Trade Act of 2015

Floor Speech

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Mr. PAUL. Mr. President, I rise today in opposition to raising the debt ceiling. I rise particularly in opposition to raising the debt ceiling without getting any sort of spending reform or budgetary reform in return. In fact, it will be completely the opposite. We will be raising the debt ceiling in an unlimited fashion. We will be giving President Obama a free pass to borrow as much money as he can borrow in the last year of his office--no dollar limit. Here you go, President Obama, spend what you want. We do this while also exceeding what are called budget caps.

We have been trying to have spending restraint in Washington. It hasn't worked very well, but at least there are some numbers the government is not supposed to exceed. These include spending caps for military spending as well as domestic spending.

When I first arrived in 2010, I was part of the movement called the tea party movement. We came into prominence, and I was elected primarily because I was concerned about the debt, worried about the debt we were leaving to our kids and our grandkids, worried that we were destroying the very fabric of the country with debt.

We came here in 2010, and we negotiated and negotiated, and President Obama said: I won't negotiate with you. I won't negotiate with a gun to my head.

The media said: You always have to raise the debt ceiling. It is irresponsible to use that as leverage to get reform.

But you know what. We did get reform. The conservatives put together something called cut, cap, and balance. It was passed overwhelmingly in the House, blocked in the Senate, but ultimately there was something passed called sequestration, which put caps on both military and domestic spending. It did slow down the rate of growth in government for a little while.

This is the problem with Congress: Congress will occasionally do something in the right direction, and then they take one step forward and two steps back. In 2013 we gave up on the sequester and we added back in about $60 billion worth of money. Now they are doing the same thing again. This time we are going to add back in $80 billion--$50 billion in 2016 and another $30 billion in 2017.

We are doing the opposite of what we should be doing. We should be using the leverage of the debt ceiling by saying: We are not raising it again until you reform your ways, until you begin spending only the money you have.

Instead, we are saying: Here, Mr. President. You can raise the debt as much as you want. You can spend as much as you want while you are in office, and we are going to do nothing. In fact, we are going to help you. We are going to exceed the caps so everybody gets what they want.

So everyone in Washington is going to get something. The right is going to get more military money, the left is going to get more welfare money, the secret handshake goes on, and the American public gets stuck with the bill.

I think one of the most important things that we do is defend the country. If you ask me to prioritize the spending, I will say we have to defend the country above and beyond and before all else. But that doesn't mean we are stronger or safer if we are doing this from bankruptcy court.

I think the No. 1 threat to our country, the No. 1 threat to our security is debt, this piling on of debt. The debt threatens our national security. Yet we just want to pile it on and pile it on.

This deal will do nothing but explode the debt. In fact, it doesn't even limit how much the debt can go up. We are giving the President a blank check.

We are in the middle of a filibuster. This filibuster will go on until about 1:00 in the morning, and then we will find out who the true conservatives in this town are. If you are conservative, you will say: There is no way I am going to vote to give an unlimited power to the President to borrow money. If you are a conservative, you are going to say: We shouldn't be exceeding the budget caps; if anything, we should be passing more stringent budget caps.

It disappoints me greater than I can possibly express that the party I belong to that should be the conservative party doesn't appear to be conservative. This is a big problem.

I am traveling the country, and I have asked Republicans everywhere. I have yet to meet a single Republican who supports this deal.

In the House, they voted on this yesterday. Do you know what the vote was? Two to one among Republicans say that this is a god-awful deal and that we shouldn't touch it with a 10-foot pole. It is a terrible deal. House Republicans understood this.

We should be doing the opposite. We should be taking the leverage of saying we are not going to raise the debt ceiling unless we get reform. Instead, we went to the President and said: Here, raise the debt ceiling as much as you can possibly spend over the next year, and we will let you exceed the budget caps. It is irresponsible. It shows a lack of concern for our country, for the debt, and it should go down in defeat.

When I ran for office in 2010, the debt was an enormous issue. The debt was $10 trillion. Some of us in the tea party were concerned because it had doubled in the last 8 years. It doubled from $5 to $10 trillion under a Republican administration. Many of us were adamant that Republicans needed to do a better job. We had added new entitlement programs, we added new spending, and the deficit got worse under Republicans. Now we are under a Democratic President and it is set to double again. This President will add more to the debt than all of the previous Presidents combined. So we will go from $10 trillion now to nearly $20 trillion. We may get close to $20 trillion, and now that we have increased the debt ceiling an unspecified amount, we may well get to $20 trillion by the time this President leaves.

Is that a problem? Some people say: It is just a big number. I don't know what $1 trillion is.

If you want to imagine $1 trillion, take thousand-dollar bills and put them in your hand. Thousand-dollar bills 4 inches high is $1 million. If you want to have $1 trillion in thousand-dollar bills, it would be 63 miles high. We are talking about an amount of money that is hard to fathom.

You say: What does that mean? How does that hurt me or my family?

Economists say we are losing 1 million jobs a year through the burden of debt. Economists also say that when your debt becomes as large as your economy, you are in a worrisome place; that when the debt is as large as the economy, there is a possibility that you may enter into a period where you might suffer a panic or a collapse or a burden so great that your economy can't withstand it. In 2008 we were very close to a panic. I think we get closer with each day.

The No. 1 priority up here shouldn't be trying to scrounge around and find new money to spend. It should be trying to conserve. It should be doing something that some say is radical but I say is the absolute essence of common sense; that is, we should spend what comes in.

So often up here, things become partisan and people just want to point fingers and say: Oh, it is that party that did it; they are the ones responsible for the debt.

But I want to let you in on a secret. This is a secret that goes on and on and on up here. It is something I call the unholy alliance. It is the unholy alliance between right and left--they both have sacred cows they want to spend money on. Instead of saying: The debt is a real problem, and we both have to conserve in both areas, they get together secretly and raise the money for their sacred cows. So on the right we are busting the limits because the right wants more military spending. The left wants more for welfare. The unholy alliance is the secret handshake. And what gets worse? The debt. We are borrowing $1 million every minute, and it is not going to end in a pretty way.

What do other conservatives have to say about this deal? Stephen Moore at the Heritage Foundation writes: ``It is the worst budget deal to be negotiated by the GOP since George H.W. Bush violated his `no new taxes' pledge in 1990.''

Rush Limbaugh says: ``The Republican party cannot campaign by running around blaming the Democrats for destroying the budget, for overspending, for threatening the very fabric of the country.'' They can't do it because they are now complicit.

We can't point fingers and say the Democrats are the big spenders. We now, by this deal, become complicit. We become equally guilty of supporting new debt.

Some say: Well, gosh, you have to raise the debt ceiling, right? If you don't raise the debt ceiling, there will be a default.

Hogwash. Do you know how much money comes into this place every month through taxes? About $250 billion comes in in taxes. Do you know what our interest payment is? About $30 billion, might be as high as $60, $70, $80 billion. There is never not enough revenue to pay for interest. People say we couldn't pay for everything. I say maybe we shouldn't spend it on everything. We have plenty of money that comes in every month to spend on interest, to spend on Medicare, to spend on Social Security, and to spend on soldiers' salaries and veterans affairs and the rest, but maybe government shouldn't be doing much else.

These are the questions we would have to ask: What would happen if the debt ceiling didn't go up? We would have a balanced budget. How bad would that be? If your debt ceiling didn't go up, you would spend what comes in. That is what every American family does--they spend what comes in.

I think this is absolutely what we need to do, but even I am willing to compromise, so I have put forward a compromise. I put forward a compromise that we tried in 2011 called cut, cap, and balance. My compromise would cut the deficit in half in 1 year--a dramatic lessening of the burden of debt. That is the cut. The cap is that my bill would actually cap spending at 18 percent of GDP--18 percent of the total amount of money spent on the economy. Why did we pick 18 percent? Because that leads to a balanced budget. The last part of my bill of cut, cap, and balance is we would pass a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution. I have kind of jokingly said--but probably seriously--if we pass a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution and we pass term limits, I will go back to being a doctor, which is my first love anyway.

We have to fix the country. We are destroying the country with debt. We are drowning in a sea of debt, and neither party seems to be concerned with it anymore.

So what I would do is I would say, yes, I will compromise. I will raise the debt ceiling under these three conditions: cut the deficit in half, cap the spending, and pass a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution.

People say: Well, there aren't the votes for that.

Why don't we have a vote? Why don't we allow a vote on cut, cap, and balance, the conservative alternative to this deal we have on the floor? Why don't we vote on an alternative? Because there won't be any amendments allowed. This will be pushed through without amendments. I really object to that. This is supposed to be a body of deliberation. We are supposed to be able to deliberate over how we are going to fix the problems of the country. And I think this is the No. 1 threat to us. We are accumulating debt at $1 million every minute. Someone has to stand up and do something about it.

Taxpayers for Common Sense says about this: ``We're not a fan of the Bipartisan Budget Agreement of 2015.''

CATO writes: ``The Gipper's [Ronald Reagan's] ghost is probably looking down from heaven at the new budget deal between congressional leaders and the Obama administration and saying `there they go again.'''

``So let's rephrase the question: What do advocates of fiscal restraint get in exchange [for raising these spending caps]? Well, if you peruse [this] agreement, it's apparent they don't get anything.''

What we have traded is an increase in the debt ceiling--not just an increase, an unspecified increase in the debt ceiling. We have said to President Obama: You can spend as much money as you want throughout the rest of your Presidency--no limits.

The National Taxpayers Union writes:

If the question on the budget and debt ceiling package is ``Deal or No Deal?'' taxpayers should clearly opt for the latter.

While the agreement contains a few meritorious provisions, it fails other sufficient savings and structural reforms necessary to address our Nation's $18.1 trillion debt problem. The debt is without question the No. 1 problem in the country. We will have a vote this evening, and that vote will be: Do you care? Are you willing to do something to slow it down? Do you think we ought to use the leverage of the debt ceiling to slow down spending or are you a profligate spender who will vote to bust the caps and who will vote to give President Obama unlimited borrowing authority?

I think it is a clear-cut question. I will vote no, and I will continue this filibuster as long as there are enough votes to allow it to continue.

UNANIMOUS CONSENT REQUEST--S. 2182

Mr. President, at this point, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the immediate consideration of my bill, Cut, Cap, and Balance, which is Calendar No. 274, S. 2182. I further ask that there be 1 hour of debate equally divided in the usual form; that following the use or yielding back of time the bill be read a third time and passed and the motion to reconsider be made and laid upon the table.

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