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Floor Speech

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Mr. PAUL. Con. Res. 41.

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Mr. PAUL. Mr. President, this year the United States will spend over $6 trillion while only bringing in $4 trillion in revenue. That is a profound gap; $2 trillion will be borrowed this year.

To add insult to injury, Congress spends like drunken sailors without even bothering to pass a budget. There is no budget. The Democrats have passed no budget in the Senate, and the Republicans have passed no budget in the House.

We are going to spend $6 trillion without anybody even thinking about where the money comes from out of budget to afford a $6 trillion government.

In fact, over the past 20 years, Congress has passed a budget less than half of the time. So today, I will attempt to do what both parties have failed to do; and that is, pass a budget.

They didn't ask me to do this. In fact, they would probably prefer I not introduce a budget because it embarrasses the status quo of both parties.

I am only allowed to introduce this budget because they didn't do their job, and once upon a time, someone wrote privileged rules into the Senate that say: If the parties fail to produce a budget, anyone can. So I have leapt at the chance because I think the American people would like to see us do something responsible, like balancing our budget.

The penny plan that I offer today will balance the budget in 5 years. The Federal Government passed an ignominious landmark this year. Our national debt now stands at $35 trillion and grows with each passing second.

To put that in perspective, each taxpayer's share of the debt is about $270,000. The government now spends more on interest to service our Federal debt than it spends on our national defense.

While we spend about 850 billion on the military, we will spend about 890 billion on interest.

We should heed this fact as a warning. As historian Niall Ferguson points out that ``any great power that spends more on debt service than on defense will not stay great for . . . long.''

We must act now if America is to once again be a rising nation.

Well, we are currently on a path toward decline. Right now, we spend nearly $2 trillion more per year than we bring in in revenue. This level of spending imposes a tax on every American. This tax is called inflation. When we borrow $2 trillion, somebody has got to buy it. Someone buys the debt.

When the Federal Reserve buys the debt, they create currency, create new money, out of thin air, which, when it begins to circulate, causes your prices to rise. This is the tax of inflation.

And Americans have felt the pain of inflation tax significantly over the last 4 years. Every day for the last 4 years, American people's purchasing power has decreased for even the most basic items. Since this administration took office, prices have risen nearly 22 percent, and feeding and providing for a family has become more expensive. For example, the price of bacon and eggs increased by nearly 30 percent. If you would like some toast with your breakfast, bread will cost you 11 percent more since the Biden-Harris administration took office. The price of butter is up by 30 percent. When Biden and Harris took office, a gallon of milk cost on average $3.25; today, the price has increased by 25 percent and costs just under $4. Gas prices have risen 22 percent.

And what kind of answer do you get from the administration? What type of answer do you get from the other side of the aisle? They say: Greed is causing prices to rise; that the grocery stores are greedy and are raising the prices; and we must have government come in and fix the prices.

Even on CNN, the mouthpiece for the Democrat party, economists appear to say: My goodness, have they not heard of Venezuela? Have they not seen what price controls do in Venezuela? They lead to shortages and famine. What they did to the Soviet Union, what they did to Communist China. And yet that is what they are proposing here because they misinterpret why the prices are going up.

It isn't that things are more precious; it is that your dollar is losing its value. Your dollar loses the value through inflation because we run a $2 trillion debt.

It is a Ponzi scheme. It is a bait and switch. The politicians come to you and say: Here, we will give you this for free. It is free. It won't cost you anything. We will give you free college. We will give you $25,000 for a house. It is free. There is no cost.

But it is a lie--the lie, the trick, the ruse. It is a lie on the American people because it is paid for through borrowing. And when we borrow, the Federal Reserve will buy the debt, and you will get inflation. So you are going to pay for it through inflation. There is no free lunch. You can't get anything for free. Something for nothing is a charade played on the American people by politicians who just want to gain power over your lives.

Americans will pay dearly for Congress's insatiable appetite for more and more spending. The high level of spending that is currently crushing the American family is just the beginning. If we continue down this unsustainable path, American families will be forced to deal with even higher inflation, confiscatory tax rates, rising interest rates, and a weak economy. It will be harder to find a job and provide for a family because the deals made in the Halls of Congress will always stick the taxpayer with the bill.

Right now, the average American family--their paycheck buys a thousand dollars less of stuff. You have lost a thousand dollars. If you make the same income you made 4 years ago, you are a thousand dollars poorer because of inflation.

Inflation came from these politicians offering you something for nothing. We have to wake up. As spending under the Biden-Harris administration weakened, every American family's purchasing power is also less. At $35 trillion, the Federal debt is nearly twice what it was 10 years ago. That is larger than the entire $25 trillion economy of America--the next five largest economies combined. So you take America's GDP, and you add the next five countries, it still doesn't equal our debt. Our debt is bigger than our economy, plus five more countries.

Whose fault is it? Well, really, frankly, both parties. During the previous administration--during the Trump administration--$8 trillion in debt was added. During the Biden administration--Biden-Harris administration--about $8 trillion is going to be added. It is going to be almost exactly the same when you compare 4 years of a Republican administration to 4 years of a Democratic administration.

So really, there is blame that goes around. But there are alternatives. I am offering an end to the inflation, an end to the debt, and a gradual balance to the budget over 5 years.

How much is $35 trillion? How do you even get your mind around it? Well, to put it in more tangible terms, $35 trillion is enough to fill 34 NFL stadiums with hundred dollar bills. So you take hundred dollar bills, and you just keep piling them into an NFL stadium until you reach the brim; and then if you fill 34 of those NFL stadiums, that would be 35 trillion.

Government spending is so out of control that even if President Biden emptied the bank account of every individual in the United States, it would only cover half of the debt.

Think about that: $35 trillion debt and then all of the savings of all of America--if you took all of their savings, which I am not proposing--but if you took it all, you only pay for half of the debt.

This is an unsustainable course, and many smart people have been saying this. We are headed for a calamity if we don't do something. Yet both parties just keep plowing on. They call what we are going forward with a continuing resolution. I will have none of it.

It is continuing the status quo. It is continuing to borrow $2 trillion a year. We have had a couple of periods in the last year where we borrowed a trillion dollars in a 3-month period. This is alarming, and it is out of control.

America is in a historic state of financial disarray. Right after the end of World War II--the world's most expensive war--our cumulative Federal debt was 18 percent larger than the GDP, the entire economy.

Now, in a period of relative peace, the debt is 22 percent larger. There are no excuses for this. Our debt now is worse than it has been at any time as a percentage of GDP.

Are we certain that if a crisis erupts--if there were a war that we were participating in, another pandemic, God forbid, or some other catastrophe--that we will be able to borrow enough to meet the challenge? Without a drastic change of course, fiscal ruin is only a matter of time.

America's leading financial minds have already sounded the alarm. The Chairman of the Federal Reserve said that Federal spending is on an unsustainable path, and it is past time for Congress to correct it.

The CEO of JPMorganChase--America's largest bank--warned that the Federal Reserve must reduce its deficits before lenders finally say enough is enough and stop loaning the government money.

Now, you ask: How will this occur? Will it occur suddenly or gradually? Will we gradually lose our dominance? Will we gradually no longer be the reserve currency of the world or will we show up on a Friday to sell the debt and no one buys it?

The Federal Reserve will always buy it. The people say: The Federal Reserve will buy it. If the Federal Reserve buys all the debt, interest rates will go through the roof and so will inflation.

Even the head of the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office cautioned that our financial situation is unprecedented and suggested the United States is now on an alarmingly weak fiscal footing.

As interest payments on the national debt crowd out the rest of the government's budget, tax increases, inflation, and eventual default on the debt are what lie ahead for the American economy.

Unfortunately, a debt crisis will not just stop with our economy. A threat to our financial security is also a threat to our national security.

We must remember that the surest path to peace is leaving no doubt in your adversary's mind about your ability to respond to aggression. With increasingly dubious financial health and a large share of resources devoted to interest payments, the United States is sending the opposite message, a message of weakness. Yet Congress has repeatedly chosen to ignore the deficit, raise the debt ceiling, fund foreign wars we can't afford--just put it on our tab.

That is what will happen today. They will vote on my budget to balance within 5 years, but there won't be enough votes. They will go merrily along with no budget, but they will also go merrily along at a spending clip that will borrow $2 trillion. And it will be all of the Democrats and about half of the Republicans who will go along with continuing to spend at this clip.

Since entering the Senate, I have introduced several proposals to balance the budget. In 2017, I introduced a budget that would have simply frozen spending for 5 years. And it balanced because, as the economy grew and revenue grew, you didn't even have to cut spending. All you had to do was agree not to spend more than you spent last year. Most American people would tolerate that. But not in Washington, no. Republicans and Democrats said: No way will we ever freeze spending.

What does a business do when they are short of money? They freeze spending. They downsize. They do whatever it takes to stay afloat so they can make their payments. But not in Washington.

So they didn't pass my budget in 2017 to freeze spending. They kept doing the same: borrow and spend, borrow and spend.

In 2018, I offered another plan to balance the budget. But by this time, a spending freeze no longer balanced it in 5 years because the spending had continued to increase. So I offered a one penny plan, cut 1 percent across the board. You can probably just cut waste and malfeasance and cut 1 percent. Cut 1 percent across the board, and it would still balance. That was the penny plan in 2018. But as things have gotten worse, as we got to the craziness of the COVID hysteria, where, once again, Republicans and Democrats shut the economy down and then said: Hey, you don't have to suffer. You don't have to work. We will just send you a check.

This was one of the worst decisions that had been made in recent history: no work, free checks. It was all borrowed. So the spending grew at an alarming rate through the COVID years, through the Trump administration.

And then we finally got beyond the urgency of it--people were no longer dying in significant numbers--and the Biden administration said that we are going to pave every road in the land, and we are going to borrow more money.

So we borrowed $8 trillion under Trump. We borrowed another $8 trillion under Biden. And now you can't balance the budget with freezing spending over 5 years. You can't balance the budget with cutting one penny; you actually have to cut six pennies. You have to do a 6-percent cut over 5 years to balance the budget.

Even the Biden-Harris administration's own Treasury has admitted that the current path is unsustainable. The math is clear. And I urge my colleagues, do not get in an argument with math. You will lose.

It is plainly wrong to stick our children and our grandchildren with the bill for our reckless spending. Thankfully, America is still home to the world's most dynamic economy and resilient individuals.

With revenue still expected to rise in the next 10 years, we are not beyond hope. The six penny plan that I am producing and introducing today will create conditions for growth and avert economic ruin. Right now, our interest payments eat away at our funds that are available for defense spending, and the budget leaves no room for emergencies.

Our current trajectory weakens our national security and drains productivity from the economy. History will remember those who had the courage to make the hard choices now and who chose to leave their children with less of the burden.

For just six pennies on the dollar, we can reverse this dismal trajectory. In just 5 years, we can restore trust in the U.S. dollar, the U.S. economy, and walk the U.S. Government off the fiscal cliff.

Vote yes on this plan. Vote yes on restoring fiscal sanity. Vote yes on securing a future for our country.

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Mr. PAUL. Mr. President, it has been proposed that there is no place to cut, that all of this spending is being used in such a noble fashion. I would propose that there are a couple of areas we might all agree on.

We spend about $1 million studying Japanese quail to see if they are more sexually promiscuous on cocaine. Hmm. It seems like we could have just polled the audience on that one. It seems pretty clear. But we can't even cut things like that--$1 million studying Japanese quail on cocaine to see if they are more sexually promiscuous.

We spend $2 million studying whether, when you go to Luby's and you go to the cafeteria and someone sneezes in front of you on the food, you are more or less likely to take that food. Could we not cut that?

We spend about three-quarters of a million dollars studying selfies. If you take a selfie of yourself smiling and look at it later in the day, does it make you happy?

One of my favorites comes from 40 or 50 years ago, but the organization still exists and still keeps getting more money. This was from a conservative Democrat. This was a long time ago when they existed. William Proxmire used to do the Golden Fleece Award. One of his favorites was, they wanted to determine which made you more aggressive--tequila or gin--so they got a group of fish, and they fed a group of fish gin, and then they fed the other group of fish tequila. I scratch my head and say: Well, gosh, everybody knows, right? It has to be tequila.

So, I mean, the thing is, is there anyplace to cut? Sure, there is. Most of these things come from the National Science Foundation. I have been harping on them for years. Do you know what they did last year? Every Democrat and half of my Republicans, who are our fellow travelers, doubled the amount of money they give to the National Science Foundation. So when they say, ``Oh, well, that ludicrous thing? I would cut that,'' well, they are not going to cut it if you give them twice as much money.

So there are lots of ways. There is lots of fat. There are improper payments to the tune of billions and billions of dollars. They write a check to the wrong person. They write a check to dead people. I came to the floor and tried to get unanimous consent to quit sending checks to dead people. When we had the pandemic and they sent all the free checks, a lot of them went to dead people, for goodness' sake.

Do we ever cut any of the spending? Is there ever any remote slowdown in the spending? Every year, it goes up because they care about people, and they want to give you free stuff, but it is not free. There is going to be a $2 trillion deficit, and you are going to pay for it through inflation.

There is no mystery to inflation. The Federal Reserve buys our debt. When they do and the new money enters the circulation, it dilutes the value of the currency. Instead, what do you hear from the other side? Oh, the grocery store owners are greedy. We must put price controls on.

Well, they should remember the story from the Soviet bloc countries. A man goes into the store, and he says: Are you the store that doesn't have any butter?

The guy behind the counter says: No. We are the store that doesn't have any toilet paper.

That was an old joke of the Soviet bloc countries. That is what you get with price controls. That is what you get when you misunderstand what causes inflation. That is what you get when you want to pattern yourself after the phenomenon of disaster which is Venezuela.

So what I am asking is, we should spend what comes in. It is what every American family does. It is what most States do. It is what most cities do and what most counties do--spend what comes in--even over half of the European Union. We think of them as socialist countries, and some border on it. But, guess what, they spend what comes in. Half of the European Union balances their annual budget.

They are destroying this country by giving you free stuff. The stuff they are giving you is not free. There is no free lunch. You can't have free college. Somebody has to pay for it. There is no money up here. They are not giving you somebody else's money. They are not even taxing the rich. They are just borrowing it. It is all borrowed. They borrow to send it to Ukraine. They borrow to give it to you for free school. They will give you free cars. They will give you free houses. None of it is free. It is what causes inflation.

When you go to the grocery store, think of these people masquerading as Santa Claus. They are the ones who have caused the price of your steak to double, the price of milk to go up, the price of gas to go up. It is not the greedy grocery store owner; it is the shrinking dollar and the politicians masquerading as Santa Claus who are causing this economic havoc and ruin.

I recommend a ``yes'' vote on the only budget that will be presented this year because both parties have abdicated their roles. My budget balances it in 5 years. It is what we should do for the strength of America.

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