture of Pittsburgh, where I was born, in 1905, and then a picture of Pittsburgh today. You may not be able to see the picture from the distance, but we can get an idea. Throughout Pittsburgh it was smog and pollution. It was heavy. They say at noon on a day in Pittsburgh you could go out and your white shirt would become black. They say at noon in Pittsburgh the street lanterns were on because you could not see through the smog and the smoke. Here is Pittsburgh today. We are not arguing for no rules. The rules we have in place have been working. What we are arguing is not to let the rules become so overzealous, so onerous, that we kill jobs and we kill industry. We want a clean environment and jobs. We have to have a balanced approach, and we cannot let hysteria and environmental extremism take over our country. The West led the industrial revolution. Life expectancy has doubled since the discovery of electricity. Childhood infectious mortality has become one-hundredth of what it was before electricity. For all the advances of civilization, there are advantages and there are disadvantages. As we have advanced from an industrial society, there have been problems, but we have been ironing out those problems for 100 years now. We are doing a good job at that, and we should not allow the regulations to become so onerous that we begin to lose jobs. One of the other things people argue about and one of the big health concerns they have with pollution is with regard to asthma. The interesting thing is, if we look at all the statistics on all the emissions from our powerplants, all these declining lines are emissions. Emissions have been going down decade upon decade. The incidence of asthma has been rising. If we were looking at this chart, we would say maybe emissions declining is inversely proportional to asthma. The other argument could be maybe they are not related at all, but they definitely are not proportional. We are not seeing rising incidents of asthma because we are having increased pollution. We have decreased pollution and rising incidents of asthma. Either they are inversely proportional or not related at all. This is an important point because what comes out of the hysteria of the environmental extremists is--we will hear people stand and say half a million people are going to die if this goes through. The Vice President recently said Republicans, because they didn't vote for his jobs plan, were for murder and rape. The ridiculousness of these statistics that are trotted out as truth should be spurned. We should think about things calmly and rationally and decide: Can we have clean air and jobs? When we hear these statistics, let's be very careful not to get carried away. Joel Schwartz has written about asthma and the environment and pollution and he notes that: As air pollution declines, the asthma prevalence continues to rise. One possible conclusion is that air pollution is not a cause of asthma or not even related. Every pollutant we measure has been dropping for decades pretty much everywhere while asthma prevalence has been rising pretty much everywhere. The other side will say, but the American Lung Association says pollution is making asthma worse. You know what. The EPA actually gave the American Lung Association $5 million, so I think their objectivity has been somewhat tainted. If we look at asthma incidence and we say: Where is asthma the worst, interestingly, asthma is worse in the countries that have the lowest incidence of pollution and asthma is actually lowest in the countries that have the highest evidence of pollution. As we look through these statistics, we need to be concerned about the costs of these new regulations. We need to be concerned about having balance between job creation and job-killing regulations. I am afraid what happened is we have opened the White House and this administration to environmental extremists, the kind of people who say: The polar bears are drowning. The whole thing on the polar bears drowning was based on the sighting of two polar bears on an iceberg and they all of a sudden maintain this. Once we start counting the polar bears, apparently they are not in decline. So the statistics and hysteria over whether within 50 years the Statue of Liberty will be underwater, this is the kind of hysteria we don't want to drive policy. It is the kind of hysteria that when our brother-in-law is out of work and when 2 million new people are out of work since this administration came into power, we need to be concerned about regulatory overreach. Another issue we are concerned about is what will happen with these new regulations with electricity rates. We have a map that shows across the United States what will happen. When we think about our electricity rates going up and the expense to this, think about who gets hit worse, the working class and senior citizens on fixed incomes. They are the ones who will suffer from rising electricity rates. It is the person who depends only on their Social Security check and has no other means of supporting themselves and is trying to pay for their electricity. In some regions, electricity could go up almost 20 percent with this series of regulations this administration is proposing. This is throughout the country. It is more in some areas than others, but it will go up dramatically, and that is the danger of allowing these new regulations--what will happen to electric rates and will poor people in the winter or heat of the summer be able to afford their electricity? The cost of these regulations is real. The cost of these regulations will be passed on to the consumer and there are significant dangers of there being periods of times in large cities where there is not enough electricity to go around and the electrical grid is overwhelmed. As we go forward and as we begin to hear some of the hysteria that will occur from the other side, be aware that what we are arguing for is not the elimination of regulations. We are arguing for continuing the existing regulations, with the two emissions we are talking about have declined significantly over decades. Sulfur dioxide has declined over 70 percent over the last three decades. Nitrous oxide has declined over 50 percent over the last several decades. So the question is, if we are doing an adequate job, if we are doing a good job, if emissions are going down, why would we want to impose new rules that will cause loss of jobs and will cause an increase in rate of electrical costs? If one is cynical, one of the reasons might be because the President wants to reward some of his campaign contributors; for example, Solyndra. The owners of Solyndra, which makes solar panels--or did. They have now gone bankrupt after they ate up $500 million worth of our money. Perhaps this is more of a political argument that he doesn't like certain industry but he likes other industry. So he is willing to spend our money, $500 million worth, on one company. Solyndra went bankrupt recently, and $500 million is still a considerable amount of money. I will put that in perspective. In Kentucky, we get over about $420 million to pave our roads annually out of the gas tax that we pay. There are 35 States that get about the same amount, somewhere under $500 million. Yet the President saw fit-- because he has been consumed with this environmental extremism--to give $500 million. That is more than 35 States get for their highway funds. He saw fit to take that money and give it to one political contributor because he has decided he wants more expensive electricity. He wants electricity that comes and is produced by people who have been his campaign contributors. As we look at adding these new regulations, these need to be put in context. We need to look at and seriously think about whether we want our country to be taken over by environmental extremists, whether we want or care about can we have a clean environment and jobs. I think we can have both. I think we can have clean air, clean water, and jobs, but it will require a balanced approach. My fear is, if these regulations go forward, the balance will become imbalanced, that there will be job-killing regulations that cause electrical rates to go up and cause us to have significantly more economic problems than we are already in. At this time, I call on my colleagues to consider supporting this resolution, which will be a disapproval of these new and onerous regulations, and I reserve the remainder of my time. I yield the floor.

Mr. PAUL

Mr. PAUL. I hope this is the beginning of a conversation with the other side and with the President. I told the President personally that I want to help with the problems we have in our country. We have 14 million people out of work, with 2 million additional people out of work since this administration began. So we are serious about our Republican jobs plan, and there can be some areas of some common interest. There currently is a supercommittee talking about some of these tax reform ideas. Our side is putting forth a message, we are putting forth a plan, and we are willing to work with the other side. The problem is, it is my understanding the other side has walked away from the table. The other side is unwilling to talk or to engage with us. I have asked the President personally to come to Capitol Hill and talk to us. I have talked with the members of the supercommittee and have indicated we are willing to work with them. We have some good ideas to create jobs, and some of these ideas the other side has already agreed to. Lowering the corporate income tax. There are Members of the other party who understand we need to be competitive with the rest of the world. So lowering the overall rates, simplifying the code, and getting rid of some of these loopholes. These are things the President talks about as he campaigns. But if he were serious, he would come and talk to us. Instead, what I have heard at his campaign stops is Republicans are too stupid to understand his plan so he is going to break it up. Well, that may get laughs at his campaign rallies, but it isn't getting anything done. I think the American people need to know our jobs plan will create jobs, and we are willing to talk with the President and with the other side. I think we are willing to get things done, and I think we have important things in the bill that will do that.

Mr. PAUL. Yes. Routinely, decade after decade, polls show anywhere from 75 or 80 percent or more support a balanced budget amendment. We need it, because we have shown ourselves to be fiscally irresponsible. Through the years, we have had Gramm-Rudman-Hollings and we have had all different types of restraints, but we disobey our own rules. We say, oh, it is an emergency. But then suddenly all the routine spending we do becomes emergencies, and the debt gets bigger and bigger. Those in the debt commission say the most predictable crisis in our history is the coming debt crisis in this country. They are seeing it in Europe. We need to be serious in our country and fix these problems before we get to a crisis situation. That is what our Republican jobs plan does. It addresses it--a balanced budget amendment, tax reform, and a regulatory moratorium. We can't keep heaping on new regulations that put us at a competitive disadvantage with the rest of the world.

Mr. PAUL. Those who say balancing the budget would be extreme, I think what is extreme is a $1.5 trillion deficit. We are en route now, at the rate we are spending money, to a decade within which the budget will be consumed by entitlements and interest. There will be nothing left for national defense or for anything else if we keep on the same spending pattern. So we do have to do something. What we have shown so far is that fiscal restraint has been an utter failure up here. After Gramm-Rudman-Hollings we had pay as you go. That was broken 700 times in the first 5 years we were supposedly paying as you go by simply saying it is an emergency. Every routine expenditure became an emergency and so we went around it. So that is a good context for the Republican jobs plan--that everything will be in the context of balancing our budget. But then there are other important matters, such as tax reform. Historically, the one thing government can do to create jobs or to lessen unemployment is to lower the upper rate. Kennedy did it in the 1960s and unemployment was cut in half. Reagan lowered the top rate from 70 to 50 and unemployment was cut in half. Reagan lowered it again from 50 to 28 and unemployment was cut in half. And interestingly, as you cut the top rate, you didn't cut revenue. Revenue stayed at 18 percent of GDP through all the lowering of the top rate. What lowering the top rate does is it unleashes economic growth. The other side has this vision they are going to hire people in government and somehow fix unemployment. You can hire hundreds of thousands of people and you don't put a dent in it. To cure unemployment, or lessen unemployment, you need to have millions of people hired, and that can only be done in the private sector. I think that is the difference in the vision between our side and their side. Our vision is unleashing the private sector, and theirs is to hire a few more people to dig ditches and fill them in. It is a different vision.

Mr. PAUL. The line-item veto, interestingly, that the Senator proposed and got to the floor in the form of a bill separate from this has cosponsors from both parties. It does have bipartisan support. Many on the other side of the aisle see some of the waste. There is no reason why we couldn't begin to work together on some of this. But, once again, I get back to if the President is going to go on the road and call us too stupid to understand and his jobs plan has to be broken up, that is not a good way to get to a consensus. The President needs to come to Capitol Hill and needs to talk with the other side and work on these ideas. Do we need a line-item veto and do we need a balanced budget amendment? Do we need to do something different or just do the same? The problem with just doing the same is we haven't had a budget in 2 or 3 years around here. The appropriations bills are supposed to agree with the budget, but they can't because there is no budget. There is a rumor that the appropriations bill will go to the conference committee between the two Houses and they will actually airdrop in whole other appropriations bills. Do we need more scrutiny? Do we need a balanced budget amendment? Do we need a line-item veto? Absolutely. Because what we are doing around here is not working and is adding up to trillions of dollars of annual deficits.

Mr. PAUL. I think the overriding message--and I appreciate the comments from the Senator from Ohio--is that we have a jobs plan and we have our ideas. There is overlap in our ideas with some of the ideas from the other side. The message is, we are willing to talk to the other side. We are willing to say these are some proposals, and let's try to find areas of agreement. We think it is more important than a campaign right now. We think it is more important, the joblessness and the economy, that we try to do something about it. We are willing to come to the table. We are willing to bring our ideas, we are willing to have a debate with the other side, and we want to get solutions. We are not doing this just to be partisan. We want to figure out a way to make our economy better.

Mr. PAUL

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

Mr. PAUL. Three million dollars was spent on a turtle tunnel. Do you want to keep spending on turtle tunnels or fix our bridges?

Mr. PAUL. Madam President, this amendment will secure funds for preparing our Nation's bridges. I have stood with the President in the shadows of our crumbling bridges. I told the President personally that I would help to rebuild the bridges. This amendment should be bipartisan. This amendment should be noncontroversial. This amendment spends no new money and raises no new taxes. This amendment simply takes funds from beautification and puts them into bridges. As legislators, we need to prioritize and spend money on what is most important to us. Some on the other side may like the beautification projects. We like them also. But we are running a $1.5 trillion deficit, and we must prioritize. If we wish to fix our Nation's bridges and if we are serious about it, we will pass this amendment, which will immediately create a fund to begin fixing our Nation's bridges. I reserve the remainder of my time.

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

Mr. PAUL. Madam President, I call up my amendment No. 821.

Mr. PAUL

Mr. PAUL. Mr. President, reserving the right to object, I find it a tragedy that in the Senate we are operating in a way that allows an 868-page bill to be offered with only 48 hours to read it and approximately 1,000 pages' worth of amendments to this bill with virtually no time to even think about the amendments. I think it is precisely what is wrong with this body, that we would try to rush things through. I have been here since January, and there have been no hearings on No Child Left Behind. I have had no hearings that involve teachers, no hearings that involve superintendents, no hearings that involve principals. I think this is an affront to the process. As I go around my State and I talk to teachers, I have yet to meet one teacher who is in favor of No Child Left Behind. They abhor it. They hate all the stuff we are telling them to do from Washington. They want more local control. I am one of the old-fashioned conservatives who believes that schools are and should be under local and State control. There is no provision in the Constitution for the Federal Government to be involved, period. This was part of the Republican platform for nearly 30 years, that we didn't believe in Federal control; we wanted to have local control. I met with six teachers recently from Marion County. Some of them are special ed teachers. They like what they do. They like teaching kids who have difficulty learning and have to be taught in a different fashion in order to get through to these kids. But they showed me a cute little boy of 15 years old who has a three-word vocabulary. He was tested in world geography and then the teacher was told she is a bad teacher because the child, who has a three-word vocabulary, did poorly on testing. This is insane, and it needs to be discussed in a rational fashion. We need to have teachers involved in the process, for goodness' sakes, principals, superintendents. I have a letter here from the American Association of School Administrators, the National Association of Elementary School Principals, the National Education Association, the National School Boards Association, and the National Association of Secondary School Principals, and they said: We . . . hope that the important work of getting policy right will not be pushed to the side in a race against the clock. . . . I feel pushed aside--an 868-page bill and 48 hours to read it. It is wrong. All I am asking for is a hearing to listen to teachers--should we not listen to the teachers--a hearing to listen to the superintendents, a hearing to listen to the principals. Let them read the bill and find out what is in the bill. I am not going to accept what Nancy Pelosi said: You can read about it after the fact. That is the process that is going on here. Mr. President, 868 pages--when are we going to read it? After they pass it. Who has been involved in crafting this legislation? I am on the committee. Nobody asked me. Nobody consulted with me. And I think that is the same with most of the people on the committee. The letter from this group also says: . . . we note that the proposed law . . . is still heavily reliant on the idea of testing every child, every year through one single high-stakes summative assessment. . . . There are many problems. I would be in favor of getting rid of No Child Left Behind. No teachers are for it. I would like to see a survey of teachers. I would like to have the teachers do a survey of their population to ask who is in favor of No Child Left Behind before we act. I would like teachers to propose amendments to my office to fix No Child Left Behind if we are not going to scrap it. I would like to hear from the superintendents: What do you think of this 868-page bill we got yesterday or on Monday? What do you think of this bill, and how could we make it better? We will not have time to hear from them because we are struggling to get through the 868 pages and another thousand pages of amendments. This process is rotten from the top to the bottom. What I would ask for is that we have a hearing. Let's invite teachers to Washington, let's invite superintendents, let's invite principals to Washington. Let's find out what they think of No Child Left Behind before we rush through an 868-page bill that no one has had time to read. This is what is wrong with Washington. This is the type of arrogance about the way Washington works that is really making us unpopular in the public's eyes. I say fix No Child Left Behind. I say repeal it or fix it, but at least give us time to read the bill. I object to this unanimous consent request.

Mr. PAUL. Will the Senator yield?

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

Mr. PAUL. I do have a question. Several Senators on the committee have said they would be happy to have meetings 24 hours a day. Why do we not have a hearing on the bill? Why do we not invite teachers, superintendents, and principals? There has been no hearing since the last election. There is no reason why we cannot. The other question we have and we need to answer is: What do we say to the American Association of School Administrators, the National Association of Elementary School Principals, the National Education Association, the National School Boards Association, and the National Association of Secondary School Principals that say: Let's do not get pushed aside in this race against the clock. I am not opposed to much of what is going to happen with the bill. I think No Child Left Behind has many errors and we can fix some of them. What I am opposed to is the process of giving us an 868-page bill yesterday and saying take it or leave it. We need more time to read the bill. We need these organizations that are very interested in education--it is their livelihood--to come in and make comments on this bill. That would be an open-hearing process. Anything else to me is disingenuous.

Mr. PAUL

Mr. PAUL. Mr. President, I submit the following notice in writing: In accordance with Rule V of the Standing Rules of the Senate, I hereby give notice in writing that it is my intention to move to suspend Rule XXII, including germaneness requirements, for the purpose of proposing and considering amendment No. 678 to S. 1619.

Mr. PAUL

Mr. PAUL. Mr. President, I rise today to speak against the process by which this body is passing major legislation as we approach the end of this fiscal year. Last week we were asked, without debate or amendment, to pass at least a half dozen bills reauthorizing or extending expiring laws and spending authorities--some of which authorize the expenditure of billions of dollars over the next year. Actions such as this are a big part of what gives Washington a reputation for being dysfunctional. The fact that authorizations for many programs expire on September 30 each year is not a secret. Nor is it a secret when September 30 will come around each year. But instead of planning ahead, working for weeks or months to address a foreseeable need, and actually doing its work on time, Congress resorts to passing massive bills at the last minute when there is not time for serious scrutiny or changes. It is unconscionable this body would avoid debating such programs in a meaningful way. I would ask my colleagues, can you be sure these programs are working as efficiently as possible? Can you assure the American people the Federal Government is maximizing value for their tax dollars? Are these bills taking meaningful steps to eliminate waste and duplication within these programs? We would know the answers to those questions if these bills had gone through the normal process of consideration in committees and on the Senate floor. Senators would have the chance to ask questions to the officials administering the programs and propose changes to them. Instead, we are faced with bills that have had very little--if any-- process in the Senate at a time where even a week's delay to consider the bills will result in the programs expiring. That is unacceptable and should be embarrassing to the Senate as an institution. We need to change the way Congress does its business. Part of that is reining in excessive spending and having more robust debates regarding the allocation of scarce taxpayer dollars. We must do better in the future.

Mr. PAUL

Mr. PAUL. Mr. President, we are considering today the highway bill and the FAA bill. The highway bill is a trust fund. When we hear the words ``trust fund,'' we should have trust that money is only spent on highways. Unfortunately, that money has been spent through the years on other items. The same applies to the Social Security trust fund and with the Medicare trust fund. It is all sent to the General Treasury, and it is not protected. What I am asking today through this amendment to the highway bill is that we keep the trust fund separate and the trust fund spends only money that comes in from the gas tax. If we continue to spend money that is not coming in from the gas tax, this will be money borrowed from China or simply printed, and there are ramifications to borrowing $40,000 a second. So my amendment to the highway bill would say we only spend what comes in through taxes. I consider this to be responsible budgeting and what we should be doing and likely what we were probably obligated under the original trust agreement to do. So I urge passage of this amendment which would limit the highway trust fund to that amount of funds coming in through taxes. My second amendment is to the FAA bill. This amendment says spending in the FAA bill go to 2008 levels. Since 2008, spending in our government has gone up 25 percent. We are mounting a deficit of $1.5 trillion. Our Nation's debt is $14 trillion. There are significant ramifications to incurring so much debt. The debt does have a face--it is the face of unemployment. Economists have said our debt burden is leading to our losing 1 million jobs a year; that 1 million people are out of work because of the debt we carry. Economists have also said this debt burden, when it is paid for through the printing of money, leads to higher prices in the stores. Our gas prices have doubled not because gas is more precious but because our dollar is less precious. Our dollar is less precious because we are paying for a debt by inflating the currency. What this amendment asks is that we go back to 2008 levels, which, believe it or not, if we did this through the entire government, will still not balance the budget. This is a modest proposal. It is the very least we can do if we believe in a responsible budget and that we must balance our budget. The second amendment would take spending to 2008 levels, and I encourage the Senate to pass these amendments.

Mr. PAUL

Mr. PAUL. Mr. President, this is an amendment to pay for the emergency funds. I think for too long in this body we have just simply added on funds, often for good causes, but we keep spending money we do not have. I think the mark of a good legislator is making priorities. If we choose to spend some money on an emergency, we should take the money from somewhere else in the budget. In this amendment we have proposed to take the money from foreign aid. When the American people are asked if they think we should be sending welfare to other countries or building bridges in other countries when our bridges are falling down in this country, 77 percent of them think we should not be sending money overseas when we have problems at home. This amendment would take unspent foreign aid money from this year and apply it toward the disaster funding. It would also take some unspent money from the State Department. I think it is responsible budgeting. It is essentially taking money from another area, spending it, and not adding to our debt. There are repercussions to the debt we have. I tell people the debt has a face. Every time we drive to the store our gas prices are rising or our food prices are rising. The reason our prices are rising is because we have to pay for the debt by printing new money. As we print new money at the Federal Reserve to pay for our debt, we diminish the value of the dollar so our gas prices rise and our food prices rise. Also, economists have said up to 1 million jobs a year are being lost to pay for our debt. What I ask for is, as we pay for these natural disasters we take the money from elsewhere in our budget. I also rise in support of the plea of Senator Coburn not to target the transportation funds. Right now we are asking that highway funds, 10 percent of them, go to beautification projects--turtle tunnels, movie theaters. In our State of Kentucky, we have a bridge that was closed this week, the Sherman Minton Bridge. Of three bridges in Louisville, one of them is closed. Traffic is stacked up for hours and you are telling me we need to have turtle tunnels? Something is seriously wrong with government when we are forcing State governments to spend 10 percent of their transportation money on turtle tunnels, white squirrel parks, and movie theaters. Another bridge is needed in the northern part of our State, Brent Spense Bridge, where debris from the bridge is falling. Four years ago we had a bridge in Minneapolis that fell into the river and killed 13 people. We, as a nation, need to set our priorities, but I think it is incorrect and a real problem that we are telling people they have to take 10 percent of the transportation funds and put them into bike paths. I am a bicyclist and I like bike paths as much as anybody. But when bridges are falling into a river and a major metropolitan area such as Louisville, KY, has one-third of it's bridge capacity closed because the bridge is dangerous to travel on, these are emergency problems. It also buys into what I am talking about with foreign aid. We cannot send welfare to other countries that we do not have. We are not sending them money that is from our savings. We are sending money that we are borrowing from China or that we are printing. There are ramifications to this debt. We are borrowing money at $40,000 a second. There are ramifications to this borrowing. It has a face. It is just not an empty number. When we say our national debt is $14 trillion or that we are adding $1.5 trillion to the debt every year, there are ramifications to that, and there is a face. The face is unemployment. The face is people losing jobs. We see it in the grocery store with our prices rising. The debt has ramifications. In Europe, we are seeing the end stages of this in some cases. We are seeing chaos and rioting in the streets. We had rioting in London recently. We had rioting in Greece, Portugal, Spain. All of these countries are tumbling under a burden of debt, and it has been predicted that this is coming to the United States. It is coming soon. It is a contagion of debt that is sweeping the world, and it is all pyramided upon the U.S. dollar. Once upon a time, banks in Europe held gold as their reserve. They now hold the dollar as reserve. When the dollar tumbles or when we have trouble paying for our debt, there will be massive worldwide problems. We are in the middle of the worst recession since the Great Depression, and there are no signs that any of the policies coming from the White House are working. In fact, the first stimulus package did not work. Two million more people are out of work since the President came into office. The price of gasoline has doubled. Our debt has been downgraded. We are set to accumulate, under this administration, more debt than all 43 previous Presidents combined. It is not working. Recently, the President came over to a joint session of Congress and presented to us the ``son of stimulus''--the son of a stimulus that did not work in the first place. He said we are just going to tax those rich people. Rich people hire poor people. Most of us have jobs because rich people hired us. They are talking about adding $400 billion in new taxes on those who make $200,000 a year or more. You say the rich ought to pay their fair share. The rich are paying for the income tax--47 percent of Americans pay no income tax. So half of Americans are already paying for all of the income tax. The Bush tax cuts actually made the Tax Code more progressive because they dropped off more people from the lower end. If we look at those who make more than $200,000 a year, it is 3 percent of the public. They earn 30 percent of the income and pay 50 percent of the income tax. If you are saying the Tax Code needs to be made more fair, it would probably be that we would have to make the Tax Code less progressive. The bottom line is, if I thought it would help people, we could do it. It is going to hurt people. The head of the Congressional Budget Office is an objective spokesman who analyzes government. He testified before the supercommittee yesterday that it would be a mistake to raise taxes. The preponderance of economists say it would be a mistake to raise taxes in the middle of a recession. It will lead to more joblessness. Pitting one group--class envy--pitting one group against another gets us nowhere. Years ago we tried this. We said we will have a special tax on those who own yachts. Guess who lost their jobs. The men and women making $40,000 and $50,000 a year lost their jobs. It does not work. It is unhealthy. It is not good for America to blame one class of people versus the other. We want to lift everyone in America. We want a thriving economy. When we lowered tax rates in the 1980s, we had 6 percent and 7 percent growth in a year. We are at 1 percent growth and we look like we are headed in the wrong direction. They say the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result. This new jobs plan by the President is the ``son of stimulus.'' It is the son of a stimulus that did not work the first time. When we calculate it, it cost $400,000 per job. It did not work. We should not be doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. I would say in conclusion that my amendment is the responsible budgetary amendment, and it pays for the new disaster funding. If we wish to help people and we think our Federal Government should be involved with disaster funding, it should be paid for. It should not be borrowed from China, and it should not be simply printed up at the printing press. We should pay for it. I urge other Senators to support my amendment which would offset the disaster funding by reducing a corresponding amount from foreign aid, the welfare we give to other nations, many of them rich nations. I would ask serious consideration of it. I would also ask serious consideration of Senator Coburn's proposal that when we have bridges crumbling in our country, we not force States to build turtle tunnels, squirrel sanctuaries, and movie theaters. We have crumbling bridges and we need to get this through and we need to say we are not going to force the States to decide to have these beautification projects. I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.

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

Mr. PAUL. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to call up amendment No. 613.