Rand Paul

Mr. PAUL

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 President, I ask unanimous consent the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. PAUL. Madam President, I think we ought to make just one clarification of fact. Israel gets all their foreign aid in the beginning of the year. They get it differently than any other country. This amendment will not affect any funding to Israel. This funding will take away a percentage. It is about 10 percent of foreign aid. Foreign aid or welfare is opposed by 77 percent of Americans. Even if you thought it was a good idea to give welfare to foreign countries, you do not have it. So you are borrowing this money from China or you are printing it up and you are adding to the debt. Our country faces a debt crisis. We are borrowing $40,000 a second. I think it is unwise, when bridges are falling down and being closed in Louisville, KY, to send money to other countries, particularly money we are borrowing and printing. I urge the support of my amendment to eliminate the 10 percent of foreign aid. I think it is a very reasonable proposal.

Mr. PAUL

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

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

Mr. PAUL. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to call up en bloc my amendments Nos. 621 and 622.

Mr. PAUL

Mr. PAUL. Mr. President, they say the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result. We now have been in 3 years of a policy that is not working. Joblessness is up and our debt has been downgraded. Our country is on a precipice, and yet we continue with the same people giving the same ideas that are not working. It is important to know how we got here. We are in a great recession, the worst recession since the Great Depression. How did we get here? We got here through bad economic policy and bad monetary policy. This policy originated with Timothy Geithner when he was at the Federal Reserve in New York. It originated with Ben Bernanke, the head of the Federal Reserve. What did we do? We reappointed these people to higher office. They say the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result. I would respectfully ask at this point we have a vote in the Senate. I think the American people have given a vote of no confidence to the Secretary of the Treasury. I think the American investors and worldwide investors have given a vote of no confidence to the debt ceiling deal and to what has been going on. Over and over we are doing the same policy. We have now appointed as head of the Council of Economic Advisers someone who brought us Cash for Clunkers. We spent $1 trillion--money we don't have--trying to stimulate the economy and unemployment is worse. Gas prices have doubled. Economic growth is anemic, if at all. We are in the process, perhaps, of sliding into another recession and something has to be different. We cannot keep doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result. For the first time in our history our debt has been downgraded. This came after a policy that came from the Secretary of the Treasury and from this administration. It came from a deal the American people and the world public, world class of investors, judged and deemed to be inadequate. This country needs a shakeup. We need new ideas. We need different propositions. The same propositions, the same tired, old proposals are not working. We are set during this administration to accumulate more debt than with all 43 previous Presidents combined. We are accumulating debt at $40,000 a second. We are spending money at $100,000 a second. When a policy doesn't work, we need new policy leaders. There will not be a new President until 2012, but this President could choose new advisers because the advice he has been getting is not working. We are languishing. We are on the precipice of possibly going into another recession, and I would suggest at this point we need a new Secretary of the Treasury. How did we get into this problem? We got into this problem because we had a housing boom. This came from bad monetary policy. It came from the Federal Reserve setting interest rates below the market rate, and that signal was transmitted out into the economy and we got a housing boom. Then we had a housing depression. We are still in the midst of a housing depression. Where did that policy come from? That policy came from Secretary Geithner and Ben Bernanke. What have we done? We have reappointed these people and reapproved their policies that got us into the problem in the first place. If we want our country to thrive again, we must diagnose the problem correctly before we try to fix it. Because they didn't understand how we got into this recession, they also passed a whole bunch of new regulations. The Dodd-Frank bill heaps all kinds of new regulations that make it harder to get a home loan. In the midst of a housing depression, we have heaped all these new rules on community banks. You know what? In my State of Kentucky, not one bank failed. The problem is at the Federal Reserve. The problem is with the policy. The problem is with the people we still have running this country and advising the President. What I am asking for today is a vote of no confidence on Timothy Geithner. I see no reason and no objective evidence that any of his policies are succeeding. I have come to the floor today to ask for this vote, and we will continue to try to get this vote. We have introduced a resolution in favor of voting a vote of no confidence on Timothy Geithner, and I hope this body will consider it. I yield back the remainder of my time and suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. PAUL. I ask that the unanimous consent request be modified so once we are on the bill I can offer an amendment related to the Secretary of the Treasury and that a vote on that issue be reported.

Mr. PAUL

Mr. PAUL. Madam President, America will not default on her debt today. In fact, there was never any doubt that America would pay her bills. But mark my words, America will default. America will default, not by not paying its bills, not by not raising the debt ceiling, but we will default in a more insidious way. America will default by increasingly paying our bills with money that is worth less and less each year. A nation pays for its debt in three ways. We can either tax people, we can borrow the money, or we can simply print the money. They all have repercussions. We are approaching our borrowing limit as a nation. We now owe China over $1 trillion. We owe Japan nearly $1 trillion. We even owe Mexico. As we reach our borrowing limit, interest rates will rise and the prices in the stores will rise. You are already seeing this in your grocery stores. You are already seeing this in your gas prices. They are not rising de novo, out of nothing. Your prices are rising because the value of your dollar is falling. The value of your dollar is falling because they are printing up money to pay for this exorbitant debt. In 2008 we went through a banking crisis and we doubled the monetary supply in 4 months. We bought things. The Federal Reserve bought toxic assets. They bought bad car loans and bad home loans. Where once upon a time your dollar was backed by gold, your dollar is now backed by toxic assets--not a very comforting thought. Many pundits are arguing that the tea party has won this battle. They misunderstand the debate. This battle is not about winners and losers, it is about the future of our country. It is about saving ourselves from ourselves. We are headed toward ruin if we continue on this path of spending money we do not have. For decades, America has lived beyond her means. A nation that lives beyond her means will eventually live beneath her means. That day is coming. A day of reckoning looms. That day was never August 2. That day is when the dollar teeters and falls from its perch. That day is when prices soar. That day is when unemployment and a declining standard of living foment discontent and unrest in the street. As Erskine Bowles put it, there has been no more predictable crisis in our history. We have been given all the warning signs. It comes, and this deal will not escape the facts that are looming for us. The President thinks that we need a balanced approach. America thinks we need a balanced budget and that we should not spend money we do not have; that since American families have to balance their budgets, why in the world would we not require our Government to balance its budget? What America needs is a balanced budget in an economy that grows and thrives and creates jobs. Yes, a malaise hangs in the air. America is a ship without a captain. Instead of the President chastising job creators and preaching class envy, we need a President who will show us leadership. The President needs to accept responsibility for an economy that has worsened under his failed leadership. Unemployment is up, gas prices have doubled, and this President will add more debt than all 43 Presidents combined. America got a deal on August 2 but not a solution. What America wants is a solution, not a deal. I hope in the next 6 months the President will find it within himself to lead the Nation, the courage to lead and embrace reform, the reform that is necessary to get this great country going again. I yield the floor.

Mr. PAUL. I will.

Mr. PAUL

Mr. PAUL. What I think this illustrates is compromise--the pundits say compromise is the mark of an enlightened person. We are trying to compromise. I just offered to pass the leader's bill. I have offered to work with them. I am from the tea party. They say we will not compromise. I am willing to raise the debt ceiling. In fact, we worked on a motion that has gotten more votes than any other motion that has been set forward, and that was cut, cap, and balance that would have required a balanced budget amendment to be passed but would have raised the debt ceiling. What do we hear from the other side? Intransigence. Who is refusing compromise? It sounds to me like the other side is refusing compromise. I have with me my distinguished colleague from Utah and would like to hear his thoughts on where the fault lies and where we could come to if we were to compromise to try to find an agreement.

Mr. PAUL. Mr. President, reserving the right to object, I would remind the Senator that there is a difference between the Senate and the House. Our Founding Fathers gave great power and leeway to the Senate. We were meant to be a check and a balance against unbridled enthusiasm sometimes from one party or another. So I would object to that motion.

Mr. PAUL. I ask unanimous consent to engage in a colloquy with my Republican colleague.

Mr. PAUL. Mr. President, I would say that what Americans don't like is empty partisanship. That is what is going on today. Democrats are standing and beating their chests saying: Republicans will not let us have a vote. It is untrue. I have offered to have the vote. We have seen the objection before our own eyes. They would not vote on this. Let's dispense with the empty partisanship. Let's move forward and have a vote. If they would let us have one amendment--an amendment that would gradually balance the budget over 7 to 8 years--I will vote for their proposal and I will ensure enough votes that it will pass. Thank you.

Mr. PAUL. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent for an extension of 2 minutes to finish our thoughts.

Mr. PAUL. When people talk about Washington being dysfunctional, and they are upset with what is going on in Washington, I think one of the things that upsets people is hypocrisy--people who say one thing and do another. That is a sad state of affairs. People run on one idea and then they completely change their ideas. The President was a Senator, and he spoke on the Senate floor. Here are his words in 2006. The fact that we are here today debating raising America's debt limit is a sign of leadership failure. He was sort of pointing fingers. Everybody's pointing fingers. It is someone else's fault. I call that sort of the empty partisanship. His conclusion, then, is voting to raise the debt limit would send a bad signal. It would send a signal to our leaders that they are doing the right thing. I have often said there is no objective evidence that Washington or Congress is spending our money wisely. The Pentagon says they are too big to be audited. They cannot balance their books. There was $100 billion unaccounted for in the budget last year. There are $5 billion worth of duplicate programs the GAO found. There are, I believe, 82 different programs to train workers. Could we not deal with one Federal program training workers instead of 82 different ones doing the same thing? But this is it. The President said raising the debt ceiling would be a mistake. Now that he is President, he has changed his mind. I think the hypocrisy of that is what makes Americans unhappy. The President said the same thing on war. He said no President should unilaterally go to war without congressional authority, and here we are at war in Libya with no vote in Congress. He said he has a piece of paper from the United Nations. We didn't elect the United Nations. We have a Constitution, and it requires those issues be debated in Congress. People are unhappy because we are not doing the people's business. We haven't had a budget in 800 days. Do you know what. It is against the law. It is against the law not to have a budget. We haven't had a budget in 800 days, but the budget law says we should have a budget every year. We are supposed to match our appropriations bills with the budget. We are not doing it. The American people are unhappy we are dysfunctional and that we are not doing the people's business. We have also become profligate spenders--spending money we don't have. I think we risk great dangers. I ask the question to this Senator from Utah: What is the answer? How do we get out of this when we seem to be so far apart, and even on both sides we don't seem to be tackling the issues in a way that would allow for significant cuts in spending?

Mr. PAUL. No. From going to hundreds of tea party rallies and grassroots rallies with voters across America, what I see is they want what is best for America. I don't think they particularly care whether it is a Republican plan or Democratic plan. They want what is best for America. They want a solution. The problem with the debate in Washington is all of the proposals seem to want to add more debt. We have $14 trillion worth of debt, and both the Republican and the Democratic proposal will add $7 trillion to $8 trillion more in debt. What I think the folks in the tea party want--and those who are concerned about passing on the debt to their kids and grandkids want-- is to spend less. I think a great contrast and what illustrates the problem is spending is going up 7 percent a year. Nobody is talking about cutting that spending. They are talking about cutting the rate of growth of that spending. There is a new plan out called the one penny plan. It would have real cuts of one penny on every dollar spent. The other side pulls their hair and says: Oh, you are so radical. We say: We want to cut one penny out of every dollar of government spending. Is that radical? The President has said it is a dysfunctional place. He is right in that sense. I think some of the dysfunction comes from the hypocrisy or from the other side not really listening. For example, the balanced budget amendment. They say polls show routinely 75 percent of Americans are for it. Routinely, about 14 percent of Americans seem to be approving of this body. The question I would have is--maybe it is we are not listening well enough. Maybe we are not doing what the people want.

Mr. PAUL. Mr. President, we are in the midst of a debt crisis, I think some of it created by the President because he has refused to take off the table the fact we would default on our debt. I think that is irresponsible, and without a doubt the President should come forward and say he will pay the interest on the debt. On our side we have been willing to compromise all along. We have been offering plans. We passed two plans in the House. Now we have a plan before us, a Democratic plan, to raise the debt ceiling, and there are some of us who would vote for this Democratic plan who might require some amendments or some compromise. There would have to be some input from our side. Yet even though this bill was introduced yesterday and Republicans said they would vote for it, the Democrats are now filibustering their own bill. What is funny is, they filibuster their own bill and then point fingers and say we are trying to stop things. We are here today to try to move things forward. In the spirit of trying to reach a compromise before the deadline comes, I would ask unanimous consent that the vote on the pending cloture motion occur immediately or as soon as possible, 5 p.m. today.

Mr. PAUL. Mr. President, I would ask unanimous consent that I be allowed to present an amendment. This amendment would be an amendment to the Reid bill. Under this amendment what would happen is, I have at least 10 Republicans who will vote for the Harry Reid bill which would allow a compromise, which allows the debt ceiling to rise. I know the President is worried about having campaign time. He is worried about getting back out and doing some fundraisers. He does not want to consider the debt ceiling again before his reelection campaign. So this amendment I would offer would allow us to move forward in a bipartisan way. All Republicans are asking for is that we balance our budget gradually over a 7- to 8-year period. What this amendment would do that I am asking unanimous consent to present is an amendment that says we will raise the debt ceiling contingent upon passing a balanced budget amendment. I would ask unanimous consent I be allowed to present this amendment to the Reid bill.

Mr. PAUL

Mr. PAUL. Madam President, I am voting no on S. 1103, a bill to create a second 2 year term for the FBI Director. I am opposed to changing the term limits on this important position, which serve as a safeguard and check against the significant power of the position. I am not opposed to Director Mueller and will not oppose his renomination, but I do oppose the idea that term limits should be changed when it is convenient. I thank him and the Bureau for their cooperation and answers to my questions over the last few weeks.

Mr. PAUL

Mr. PAUL. I have a question before we finish. The question I have is: We have not had a budget in 2 years. When is the last time we had appropriations bills and are we working in the committees? See, the people expect us to come up here and do our jobs and I think our job is in committee. We deliberate over a budget in your Budget Committee. Over appropriations, are we deliberating over appropriations or have we had any committee hearings over the debt ceiling or how we could cut spending in order to spend so much money we do not have? Are we in the process of doing what we are supposed to be doing in committee?

Mr. PAUL. What was the intention, though? What was the intention that rule would do? By having a budget was it supposed to limit, then, what each appropriations bill for each subject would be allowed to spend?

Mr. PAUL. So by invoking this rule from the 1974 Budget Act, the Senator's intention has nothing to do with the bill presented before us, it has to do with whether we should be responsible as a government, have a budgetary plan, know how much money comes in, know how much money is being spent, and do the responsible things the American people expect of us. I am concerned what happens if we keep on this path. If we keep spending money at the rate we are spending it, within about a decade entitlements and interest consume the whole budget, that is, if interest rates do not go up. As you noticed the other day when Larry Lindsey wrote about it in the Wall Street Journal, he said if interest rates go up to where they have historically been, we will add another $5 trillion. My fear is the economy will not withstand it, our country will not withstand it, and we need to have somebody to say enough is enough. The country needs to have a plan. We need to budget how much money comes in and how much we can spend. I think this is a good first step.

Mr. PAUL. In this, it had some rules. Right now we are discussing: Do we need new rules to do something about the deficit? This was a rule they thought about back in 1974. It was supposed to make things better. But it shows the rules only work if we obey them. We will be in defiance of this rule. That is the question I have for Senator Sessions: Will we be in defiance of our own rules if we go forward with an appropriation without a budget?

Mr. PAUL. I wish to join in the sort of the outrage that we would consider spending money without having a plan. Who spends money with no plan as to how much you are going to spend or a plan as to what the repercussions are for spending money you do not have? We are spending $100,000 a second. By the time I finish this sentence, we will have spent $\1/2\ million. Of that $100,000 a second, we are borrowing $40,000 a second. The President is asking us now--you all heard about it, the debate is on-- the President is asking us to add $2 trillion of spending and borrowing, of borrowing and spending--$2 trillion. How long will it last? We do not know because there is not a budget, but there is going to be an estimated $2 trillion that will be spent in the next year that we do not have. What does that mean to a country? There are estimates that our deficit now, which approaches the size of our economy, is costing us 1 million jobs a year. What does that mean? That also means less revenue, which means worse deficits. It is all compounding upon itself. We have a rule and a law within the Senate--is it called the budget resolution from 1974?

Mr. PAUL

Mr. PAUL. Mr. President, on August 2, the United States will face the debt ceiling. I am one who thinks we should be debating it every day, every week until we find a solution. But in order to find a solution, we have to first admit we have a problem. We have a significant problem. Raising the debt ceiling is sort of like not paying your credit card bill and then saying to the credit card company: I want to increase my limit. We have been doing that year after year, decade after decade. Both parties have done it. This is not just one party's problem. It is both parties' problem, and it is the country's problem. How big is the problem? We are spending $10 billion a day. Of that $10 billion, we are borrowing $4 billion a day. We are spending $100,000 a second, and we are borrowing $45,000 a second. Senator DeMint, the other day, said it was akin to a drug addiction. You know that to get better from a drug addiction, the first thing you have to admit is: I am addicted. You have to admit you have a problem. That is what is going on. We have to admit as a country we have a problem. But then we get into this debate, and each side seems to have a different position. Is the problem that we are spending too much or is the problem that we are taxing too little? You can look at the numbers and you can actually come up with an objective answer. The answer is we are spending too much. You can look at it in terms of what is spending as a percentage of our gross domestic product? What is spending as a percentage of our economy? Spending under Clinton and under Bush, for about 16 years, was between 19 and 20 percent of our GDP. What is it now? It is about 25 percent of our GDP. So under any objective standard, we are spending more than we were previously. Some would argue--they say: Well, the Bush tax cuts caused this. If we could just get rid of the Bush tax cuts. We are not taxing people enough. But if you look at the numbers, the numbers do not bear out. The numbers are that basically, in 1987, revenue was about 18 percent of GDP. In 1995, revenue was about 18 percent of GDP. In 2003, Bush passed the tax cuts--Congress passed these tax cuts. In 2006, revenue was still at about 18 percent of GDP. Right now, revenue is under 15 percent. So revenue has gone down in 2008, 2009, and 2010. But what happened in 2008? A severe recession, the worst recession since the Great Depression. When we have fewer people working, we have fewer people paying taxes. It has absolutely nothing to do with the Bush tax cuts. They happened in 2003. Revenue stayed steady at 18 percent, which it has historically for 60 years until 2007, 2008. The recession hits, revenue goes down. So we have a lack of revenue. But if you raise rates, you will not get more revenue. If you want more revenue to try to balance our books, you need an economy that employs more people, you need a growing economy. It is all about getting out of the recession. But that is why some of us fear raising rates now, because we think that will harm us and make it more difficult to come out of a recession. Many on the other side say: Well, the rich just need to pay more. They think the rich are not paying enough. They want to somehow say: If the rich would pay more, we could get out of this. But you have to once again look at the facts. There is a resolution on the floor now that the Democrats are promoting. It says that the rich--the people who make more than $1 million a year--that they earn or bring in 20 percent of the Nation's economy. Well, that is true, but they pay 38 percent of the income tax. So the question is, Are the rich paying enough? Well, they bring in 20 percent of the income, and they are paying 38 percent of the revenue. I do not know. The other question is, If you just stick it to the rich and say, well, let's make the rich pay more, what will that do to the rest of us? Do you think we will have more jobs or less jobs if we tax people more? The question also is, Will you get more or less revenue if you do this? Historically, no matter what the rates have been, we bring in about 18 percent of GDP. For example, back in the 1950s, we had tax rates as high as 70 percent on the wealthy. When we did, we brought in 18 percent of GDP. When Reagan came in, he lowered tax rates to 28 percent for the upper limit. We still brought in 18 percent of GDP. The difference was when we brought in lower rates, we brought in a booming economy, more jobs, and we expanded the number of people paying taxes. You expand the tax base. Now we get back to the impasse. There is an impasse up here. The other side says: The rich must share more of the burden. There is a way to do it without raising taxes. There is ultimately a compromise that I think brings both sides together, gets beyond the debt ceiling. If they would talk about it, if we would have a debate down here or an informal discussion, we could fix this tomorrow. If you want the rich to share more of the burden, ask them to pay for their Medicare. I see no reason why the wealthy should not pay the full cost of Medicare. Ask the rich to take less in Social Security benefits. If you means test Social Security benefits--if you say: If you are a wealthy person, guess what, we don't have enough money to give you what we said we were going to give you and you will have to take less--I am perfectly willing to accept that. So there are ways you can do it without damaging the economy. I think raising taxes damages the economy and damages jobs for the working class. We tried this before. About 10 years ago we said let's get those rich people. They put a special tax on yachts. Guess who it hurt. The guy making $40,000 a year building the yachts lost his job; the rich went to the Caribbean and bought their yachts somewhere else. It does not work. It is not good for the economy. It hurts the working class to raise taxes. But if you want to say the rich need to absorb more of the burden, simply have the rich pay more for their benefits or get fewer benefits. I am willing to accept that. Many Republicans are. It is the compromise. Republicans aren't willing to raise taxes. Democrats want to raise taxes. Where do we compromise? Come together and say that the rich can absorb more of the burden by paying more for their benefits or getting fewer benefits. This is a compromise that would work. We could actually get together and raise the debt ceiling. I have said I will vote to raise the debt ceiling if and only if we decide to do something different in this Congress. Congress really has done a poor job. Do you wonder why Congress has a 14-percent approval rating? Because they have been a poor steward with your money--a poor steward. The Congress has not done a good job watching over your money. They have been profligate spenders. So I think that in order for the American people to believe we are going to do a better job, we need a new rule. We need a balanced budget amendment. So I will propose, along with other Senators, to raise the debt ceiling contingent upon a balanced budget amendment so that we balance our budget by law. Some have said: Well, let's just promise to cut spending over the next 10 years. Let's raise the debt ceiling $2 trillion, and then we will promise to cut spending $2 trillion. The problem is that we are not very believable because we have not kept our word in the past and we cannot bind the next Congress. The next Congress will be elected by a new set of people. They will come up here, and they do not have to go by what we are promising. If we amend the Constitution, though, the next Congress will be bound by this, and the next Congress would have to live within its means. I believe this is very important. There is becoming a consensus in our country that says the debt is a real problem. I think the two sides could come together--Republican and Democrat--and say: This is how we would work it out. But I think it means significant cuts in Federal spending. It means statutory caps, meaning government should have to live within its means each year. And I believe we need to amend the Constitution. But if the Democrats say they have to have it that the rich pay more somehow, let's have the rich pay more for their benefits. That is ultimately the compromise. I think you can get the vast majority of Republicans to agree to that, Democrats could agree to that, and we could fix the problem. The American people would be amazed that we got together and we fixed the problem and we moved on. That is what needs to happen. It is not happening in this body. This body needs to debate the debt ceiling, we need to come up with a solution, and we need to move on. We have not had one committee hearing about the debt ceiling. We have not passed a budget in 2 years. We have not passed an appropriations bill in 2 years. We are not doing what we are supposed to be doing. The American people say they want results. They want us to at least have a debate. We do not have to agree on everything, but let's debate and admit what the problem is and move forward. But instead we get obfuscation, and we talk about something that is not really pertinent to what our problems are. We have to, like the drug addict, admit we have a problem. Our problem is spending. It is not a taxation problem. It is not a revenue problem. We have less revenue because we are in a recession. We have a spending problem. The numbers are clear as day. I would say to this body and to the American people, let's balance our budget. Raise the debt ceiling, but let's go ahead and have a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution. I hope we will recognize those problems and move forward. I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.