Executive Session

Floor Speech

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Mr. PAUL. today.

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Mr. PAUL. Mr. President, I rise to present an amendment to this bill. My amendment is simple, and it reflects the kind of commonsense budgeting we ought to be doing in Washington. Today I offer the penny plan for infrastructure. This plan cuts one penny, 1 percent of all spending, and puts that money in a fund for infrastructure.

My amendment would put about $12 billion per year into a fund to fix our roads and bridges. Every agency would still get 99 percent of the spending they got the previous year. Sure, they would need to trim some fat, but they would still be fine. A lot of businesses and organizations will tell you they have to cut much greater than 1 percent a year.

I visited a business recently that in the downturn of 2008-2009 had to cut 30 percent of their expenditures. Business men and women in America are used to having to cut expenditures; government never does.

Whether it is our highways or our bridges or our waterways, our infrastructure in America is falling behind. Everyone knows it, but like so many things, Washington can't figure out how to fix it, how to find the money to fix it.

Politicians on both sides of the aisle talk about trillion-dollar infrastructure plans but offer no way to pay for it. My plan is much more modest, doesn't increase taxes, and doesn't increase our debt. The penny plan for infrastructure pays for it with money we have already allocated.

To be clear, we do have the money. Washington just spends it in inappropriate ways. Washington spends, for example, $233 million on a single highway in Afghanistan. We have money to pave roads in Afghanistan, but they will not vote to spend the money here to pave roads.

The people in Afghanistan got $233 million for a road, but they couldn't even maintain it, so we gave them another $22 million to maintain the road.

We spent $326 million to pave 2,000 kilometers of dirt roads in Afghanistan. We have enough money to spend over $300 million to pave dirt roads in Afghanistan, but we can't come up with $1 billion to help our infrastructure here. They were supposed to pave 2,000 kilometers; it turned out they only paved 159 kilometers. They paved less than 10 percent of what they actually promised to do with the money. What is that equal to--$2.7 million per mile.

It is outrageous, and it goes on year after year after year. I think it is time we try a new way. Just in Afghanistan, we have spent more than the Marshall Plan did to rebuild Europe after the devastation of World War II, and we are still there, spending good money after bad. So when people come up here and say that a 1-percent cut would somehow be a disaster, we need to remind them that the money is there. They just have to listen to the people and pull the plug on this kind of crazy spending overseas.

My amendment would move 1 percent of current spending, and it would put that 1 percent of the current spending bill into infrastructure.

Supposedly, Republicans, Democrats, and Independents all agree on infrastructure. Yet we don't allocate more money to it because we are too busy paving roads in Afghanistan. If we did this, it would be about $12 billion. It is not enough to fix everything in the country. It is a modest sum. This is actually a modest proposal to move over a few billion dollars.

Do you know what it would do? Twelve billion dollars would pave up to 6,200 miles of a new four-lane highway, resurface 20,000 miles of a four-lane highway, and 2,200 miles of a six-lane interstate. It would pay for multiple big-ticket infrastructure projects that are currently stuck without funding. In my State, they have been advocating money for the Brent Spence Bridge across the Ohio River since before I was elected--8 or 9 years of advocating for a bridge for which we can't find the money. We have the money. Quit paving roads in Afghanistan, and let's start building bridges and paving roads here.

This amendment would improve our infrastructure, benefit our communities, eliminate government waste, and help our economy. By cutting 1 percent of the current spending, we will force all of government to do a better job.

There is at least 1 percent waste. There is probably 10 percent waste in government. I am asking to cut 1 percent of waste. Take that money you cut by making government more efficient and put it into infrastructure.

I encourage the Senate to consider this amendment. I think we have very few amendments come forward where people have a chance to vote for infrastructure.

At this point, I am about ready to do that.

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