Establishing the Commission on Freedom of Information Act Processing Delays

Floor Speech

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. PAUL. I ask unanimous consent to engage in a colloquy with my Republican colleague.

The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

Mr. PAUL. Mr. President, we are in the midst of a debt crisis, I think some of it created by the President because he has refused to take off the table the fact we would default on our debt. I think that is irresponsible, and without a doubt the President should come forward and say he will pay the interest on the debt.

On our side we have been willing to compromise all along. We have been offering plans. We passed two plans in the House. Now we have a plan before us, a Democratic plan, to raise the debt ceiling, and there are some of us who would vote for this Democratic plan who might require some amendments or some compromise. There would have to be some input from our side. Yet even though this bill was introduced yesterday and Republicans said they would vote for it, the Democrats are now filibustering their own bill. What is funny is, they filibuster their own bill and then point fingers and say we are trying to stop things. We are here today to try to move things forward.

In the spirit of trying to reach a compromise before the deadline comes, I would ask unanimous consent that the vote on the pending cloture motion occur immediately or as soon as possible, 5 p.m. today.

The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Illinois.

Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, reserving the right to object, under the filibuster rules of the Senate, there is a requirement of 60 votes for cloture. We have said we are prepared to move to a timely vote on this pending amendment, a majority vote, the same as Speaker Boehner had in the House. I would object unless the Senator from Kentucky wants to amend his unanimous consent request to make it clear that this will be a unanimous consent which I have spelled out in detail, if he would like me to present it.

Mr. PAUL. Mr. President, reserving the right to object, I would remind the Senator that there is a difference between the Senate and the House. Our Founding Fathers gave great power and leeway to the Senate. We were meant to be a check and a balance against unbridled enthusiasm sometimes from one party or another. So I would object to that motion.

The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection to the original request?

Mr. DURBIN. I object.

The PRESIDING OFFICER. Objection is heard.

Mr. PAUL. Mr. President, I would ask unanimous consent that I be allowed to present an amendment. This amendment would be an amendment to the Reid bill. Under this amendment what would happen is, I have at least 10 Republicans who will vote for the Harry Reid bill which would allow a compromise, which allows the debt ceiling to rise.

I know the President is worried about having campaign time. He is worried about getting back out and doing some fundraisers. He does not want to consider the debt ceiling again before his reelection campaign. So this amendment I would offer would allow us to move forward in a bipartisan way.

All Republicans are asking for is that we balance our budget gradually over a 7- to 8-year period. What this amendment would do that I am asking unanimous consent to present is an amendment that says we will raise the debt ceiling contingent upon passing a balanced budget amendment.

I would ask unanimous consent I be allowed to present this amendment to the Reid bill.

The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection?

Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, I object.

The PRESIDING OFFICER. Objection is heard.

Mr. PAUL. What I think this illustrates is compromise--the pundits say compromise is the mark of an enlightened person. We are trying to compromise. I just offered to pass the leader's bill. I have offered to work with them. I am from the tea party. They say we will not compromise. I am willing to raise the debt ceiling. In fact, we worked on a motion that has gotten more votes than any other motion that has been set forward, and that was cut, cap, and balance that would have required a balanced budget amendment to be passed but would have raised the debt ceiling.

What do we hear from the other side? Intransigence. Who is refusing compromise? It sounds to me like the other side is refusing compromise.

I have with me my distinguished colleague from Utah and would like to hear his thoughts on where the fault lies and where we could come to if we were to compromise to try to find an agreement.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. PAUL. No. From going to hundreds of tea party rallies and grassroots rallies with voters across America, what I see is they want what is best for America. I don't think they particularly care whether it is a Republican plan or Democratic plan. They want what is best for America. They want a solution.

The problem with the debate in Washington is all of the proposals seem to want to add more debt. We have $14 trillion worth of debt, and both the Republican and the Democratic proposal will add $7 trillion to $8 trillion more in debt.

What I think the folks in the tea party want--and those who are concerned about passing on the debt to their kids and grandkids want--is to spend less. I think a great contrast and what illustrates the problem is spending is going up 7 percent a year. Nobody is talking about cutting that spending. They are talking about cutting the rate of growth of that spending.

There is a new plan out called the one penny plan. It would have real cuts of one penny on every dollar spent. The other side pulls their hair and says: Oh, you are so radical.

We say: We want to cut one penny out of every dollar of government spending. Is that radical?

The President has said it is a dysfunctional place. He is right in that sense. I think some of the dysfunction comes from the hypocrisy or from the other side not really listening.

For example, the balanced budget amendment. They say polls show routinely 75 percent of Americans are for it. Routinely, about 14 percent of Americans seem to be approving of this body. The question I would have is--maybe it is we are not listening well enough. Maybe we are not doing what the people want.

Mr. LEE. That certainly appears to be the case. It is a reminder to us of the fact that no matter how much we might be tempted at times to demagogue this issue, no matter how tempting it might be for certain Members of this body to cast blame elsewhere, they cannot escape one simple fact, which is the American people are demanding more. They are demanding that we spend less. They are demanding that we stop this barbaric practice of perpetual massive-scale deficit spending. Why? Because it erodes individual liberty. It takes money people have not yet made and spends it and obligates them to repay it--in some cases before they are old enough to vote, in other cases before they are even born. We need a permanent solution.

When we put something in the Constitution, it serves as a permanent reminder of the fact that we, as a people, have made a decision, and we are going to move forward. Not everybody will necessarily agree as to how best we should move forward having made that decision. The American people overwhelmingly, to the tune of 75 percent, support the idea that we should amend the Constitution to restrict Congress's deficit spending power.

Mr. PAUL. When people talk about Washington being dysfunctional, and they are upset with what is going on in Washington, I think one of the things that upsets people is hypocrisy--people who say one thing and do another. That is a sad state of affairs. People run on one idea and then they completely change their ideas.

The President was a Senator, and he spoke on the Senate floor. Here are his words in 2006.

The fact that we are here today debating raising America's debt limit is a sign of leadership failure.

He was sort of pointing fingers. Everybody's pointing fingers. It is someone else's fault. I call that sort of the empty partisanship. His conclusion, then, is voting to raise the debt limit would send a bad signal. It would send a signal to our leaders that they are doing the right thing.

I have often said there is no objective evidence that Washington or Congress is spending our money wisely.

The Pentagon says they are too big to be audited. They cannot balance their books. There was $100 billion unaccounted for in the budget last year. There are $5 billion worth of duplicate programs the GAO found. There are, I believe, 82 different programs to train workers. Could we not deal with one Federal program training workers instead of 82 different ones doing the same thing? But this is it. The President said raising the debt ceiling would be a mistake. Now that he is President, he has changed his mind. I think the hypocrisy of that is what makes Americans unhappy.

The President said the same thing on war. He said no President should unilaterally go to war without congressional authority, and here we are at war in Libya with no vote in Congress. He said he has a piece of paper from the United Nations. We didn't elect the United Nations. We have a Constitution, and it requires those issues be debated in Congress.

People are unhappy because we are not doing the people's business. We haven't had a budget in 800 days. Do you know what. It is against the law. It is against the law not to have a budget.

We haven't had a budget in 800 days, but the budget law says we should have a budget every year. We are supposed to match our appropriations bills with the budget. We are not doing it.

The American people are unhappy we are dysfunctional and that we are not doing the people's business. We have also become profligate spenders--spending money we don't have. I think we risk great dangers.

I ask the question to this Senator from Utah: What is the answer? How do we get out of this when we seem to be so far apart, and even on both sides we don't seem to be tackling the issues in a way that would allow for significant cuts in spending?

Mr. LEE. Mr. President, I have a friend by the name of Ron McMillan, who lives in my hometown of Alpine, UT. He is the author of a number of books dealing with business negotiations, dealing with trying to figure out how compromise can be reached.

The PRESIDING OFFICER. The time of the Senators has expired.

Mr. PAUL. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent for an extension of 2 minutes to finish our thoughts.

The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection?

Mr. DURBIN. I don't object, as long as this side is given an additional 2 minutes.

The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

Mr. LEE. In that series of books, the crucial conversation line of the books, one of the things he encourages people to do is to find whatever common ground they can reach.

I think there is common ground among the American people generally that we should balance our budget. Not everyone agrees about how we balance the budget, what should be cut, but they do agree we should balance it. That being the case, that is where we ought to focus our efforts. We should focus our efforts on amending that law of laws, that 224-year-old document that fostered the development of the greatest civilization the world has ever known. We should change it, again, to improve it, to restrict Congress's borrowing power.

The plan proposed by the Democrats that is now about to come before us puts our budgeting process on autopilot. It doesn't require another budget for 2 years, preserving the ability of ObamaCare to fund itself without a single additional debate in Congress. This is wrong. This is not the right approach. I object to it. For that reason, I, along with some of my other Republican colleagues, am prepared to vote on this and vote no on it right now. We are not the ones delaying this vote.

Mr. PAUL. Mr. President, I would say that what Americans don't like is empty partisanship. That is what is going on today. Democrats are standing and beating their chests saying: Republicans will not let us have a vote. It is untrue. I have offered to have the vote. We have seen the objection before our own eyes. They would not vote on this.

Let's dispense with the empty partisanship. Let's move forward and have a vote. If they would let us have one amendment--an amendment that would gradually balance the budget over 7 to 8 years--I will vote for their proposal and I will ensure enough votes that it will pass.

Thank you.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Source