Rand Paul

Mr. PAUL

Mr. PAUL. Mr. President, 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 XIV, paragraphs 3 and 4 for the purpose of moving to proceed to S. 1071, as follows:

Mr. PAUL. Mr. President, 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 XIV, paragraphs 3 and 4 for the purpose of moving to proceed to S. 1072, as follows:

Mr. PAUL. Mr. President, 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 XIV, paragraphs 3 and 4 for the purpose of moving to proceed to S. 1073, as follows:

Mr. PAUL. Mr. President, 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 XIV, paragraphs 3 and 4 for the purpose of moving to proceed to S. 1076, as follows:

Mr. PAUL. Mr. President, 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 XIV, paragraphs 3 and 4 for the purpose of moving to proceed to S. 1077, as follows:

Mr. PAUL

Mr. PAUL. Mr. President, I was a small businessman before I was elected to the Senate. I know well the struggles small businesses face because of government regulations and taxes. I also know that small businesses are a key driver of economic growth and employment. That is why I join the Senate and the President in recognizing the contributions of small businesses all over the country during National Small Business Week. Unfortunately, this resolution goes a step beyond recognizing the hard- working entrepreneurs who are our small businessmen and businesswomen. The resolution also praises big government and using taxpayer dollars to subsidize small businesses. I do not believe small businesses need government assistance to exist. I do not believe we need an entire agency of the Federal Government to encourage entrepreneurs. Quite the opposite--I believe that with less government, businesses of all sizes will be created, existing businesses will grow, and the American spirit will thrive. That is why I voted against this resolution.

Mr. PAUL

Mr. PAUL. Mr. President, there has been a lot of discussion of the PATRIOT Act, and we are told basically that we wouldn't be able to capture these terrorists if we didn't give up some of our liberties, if we didn't give up some of the fourth amendment and allow it to be easier for the police to come into our homes. We were so frightened after 9/11 that we readily gave up these freedoms. We said: Well, the fourth amendment is not that important. We will just let the government look at all of our records, and we will make it easier for the government to look at our records. The question we have to ask, though, is whether we would still be able to catch terrorists by using the fourth amendment as it was intended and having the protections of the fourth amendment. What we have to ask ourselves is, think about the worst person in our communities. Think about someone accused of murder or rape or a pedophile. We think of these people, and do we know what happens if someone is accused of that? Even if it is 3 o'clock in the morning and they want to get their records or they want to go into their houses, they call a judge. This is something very important. They get the warrants almost all the time. But it is one step of protection. What we have is the protection where we don't have police officers writing warrants to come into our houses. They have to have it reviewed by a judge. What we have done through the PATRIOT Act is taken away some of the protections of the fourth amendment. The fourth amendment says we need to name the person and the place to be searched. We have taken away those protections. The fourth amendment says we need to have probable cause. We have taken that away and made it to, if it is relevant, or we think they might be related to it. Originally, the FISA Court lowered the standards somewhat on the fourth amendment, but it recognized that it was lowering the standard and was careful. We had secret courts set up, and the FISA Court was the court that dealt with things that had to do with national security or terrorism or intelligence. The information was kept secret so we didn't let everybody in the world know the name, but the name had to be divulged to the judges. Well, those who argue that we have to have the PATRIOT Act, or we have to do this or we will not be able to stop terrorism, they need to explain why the FISA Court did tens of thousands of search warrants and never turned any down. In fact, the history before the PATRIOT Act was no search warrant had ever been turned down. So do we want to give up our liberties in exchange for more security? Franklin said those who give up their liberty in exchange for security may end up with neither. Right now, if someone has a Visa bill that is over $5,000 and chooses to pay for it over the phone, which is a wire transfer, the government is probably looking at their Visa bill. They don't have to show probable cause, and they don't have to have a judge's warrant. This does apply to U.S. citizens. Often they will tell us: Oh, it is only foreign terrorists we are looking at. They want us to feel good about allowing them to spy. But this spying is going on by the tens of thousands and even by the millions. With regard to these suspicious activity reports, we have done over 4 million of them in the last 10 years. We are now doing over 1 million a year. These suspicious activity reports, all the trigger is--it doesn't have to have anything to do with terrorism. The trigger is just that someone has over $5,000 that they have transferred by bank account. We say, well, the courts have decided our bank records aren't private. Well, the hell they aren't. They should be private. If someone looks at my Visa records, they can tell whether I go to the doctor and what kind of doctor I go to. They can conceivably tell what kind of medication I am on. They can tell what kind of magazines I read. They can tell what kind of books I order from Amazon. Do we want a government that looks at our Visa bill? Do we want a government that looks at all of our records and is finding out what our reading habits are? One of the provisions applies to library records. Do we really want the government to go and find out what we are reading at the library? We now have a President who is wanting to know where a person has contributed before they do work for the government. Do we really want that kind of all-encompassing government that is looking at every record from top to bottom and invading our privacy? There is another aspect of these so-called national security letters. These are basically warrants that are written by FBI agents. No judge reviews them. This is specifically what James Otis was worried about when he talked about general warrants that weren't specifying the person or the place and that were written by police officers. This is a problem because this is--we depend on the checks and balances in our society. We never want to give all of the authority to either one group of Congress or to the President or to police or judges. We have checks and balances to try to prevent abuse. Some have said, well, if one has nothing to hide, why do you care? The thing is, it will not always be angels who are in charge of government. We have rules because we want to prevent the day that may occur when we get somebody who takes over our government through elected office or otherwise who is intent on using the tools of government to pry into our affairs, to snoop on what we are doing, to punish us for our political or religious beliefs. That is what we don't ever want: to let the law become so expansive. We have to realize we can still get terrorists. We get rapists and murderers every day by calling a judge. That is what I am asking for. I am asking that we go through and obey the fourth amendment. Many conservatives have argued that, well, they love the second amendment. Some liberals say, well, they love and will protect the first amendment. Do you know what. If we do not protect the entire bill of rights, we are not going to have any of it. If we want to protect our right to own a gun, we need to protect our gun records from the government looking at our gun records and finding out whether we have been buying a gun at a gun show. We need to protect our privacy. If we want to protect the first amendment, we have to have the fourth amendment. In fact, we specifically had to go back there. The original PATRIOT Act said we could not even consult with our attorneys. We could not even tell our attorneys. We were gagged from telling our attorneys. Even now, though, one may say: I do not know if they have investigated me. Do you know why? Because they tell our phone company, if they are looking at our phone records right now or our Visa records, it is against the law for Visa or the phone company to tell us that. It is hundreds of thousands of dollars of fines and jail time. It is 5 years in jail if our phone company tells us they have been spying on us. Some of this does not even require a letter from government. Some of it is done by the banks. The suspicious activity reports, we have simply told the bank: Here, anybody who deals in cash, anybody who has over a $5,000 wire transfer or who deals in large amounts of money--it is incumbent upon the bank to spy on their customers now. This is a real problem, and I think we need to have some argument and debate in our country over these things. Some want to have these things permanently. They want to permanently give up their fourth amendment protections, and I disagree strongly. Not only would I let these expire, but I think we should sunset the entire PATRIOT Act and protect our liberties as intended by our Founding Fathers. James Otis was an attorney in Boston, and he wrote about these things they called, in those days, writs of assistance. These were general warrants. The king would write them--or actually they were written by soldiers here. They did not name the person to be searched or the place, and they were used as a way to have the king have his way with the people and to bully the people. The idea of general warrants is what sorely offended our Founding Fathers. That is why we got the fourth amendment. The fourth amendment was a product of a decade or more of James Otis arguing cases against the British Government. But the question we have to ask ourselves when thinking about these issues is, is it so simple that we can just say: Well, I am either against terrorism or I am going to let terrorists run wild and take over the country. One can be opposed to terrorists. We can go after terrorists. We can go after murderers and rapists and people who commit crimes. But we can do it with a process that protects the innocent. I think so far they say we have looked at 28 million electronic records. We have looked at 1,600,000 text messages. We have 800,000 hours of audio. We have so much audio they do not even listen to it all. Twenty-five percent of what they have recorded of our phone conversations is not listened to because they do not even have time to listen to it. My point would be that we are eavesdropping on so many people it could be we are missing out and not targeting. Just like at airports-- every one of us is being searched in the airport. We are not terrorists, and we are no threat to our country. Why are we not looking for people who would attack us and spending time on those people? Why do we not go to a judge and say: This person we suspect of dealing with this terrorist group. Will you give us a warrant? Why don't we have those steps? Instead, we are mining and going through millions of records. I think we are overwhelmed with the records that we may well be doing less of a good job with terrorism because we are looking at everyone's records. The bottom line is, I do not want to live in a country where we give up our freedoms, our privacy. I do not want to live in a country that loses its constitutional protections of us as individuals. We do have a right to privacy. We have a right not to have the government reading our Visa bills every month. We do have rights, and we should protect them. We should not be so fearful that we say: Well, I am a good person. I don't care, just look at my records. If we do, we are setting ourselves up for a day when there will be a tyranny, when there will be a despot who comes into power in the United States and who uses those rules for which we said: Oh, well, I don't have anything to hide. What happens when someone takes over who believes one's religion is to be combatted, who believes one's political beliefs and literature should be combated? What happens when that day comes? We cannot give up our liberty. If we do, if we give up our liberty and we trade it for security, we will have neither. So I rise in opposition to the cloture motion. I will be offering amendments to the PATRIOT Act this week, and we will be having a real debate about how we can stop terrorism but also preserve freedom at the same time. I thank the Chair.

Mr. PAUL

Mr. PAUL. Mr. President, sports teams often have a motto. They want to describe how they are going to win the event. The Senate Democrats have a motto and it goes something like this, ``I am from the government and I am here to help.'' Beware when your government comes to help. They have figured out there is a problem and the problem is gas prices are rising and people are being hurt by the rising prices. Actually, if we measure inflation the way we did back in the 1970s, we have inflation of 10 percent. Senator Coburn is exactly right. It has to do with the fact that we are losing the value of our dollar. Our dollar is going down in value because we spend money we don't have and we are running up these enormous deficits. But it is a problem nonetheless. But those who believe government is always the answer are rushing to rescue us. They are rushing to rescue us from high prices at the gas pump, but they haven't even diagnosed the problem, so they are going to come up with the wrong solution. Their solution is to raise taxes on oil companies. Do my colleagues know what taxes are? Taxes are simply a cost. If you run a business and I raise your costs, you will raise your prices. So let's see. Prices are too high, so we are going to raise the cost, which will raise the prices further. It makes absolutely no sense. It is because their motto is wrong. Their motto is, ``I am here from the government and I am going to help you.'' Their motto is, ``It is the government that is going to solve your problems.'' But they are going to solve your problems by compounding your problems. The price of gasoline is a problem. If we include the price of gasoline and the price of food in the CPI, it would be 10 percent or higher. People are struggling to pay for gas. What are the main things people who are just getting by pay for? Their gas, their food, their rent. So how are we going to make it better? We are going to make it worse before we make it better. We are going to raise costs to the oil companies by raising their taxes, which means we will pay more at the pump. It is economic illiteracy and it is what is wrong up here in Washington. We still have too many people who do not understand the basic economic realities. If you raise costs on a business, if you raise taxes on a business, you will raise prices at the pump. The interesting thing is, there are some answers. They say: Well, let's go after those greedy oil companies because they are making a profit. Out of every $1 you spend at the pump, about 7 cents is profit to the oil companies. Well, do you know what. If you eliminate profit, you will not have oil companies. Everybody works for a profit. We all work harder because we want to maximize our profit. Who owns the oil companies? Is it a bunch of greedy rich people running their fingers through piles of gold? Are they Midas in some room full of gold? You own the oil companies. I own the oil companies. If you have a 401(k), if you have an IRA, if you have a mutual fund, you own the oil companies. OK. Corporations are owned by people. Do some people make a lot of money in the corporations? Yes, but if we limit that or try to obscure that or try to get rid of profit, you will get rid of companies. Then where will they go? They will go overseas. Oil companies are international. If you make it hard for them to do business here, they will flee our country. And they already do. We have high corporate taxes in our country, so they keep their profits overseas. Lower corporate taxes--do not raise taxes--lower taxes and people will bring their profits home to the United States. This is their profit, as shown on this chart: The oil companies make about 7 cents on the dollar. How much does the Federal Government take? The Federal Government takes 18 cents of every $1. Do you want to have lower gas prices this summer? Do you want to help the people who are struggling? Let's have a gas tax holiday. It is only a short-term solution, but let's get rid of the 18 cents for the next 4 months through the summer season. It will cost the Treasury. There will be less money coming into the Treasury: $10 billion to $12 billion over 4 months. Let's take it from somewhere else. We are spending $30 billion a year in foreign aid. This is money we give away to other countries so they can build schools, they can build bridges, so they can rebuild their infrastructure. We give this away to foreign countries. A lot of times it winds up in the hands of foreign leaders who simply steal it. Mubarak was said to have gotten $60 billion over 30 years and accumulated at least $5 billion to $10 billion we can count that he stole. Many of these dictators throughout the African nations, as well as throughout the rest of the world, have simply stolen our foreign aid money and used it for their own personal aggrandizement. Let's eliminate the gas tax. Let's take the money from foreign aid and let's give it back to the American people who have worked hard to earn it. You cannot do this forever, but you can do it for 4 months, and pay for it by getting rid of foreign aid. That would help people. That would lower the price of gasoline, and that would be a stimulus to the economy. What I am saying is, let's have a gas tax holiday. Let's eliminate Federal taxes for the next 4 months on gas, and let's take the money that would be lost, put it into the highway fund, but let's take it from money we are giving away to other countries. That would be a short-term answer. There is also a long-term answer. Senator Coburn was right that much of the price of gasoline rising is from inflation. Basically we are destroying the value of the dollar. But there is another reason gas prices rise: because demand for oil and gas is outstripping the supply. Why don't we have more supply? Because the current administration is basically an enemy to production, an enemy to drilling, an enemy to all things related to energy. We now are going back and looking at permits to mine coal that have been approved for 10 years. We are taking away drilling permits to drill for oil in Utah, in Alaska, off our coast. If we want gasoline prices to be less, if we want to send less money to Middle Eastern countries that hate us that we have to buy oil from, let's make more here. Let's drill for oil. Let's produce more here. Let's drill in Alaska. Let's open up new places to drill. Can we do it responsibly? Yes. Nobody wants to damage the environment. Do it responsibly, but let's produce energy here. We have, as Senator Coburn says, 160 million barrels of oil waiting to be extracted. Let's go for it. But we have to have a government that is friendly to energy. We have a government now, an administration that is unfriendly to energy and at every aspect of producing energy places roadblocks. They think for some reason we can get electricity to supply our country from some windmills that are made in China. What we need is, we need oil and gas production in our country. We need nuclear energy in our country. We need coal in our country. We have the ability, we have the resources, but we need to get government out of the way. Instead, what we are doing is placing new obstacles. There will be a long-term solution that Senator McConnell and our party will introduce. I will support that also. It will encourage domestic production of oil and gas, domestic production of energy. That is what we need. But you are not going to get it until we have new faces here in Washington because the current crop of faces is opposing production at every turn. I wish to conclude by saying, if you want to help people, even for a short period of time, there is a short-term solution. Let's get rid of the gas tax for 4 months. Let's pay for it by not sending the money overseas to have other countries either steal it or build their own infrastructure. Let's keep those U.S. tax dollars here at home. Better yet, let's keep them in the pockets of the consumers by having a gas tax holiday. Thank you very much. I yield back the remainder of my time. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. PAUL

Mr. PAUL. Mr. President, it is amazing to me to be lectured to and hear about how awful the tea party is from folks who have never been to a tea party to hear what the tea party represents. Come on down. Bring your Huey Long rhetoric that there will be a chicken in every pot and a windmill in every backyard. Bring it down to the tea party and let's have a discussion. Bring it out to the public. We hear from those who want to lecture the tea party about cutting spending. Who among these folks has voted against an appropriations bill? We haven't even seen one this year. We didn't see a budget. We are spending $2 trillion that we don't have, and they are here blaming it on the tea party. Who is in charge here? It is not the tea party. Blame it on us. Give us an appropriations bill. Give us a budget. Do something constructive to fix the fiscal problems we have up here. They say compromise is the ideal. They tell the tea party: You need to compromise. But do you know what the compromise is? They want to raise taxes. The debt commission wants to raise taxes. The President wants to raise taxes. That is what they are talking about. Yesterday, the President said he is going to cut $4 trillion. Well, try to read what is going on here. He said he was going to spend $46 trillion a month ago in his budget. Before we even discuss his budget, he is going to cut $4 trillion off the $46 trillion he is going to spend. These are no cuts. We will spend more this year than we spent last year. Forget about all the numbers, all the baselines, and forget about 6, 60, 30, 78, or 0, which is what the CBO scored this yesterday--zero in cuts. Forget about it and ask your Representatives: Are we going to spend more this year than last? If we are, that is not a cut. Ask your Representatives, ask your Senators: Will the deficit be more this year than last year? The deficit will be bigger this year. We threaten to shut down government over nothing because we are not cutting spending in any serious way. They want to blame it on the tea party because in their secret caucus meetings they have done a poll that says the tea party could be the villain. Call them ``extreme,'' call them all ``tea partiers,'' say the tea party has ``taken over'' the Republican Party. Do you know what the tea party believes in? Good government. We believe in balancing the budget, in reducing spending. We have plans to fix Social Security. We introduced a plan yesterday. If the other side is serious about fixing entitlements, we have a plan. Come to us and work with us, but don't just come down here and call us names. Before you send any more money to Washington, ask your representatives whether they are spending your money wisely. Mr. President, $100 billion in the budget last year is unaccounted for. We don't know where it was spent or we think it was improperly spent--$100 billion. In our senatorial offices we get several million dollars. Some of us want to be frugal with that and send some back to the Treasury. We plan on sending several hundred thousand dollars back. We want to know where the money goes. We are still not certain. We have been asking for months. Some people say that money is kept in some fund for 3 years and may go back. Other people told us that the leadership spends that money. We don't have a definitive answer for even trying to save a couple hundred thousand dollars of your money that we have control of. The Pentagon spends a lot of money. Are they spending the money wisely? You don't know because we cannot audit them. Why? Because the Pentagon tells us that they are too big to audit. You heard about the companies saying they are too big to fail. The government now tells you they are too big to be audited. We got a partial audit of the Federal Reserve, and we got some information from that. We are now fighting the war against Qadhafi. Last month, we were giving him money. We gave him some foreign aid, and we helped to bail out his national bank. The national banks in those countries are the leaders' piggy bank. Half of it is probably spirited off to secret accounts in Switzerland. The U.S. taxpayer bailed out Qadhafi's bank, and now we are bombing it. The budget bill that we are talking about has now been scored by the CBO and will cut almost nothing--maybe a couple hundred million dollars. It will increase defense spending by $8 billion and cut spending by $8 billion. The net is about zero. Our deficit this year will be bigger than last year. Our overall spending will be bigger this year than last year. We are not yet serious in Washington. We have not yet recognized the severity, the enormity, and the significance of how big this deficit is. This deficit is going to have serious repercussions. The Chinese have bought over $1 trillion of our debt, and the Japanese, nearly a trillion. The Japanese have suffered an enormous national disaster. The question is, Will they continue to buy our debt or can they? The other question is, How long can a government continue to exist that spends more than it brings in? On the other side, they want to blame the tea party or the Republicans or the rich people. Do you know what. Both parties are responsible--Republicans, Democrats, Senators, Congressmen, the President--everybody up here is responsible. It is not one party or the other. When Republicans were in charge, they ran up the deficit. Now the Democrats are in charge, and the main difference is that they are doing it faster. The Republicans weren't doing a good job either during our time in power. We have to understand that the people can do things; not everything has to be done up here. The States can do things. We have to believe once again in the American dream. Believing in the American dream is not standing on the floor and castigating rich people. What is great about our country is that any among us--any of our kids--can become rich people if they work hard, go to school, and achieve. We live in a mobile society, and that is what the American dream is about. We got away from Europe because all the land was owned and stifled by the nobility. We came here where there was plenty of land and opportunity, and the American dream is believing in that. The interesting thing is, when they try to soak the rich--this old Huey Long stuff--it is actually failing with the American people because many of us believe that our kids could gain great wealth or great success. We still believe in the American dream. If they want to castigate that and say forget about it and say what we need is just more government, they need to explain to people why they don't believe in capitalism, in the American dream, and why they don't believe in the greatness of America. I still believe in America. I want to get government out of the way. I think we cannot have an America that succeeds until we are able to do something about our debt crisis. I fear that no one up here--or very few here--on either side recognizes the severity and imminence of this problem. My hope is that before a crisis occurs in our country we will begin to seriously discuss balancing our budget and have plans to do so and seriously cut spending.

Mr. PAUL

Mr. PAUL. Mr. President, I voted against this short-term continuing resolution for the same reason I voted against the last one and the one before that--because it does not set us on a path to fixing the spending and debt problems our country is facing. As I have said before, there is not much of a difference between a $1.5 trillion deficit and a $1.6 trillion deficit--both will lead us to a debt crisis from which we may not recover.

Mr. PAUL

Mr. PAUL. Mr. President, 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 XIV, paragraphs 3 and 4 for the purpose of moving to proceed to S. 768, a bill to provide for continuing operations of Government in a fiscally responsible manner.

Mr. PAUL

Mr. PAUL. Mr. President, I very much thank the majority leader for allowing this important debate to occur. During his campaign, Candidate Barrack Obama said no President should unilaterally initiate military conflict without Congressional authority. I agree with that statement. It is a very important constitutional principle and something that I think deserves debate. I think the most important thing we do as representatives is voting on whether to go to war. If Congress does not vote to go to war or does not vote on the notion of going to war, we would have an unlimited Presidency, and this is a very dangerous notion. I would take this position no matter what the party affiliation were of the President because I believe very strongly in the constitutional checks and balances. We will vote today on the President's own words verbatim. During the election, the President said: ``The President does not have power under the Constitution to unilaterally authorize a military attack in a situation that does not involve stopping an actual or imminent threat to the Nation.'' Clearly, the circumstances in Libya do not rise to this, and I think this vote is incredibly important. Madison wrote that: The Constitution supposes what history demonstrates. That the executive is the branch most interested in war and most prone to it. Therefore, the Constitution has with studied care given that power to the legislature. ``Don't tread on me'' was a motto and a rallying cry for our Founding Fathers. The motto of Congress appears to be: ``Tread on me, please tread on me.'' The Congress has become not just a rubber stamp for an unlimited Presidency, but, worse, Congress has become a doormat to be stepped upon, to be ignored, and basically to be treated as irrelevant. Some would say: We had no time. We had to go to war. There was no time for debate. When we were attacked in World War II on December 7, Pearl Harbor, within 24 hours this body came together and voted to declare war on Japan. There is no excuse for the Senate not to vote on going to war before we go to war. The President had time to go to the United Nations, have a discussion, and a vote. The President had time to go to the Arab League, have a discussion, and a vote. The President had the time to go to NATO. But the President had no time to come to the people's house, to the Congress, and ask, as the Constitution dictates, for the approval of the American people and for the approval of Congress. Why is this important? It is important because when our Nation was founded, we were founded as a constitutional Republic. We placed limitations not only on the President but on the Congress. We are supposed to obey the Constitution. These are important principles and we have gone beyond that. We have gotten to the point where my question is, Are we even obeying the Constitution in this body? This is a sad day. This is a sad day for America. The thing is, we need to have checks and balances. Do we want an unlimited Presidency, a Presidency that could take us to war anywhere, anytime, without the approval of Congress? Some have said: We are going to have a vote sometime, sometime in the next couple weeks. When we get around to it, we may have a debate about Libya. Had the President shown true leadership, the President would have, when he called the United Nations, when he called the Arab League, when he called NATO, the President would have called the leadership of the Senate and the leadership of the House, and we would have been here within 24 hours, having what should be the most momentous debate this body ever has on sending our young brave men and women to war. We are currently engaged in two wars, and we are now going to be engaged in a third war. The interesting point is, when we went into Iraq and Afghanistan, we had votes in this body. President Bush came to Congress and there were votes. The War Powers Act--some on the other side say: This is no big deal. The President can do whatever he wants as long as he notifies Congress within a certain period of time. This is not a correct interpretation of the War Powers Act. The War Powers Act does say he needs to notify Congress. But the War Powers Act also says the President must meet three hurdles before taking our troops into harm's way. No. 1, there should be a declaration of war or there should be an authorization of force from this body or there should be imminent danger to the Nation. None of those were adhered to. The law was not adhered to. Some will say: The War Powers Act, no President recognizes it. Well, The War Powers Act is the law of the land, and the President needs to respect not only the statutory law of the land but the Constitution. I do not think these are trivial questions. But I am bemused, I am confused, I do not understand why your representatives are not down here debating such a momentous event as going to war. I can think of no vote and no debate more important than sending our young men and women to war. It should be done reluctantly. We should go to war only when threatened as a nation. When engaged in two wars, we should debate the prudence of being involved in a third war. These are not trivial questions. I am amazed this body does not take the time to debate whether we should be in Libya. Some have said: We will debate it next week. The problem is, the debate should occur before we go to war. At this point, we will have a vote. We will have a vote on the President's own words. I will yield for a minute or two for a question, if that is OK. I yield to the Senator from Utah.

Mr. PAUL

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

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

Mr. PAUL. On December 7, 1941, we were attacked and the President declared war. We had a session within 24 hours. On 9/11, we were attacked by people coming from Afghanistan. We met within 3 days and had a use of force authorization. I think there is a problem with sort of saying it is OK to declare that the President can go to war after he has already done it. In Afghanistan and Iraq, with all the complaints from many people on the different wars in which we are involved, President Bush did come to ask for the authorization of force. We have had 2 to 3 weeks of this issue. They had time to go to the U.N. They had time to go to the Arab League. They had time to go to everyone. I think the Senator from Illinois should be as insulted as I am that they never came to Congress. The War Powers Act has specific criteria that allows the President to use force: a declared war, when he has use of authorization, or when we are in imminent danger. Which one of those meets the War Powers Act with regard to Libya?

Mr. PAUL. Madam President, we are engaged in a third war at a time when our country is struggling under an enormous debt, at a time when we are engaged in two wars. Historically, our country has fought war by asking for congressional authority. This was true in Iraq. This was true in Afghanistan. The President came to Congress, and there was a vote on use of force prior to him engaging in force. Some say: Well, this is no big deal; the President should be able to fight war whenever he wants to fight war. I beg to differ, and our Founding Fathers begged to differ. Madison said that the Constitution supposes what history demonstrates, that the executive is the branch most prone to war and most interested in it. Therefore, the Constitution has, with studied care, invested the power to declare war in the Congress. I think this is an incredibly important debate. When we talk about sending our young men and women into harm's way, into another war, the fact that we would have a President send us to war without any debate-- your people's representatives have had absolutely no debate, and we are now involved in a third war. The language of my resolution is not unfamiliar to many. The language of this resolution is the President's words. In 2007, Barack Obama said: The President does not have power under the Constitution to unilaterally authorize a military attack in a situation that does not involve stopping an actual or imminent threat to the nation. This was very clear, what the President said. I agree with what Candidate Barack Obama said. We should not go to war without congressional authority. These are the checks and balances that give you a say, that give the people of America a say through their representatives. This allows us to say when we go to war through our Congress, not through one individual but through 535 individuals whom you elect. I think the decision to go to war is such an important one that we should not leave it up to one person. Our Founding Fathers agreed with this. In the 1970s, after Vietnam, we voted on something called the War Powers Act. We did give the President the right to go to war in certain circumstances. These circumstances were, one, if Congress had declared war; two, if Congress had authorized the use of military force, or three, if there was imminent danger to our country. I think all of us recognize that. If we were in imminent danger of attack, we would allow the President some latitude, but we would expect very quickly for him to come to Congress and ask for permission. In this instance, even the Secretary of Defense has said that Libya is not in our national interest. There is no threat to our national security. Yet we are now involved in a third war. We have already spent $600 million in the first 3 days of this war. There has been no constitutional authority given to the President to be committing troops to this war. This is such an important constitutional principle that, while I am new here in the Senate, I am appalled that the Senate has abdicated its responsibility, that the Senate has chosen not to act and to allow this power to gravitate to the President. I think that the precedent of allowing a President to continue to act or to initiate war without congressional review, without congressional votes, without the representatives of the people having any say, is a real problem. There was an article this morning in the Washington Times by GEN Mark Kimmitt. In that, he says that there is a climate of cognitive dissonance surrounding the discussion as the military objectives seem detached from U.S. policy. The lack of connectivity between the use of force and campaign objectives, the subordination of the military to a nondecisive purpose, turns decades of policy on the use of force on its head. This is from General Kimmitt this morning: Vital national interests are not threatened. . . . Nor have sanctions failed or diplomacy been exhausted. . . . We are putting the lives of our troops at risk in a nondecisive role for a mission that does not meet the threshold of a vital or national interest. General Kimmitt goes on further: For a military carrying the burden of three wars on its back for the foreseeable future, a policy of more frequent intervention and suboptimal use of force as an instrument of diplomacy is a mistake. I come from a State--Kentucky--that has two military bases. I see our young men and women going to war, and I worry about their families and themselves engaged in two wars. Some of these young men and woman have been going to war for 10 years now. And the President now is going to engage us in a third war without any consultation, without any voting in Congress, and without any congressional authority. I believe this is a very serious breach of our Constitution. It is something we should not let happen lightly. It is something that we should object strenuously to and that we should force a debate on in this body. Many debates historically have happened here, many important debates. And what is happening now is we are abdicating our duty and allowing this to be made unilaterally by one individual. I think it is a mistake, I think it is a travesty, and I think it should end. There have been some questions about who these people are whom we will be supporting in this new war. I think there is no question that Qadhafi is a tyrant, an autocrat, and someone whom freedom-loving people would despise. However, do we know who the rebels are? During the 1980s, we supported the Freedom Fighters in Afghanistan. Do you know who turned out to be the leader of the Freedom Fighters, or one of the leaders? Osama bin Laden--now our mortal enemy--was receiving money from the United States and support from the United States for over a decade. In fact, the State Department's stated goal in Afghanistan during the 1980s was ``radical jihad.'' We were in favor of radical jihad because we thought the Islamic radicals hated the Russians worse than us. They did until they got rid of the Russians, and now they hate us as much or more. I think we have to be very careful in going to war. I told my constituents when I ran for office that the most important vote I would ever take would be on sending their men and women, the boys and girls, the young men and women in my State or anywhere else in the United States, to war. To me, it is amazing--amazing--that we would do this so lightly without any consideration by this august body, send our young men and women to war without any congressional approval. There have been some reports in the media about possible ties of al- Qaida to the rebels. This morning in the Washington Post, a former leader of Libya's al-Qaida affiliate said he thinks freelance jihadists have joined the rebel forces. A NATO commander said that some of al- Qaida and Hezbollah forces are fighting Qadhafi forces. Former jihadist Noman Ben Otman estimates there are 1,000 jihadists in Libya. These are the rebels. We have to ask ourselves, when Qadhafi is gone, who will take his place? A 2007 West Point study showed that 19 percent of foreign al- Qaida fighters in Afghanistan hailed from Libya. Libya has been supplying the second leading amount of jihadists to the war in Afghanistan. Interestingly, where do these fighters go? Do the fighters come back to Libya to haunt us? When Qadhafi is gone, will we now have an al-Qaida-supported government in Libya? But I think most important are not the practical aspects of going to war, it is that we didn't follow the Constitution in going to war, and we should have. The Constitution says very clearly that the power to declare war is the power that was given to Congress and not to the President. James Madison in the Federalist Papers was very explicit that this was a power given to Congress and not to the President. The President's own words are incredibly important here. The hypocrisy is amazing. In 2007, the President said: The President does not have the power under the Constitution to unilaterally authorize a military attack in a situation that does not involve stopping an actual or imminent threat to the nation. Yet here we have a President cavalierly taking us to war. He seems to have had a lot of time to talk to people. He talked to the Arab League. They had time to get together and vote on it. He talked to the U.N. They had time to get together and vote on it. But he had utter disregard and contempt for the most important body in the United States that represents the people--the U.S. Congress. Utter contempt. He has gone to NATO. He has gone to our allies. He has gone to the U.N. He has gone to the Arab League. But he has not had one single minute of debate in Congress. To add insult to injury, he chose to go to war while in Brazil, while Congress was not even in session. This really should not be the way we operate as a constitutional republic. I am saddened that no one here seems to stand up and say: Why in the world would we let a President take us to war without any debate? Why in the world, when we are involved in two wars, would we get involved with a third war without having a debate in Congress? This, to me, is a remarkable and really tragic set of events. I hope that the Congress and the Senate in particular will see fit to pass this motion which sends the bill back to committee with specific instructions. The specific instructions are the President's words, and I will be more than interested to see whether his supporters here in the Senate will support the candidate Barack Obama or now the hypocritical version that has become our President. I think this is an important question beyond any question we will address in this year. Our fiscal problems are really a tragic problem we face now, but this really pales in comparison, to usurp the power of war, to take that power upon himself unilaterally without any debate in Congress. I urge the passage of this motion to commit to the committee.

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

Mr. PAUL. Madam President, I have a motion at the desk.

Mr. PAUL. I know the word ``hypocritical'' is a strong word. I don't use it lightly. But the words we are using in this resolution that we will get a chance to vote on are the words from the President. The President said: The President does not have power under the Constitution to unilaterally authorize a military attack in a situation that does not involve stopping an actual or imminent threat to the Nation. How does the Senator from Illinois square that with his actions?

Mr. PAUL

Mr. PAUL. Can we report the bill, please?

Mr. PAUL. I have a motion to present to the desk.

Mr. PAUL. Has morning business concluded?

Mr. PAUL

Mr. PAUL. I ask unanimous consent to set aside the pending amendment and call up my amendment, No. 199.

Mr. PAUL. This amendment would cost $200 billion in spending. Earlier this morning we voted, nearly unanimously in this body, to cut 5 percent from our legislative budget. Similar to so much in Washington, it sounds good. I voted for it. But 5 percent of our legislative budget will be a few million dollars. We have a deficit this year of $1.65 trillion. We are awash in debt. It is America's No. 1 problem. Even the administration has said our national debt is our No. 1 threat to our national security at this point. We have to get our fiscal house in order. Voting to cut our own budget by 5 percent is wonderful. It is a first step. It is about $1 million--a couple million dollars. It will not put a dent in the overall problem. If we were truly concerned as a body about our deficit, we could cut the entire budget by 5 percent. It has gone up by 25 percent in the last couple years. If we were to cut our entire budget by 5 percent, it would be about $200 billion. That is what I am proposing, a $200 billion cut in spending. Are we bold enough? Will we do it? If we do not do it, what happens? My fear is, if we do not have significant cuts in Federal spending, that ultimately in the next few years we could have a debt crisis. This amendment will give us a chance, will give the Members of this body a chance to say: Are we serious? Are we serious about addressing the debt problem or do we only want to do token things such as cutting our legislative budget 5 percent? It is a good start, but it is not enough. This was actually only a sense-of-the-Senate resolution, so we didn't cut our budget by 5 percent. We said we might be in favor of that. This would be a real cut, $200 billion. I hope the Senate will support it. I yield the floor.

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