The National Debt

Floor Speech

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Mr. PAUL. Mr. President, the Senate is considering an infrastructure bill, and I am glad we are. For too long, Americans have been compelled to send their tax dollars overseas to improve the infrastructure of other countries. I have been fighting, for several years, to invest in infrastructure here at home, which is why I find it frustrating that the very people who celebrate this package today actually opposed my efforts in the past.

We have a short memory here in the Senate. Only 2 years ago, I offered my Penny Plan for Infrastructure for a vote. My plan would have invested nearly $40 billion in infrastructure over those 2 years. In those 2 years, nearly 20,000 miles of roads could have been resurfaced. Instead, those investments weren't made and 2 additional years of wear and tear passed by.

The parade of Senators coming to the floor and expounding upon the urgency of this package is nothing less than shocking, particularly when those same Members voted against 20,000 miles of resurfaced roads only a short time ago.

The Penny Plan was not my only effort to invest in infrastructure. Six years ago, I worked on a bipartisan package that would have made $ 130 billion available for infrastructure. Had my plan been enacted into law, Americans would now be driving on 130 thousand miles of new roads.

So, why for more than 5 years have my infrastructure proposals been stifled? For only one reason: each of my proposals were paid for.

And if there is only one thing Congress always agrees on: never pay for any new spending. Ever.

Proponents of this bill claim it is paid for. And by using budgetary gimmicks, they hope they will erect enough smoke and mirrors to obscure this bill's enormous price tag. But this $1.2 trillion bill is not paid for. And, perhaps the most alarming part of the cost, is the authors of this bill know it is not paid for. And we know that because they wrote the bill so as to exempt it from rules that require the bill be paid for.

You see, Congress passed a law back in 2010 mandating that new spending has to be paid for. That law is called statutory pay-go, or pay as you go. And if Congress can't help itself and refuses to offset the cost of new spending, pay-go is enforced by an automatic cut to spending elsewhere.

But Congress rarely adheres to its own rules. Instead, Congress waived pay-go more than 60 times over the past decade and added over $10 trillion to our debt.

This time is no different. This bill, which its proponents say is paid for, also carries a provision that says pay-go won't apply to it.

The only way to ensure Congress adheres to pay-go is through a point of order. If this bill is actually paid for, then you should have no trouble supporting the point of order. But if you vote to waive the point of order, if you vote to exempt Congress from its own rule requiring that we be good stewards of taxpayer dollars, then stop telling people something you know is not true. The truth is, this bill is not paid for.

And every American should ask a simple question: Why won't Congress obey its own rules?

This bill plus the next pork-laden bill will add trillions of dollars of new debt. We are adding debt at an unprecedented pace. There will be repercussions. A day of reckoning awaits.

But today there is a choice to make. A vote for the point of order is a vote not to keep adding debt.

I urge my colleagues to vote with me to stop the bleeding, to stop the red ink that threatens our country's future.

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