Setting Forth the Congressional Budget for the United States Government for Fiscal Year 2026 and Setting Forth the Appropriate Budgetary Levels

Floor Speech

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Mr. PAUL. Mr. President, I rise today to introduce a budget that balances over 5 years. My budget, the Six Penny Plan, the Six Penny Plan budget, cuts 6 percent of all spending to rebalance in just 5 years.

I am able to introduce this budget because neither Republicans nor Democrats introduced a budget this year. So we are running a $7 trillion government without a budget this year. So I think it is important that we have at least some debate and vote on a budget.

Most Republicans say they are for a balanced budget amendment. Most of them have voted for it at some point in time. Yet most of the budgets and most of the spending that go through here seem to be adding to the debt, not canceling it out.

Since I was elected, Congress has passed a budget less than half of the time. For almost five decades, Congress has passed all required annual appropriations bills only four times. So four times in 50 years has Congress actually gone through and individually passed the appropriations bills. As a consequence, the looting of the American taxpayer continues.

By promising yet another so-called clean continuing resolution, Republicans are doubling down on embracing what they once considered to be reckless spending levels.

Today, I propose a clear path back towards fiscal responsibility. I urge the Senate to adopt my Six Penny Plan that will balance the Federal budget.

This year, the United States will spend $6.7 trillion while bringing in about $4.7 trillion. That is $2 trillion more being spent than what is coming in. A deficit of this magnitude should be concerning enough even on its own merits. But to add insult to injury, Congress passed a budget just 5 months ago which set a spending cap of almost $6 trillion for the year. So 5 months ago, Congress did actually pass a budget-- halfway through the year we were already in--to spend $6 trillion this year. Turns out, though, we have spent $6.6 trillion. So we couldn't even get it right 6 months ago when the vast majority of Republicans voted for a budget that said they were going to spend $6 trillion in a year that was half over, and now they have spent $6.6 trillion.

Next year, it is going to be even worse. The budget that was passed in the spring said we would spend $6.3 trillion next year, but it turns out it is going to be $7.2 trillion next year.

What is going on here? We keep passing budgets. We keep saying we are going to get better. We keep saying the bills we are passing are making the deficit less. Yet the deficit keeps getting worse.

So even when Congress passes a budget, they seem to immediately renege on the deal they just passed. The numbers in the budget end up not being of consequence because the spending goes on unabated.

This week, Congress will likely vote on locking in spending levels. The spending levels will be the same spending levels that Republicans criticized as the Biden spending levels last December. So when there was a Democrat in the White House, when President Biden was there, all the Republicans were unified in saying ``We despise the Biden spending levels. We are against spending in deficit and deficit spending. We are against all of that''--until the Republicans got in charge, and 3 months later, they voted for the exact same levels.

The continuing resolution from March of this year is the exact same levels as the Biden spending levels. What are we going to vote for in a couple of days here? The Biden spending levels again. What does that lead to? Two trillion dollars in deficit.

So every time we vote for a continuing resolution, for continuing the spending at the same level, we are voting for a level of spending that is $2 trillion short of what comes in.

According to the Congressional Budget Office, enacting a yearlong CR--continuing resolution--will result in blowing through next year's spending target by nearly $1 trillion.

So the target that was passed last spring was 6.3, but the spending is actually going to be 7.2. How can you be off a trillion dollars? How can you with a straight face go home and say: Oh, well, we were just off a trillion.

And this year, we don't have a budget because--I don't know--maybe our math was so bad last year, we decided not to do it. But the deficit next year is going to be $2.1 trillion.

It is getting worse, not better. Next year's deficit will be $100 billion more than the deficit this year.

It was not that long ago that Republicans were castigating the Biden administration and saying they were reckless. Now we are doing the same thing.

It was not that long ago that Republicans argued to the American people that Biden's overspending inevitably was causing inflation; it was to blame for the rise in the cost of goods. Anybody remember Bidenomics? Anybody remember Biden inflation? It was accurate because it was based on debt, and debt causes inflation. When the Federal Reserves buys the debt and monetizes the debt, that recreates inflation.

But the same thing is happening. Nothing has changed. A new party in charge, and the same spending and the same debt.

It wasn't that long ago that conservatives were staunchly opposed to raising the debt ceiling, and only the unholy alliance between Democrats and Big Government Republicans would get the spending bills through, would get the debt ceiling through.

But now it has evaporated. Virtually the entire Republican Party now supports this debt. On an inauspicious day, March 15 of this year, the Republican continuing resolution was signed into law. On the Ides of March, Republicans took ownership of the Biden spending levels. The Biden spending levels are now Republican spending levels.

To make matters worse, this summer, Republicans voted to raise the debt ceiling by $5 trillion. We have never ever voted to raise the debt ceiling that much. It used to be the conservative line that we held the line and said: We are not doing that or, if we are going to raise the debt ceiling, we are going to do it in a small amount for a short period of time in order that we would discuss this again and again and again until we get it right.

But Republicans now own the spending problem. Republicans now own the debt expansion. Republicans must rediscover our principles of fiscal responsibility. Our country's future depends on it.

Our national debt now stands at $37 trillion and grows with each passing second. If you have ever seen the usdebtclock.org, the website, the numbers are spinning literally out of control. To put this debt in perspective, every American household is on the hook for over $238,000 to cover Uncle Sam's reckless spending spree.

To put it bluntly, the state of our Nation's fiscal health is bleak. The government now spends over a trillion dollars just on interest. This is more than we spend on our national defense.

We should heed this fact as a warning. As Hoover Institution Historian Niall Ferguson points out, ``Any great power that spends more on debt service than on defense will not stay great for very long.''

We must act now if America is to, once again, be a rising nation, but we are currently on a path toward decline. If we continue down this unsustainable path, American families will be forced to deal with even higher inflation, confiscatory tax rates, rising interest, and a weak economy. It will be harder to find a job and provide for your family because the deals made in the Halls of Congress always stick the taxpayers with the bill. You either are going to have to pay for it through taxes--the debt will always be paid either through taxes or through inflation and high prices at the grocery store.

Government spending and fiscal malfeasance have not only weakened every American family's purchasing power, but our national economy is weaker as well. At $37 trillion, the Federal debt is nearly twice what it was 10 years ago. The Federal debt is now larger than the entire economy. Our economy is about $29 trillion; the debt is at $37 trillion or, to put it in more tangible terms, the U.S. debt is large enough to fill 34 NFL stadiums with $100 bills.

Government spending is so out of control that even if every bank account in the United States were emptied to pay down our debt, it would only cover just about half of what Washington owes. So if everybody's bank account was liquidated in the whole country, it only would pay for half of the debt.

This is an amazing problem. This is an extraordinary problem. Something must be done.

America is in a historic state of financial disarray. Right after the end of World War II, the world's most expensive war, our accumulated debt was 18 percent larger than the entire economy. We are now 20 percent. So we have now exceeded even the debt of World War II.

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 JPMorgan Chase, America's largest bank, warned that the Federal Government must reduce its deficits before lenders finally say enough and stop loaning the government money.

Just this week, the Director of the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office suggested that the U.S. economy is weakening. The people who rank our credit have downgraded the U.S. credit rating.

As interest payments on the national debt crowd out the rest of the government's budget, entitlement cuts, inflation, and eventually 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 with aggression.

With increasingly dubious financial health and a larger share of resources devoted to interest payments, the United States is sending a message of weakness.

Yet Congress has reportedly chosen to ignore the deficit, raise the debt ceiling, and continue to fund foreign wars. Instead of budgeting, Congress decided to kick the difficult decisions down the road. Unfortunately, continuing spending at the Biden administration levels is a path that is not sustainable and will further our fiscal decay with $2 trillion annual deficits as far as the eye can see.

Since entering the Senate, I have introduced several proposals to lead us back to a balanced Federal budget. In 2017, I introduced a budget that would freeze spending. In 2017, if you simply froze spending--you didn't cut one penny from anything, but you froze spending for 5 years--we would have balanced in 5 years just by freezing spending.

I introduced a budget a few years later, and it would have taken one penny--1 percent across the board would balance in 5 years. A few years later, I introduced it again; it was a two-penny plan. Then came the pandemic. We spent so much money. We closed the economy down. We did such terrible things to the country, and now it is a six-penny plan. It takes a 6-percent cut.

How can we possibly survive a 6-percent cut?

I will tell you how I present it to people. I have people come in. They always have something that seems to be of value for people. I will give you an example. The folks that come in and they are looking for Alzheimer's research. I have family members with Alzheimer's. I have a great deal of sympathy. I look at them and tell them where we are, and I tell them we are a rich country; we ought to have some government money researching Alzheimer's. And I say: You know, we are $2 trillion short this year. If we cut everybody by 6 percent, we will be able to balance the budget. So the Alzheimer's research, we spend $100 million on. If next year we spend $94 million and we did that for everyone, we could balance the budget.

Interestingly, people who are emotionally involved with this--moms, dads, grandparents with Alzheimer's--look at me and say: You know what? For the good of the country, we can do that.

Yet if you talk to people around here, they go: Oh, you hate old people. I don't hate old people. I aspire to be an old person.

The thing is, you have to have a little bit of a haircut for every program up here. If you just cut one program, you will never get through it. You have to cut everything all across the board, not because you don't like the recipients, not because you don't want to help people, but because you don't want to destroy our country.

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 steer the U.S. Government away from this fiscal cliff. History will remember who had the courage to stand up to make these hard choices. History will remember those who chose not to leave this enormous bill to their children.

Vote yes on this plan. Vote yes on restoring fiscal sanity. Vote yes on securing the future for our country. 159, S. Con. Res. 22.
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