[Congressional Record Volume 167, Number 177 (Thursday, October 7, 2021)]
[Senate]
[Pages S6975-S6990]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                          LEGISLATIVE SESSION

                                 ______
                                 

        PROMOTING PHYSICAL ACTIVITY FOR AMERICANS ACT--Continued

  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Under the previous order, the Senate will 
resume legislative session.
  There will now be up to 3 hours of debate under the control of the 
Senator from Utah, Mr. Lee, or his designee, and 1 hour under the 
control of the majority.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Kentucky.


                          Government Spending

  Mr. PAUL. Mr. President, we are rapidly approaching a milestone in 
our country, and it is not a good one. We are rapidly approaching $30 
trillion in debt. We are accumulating debt like we never have at any 
time in our history. We are actually accumulating debt at the rate of 
over $2 million per minute.
  Now, some say deficits don't matter. Some on the left say they have 
this new monetary theory: We can just print it all up. You can all have 
free stuff. There will be manna from Heaven. And nothing could go 
wrong; we are just going to give you money. If not $1,400 checks a 
month or a year, why don't we give you monthly checks?
  That is part of the new plans. The new plans of the $3\1/2\ trillion 
that we are facing down at this point--that will all be borrowed--is to 
give people free money; to give people free this, free that. But I 
think people are smarter than that. I think people know that, 
ultimately, you don't get anything in life without hard work; you don't 
get anything in life, really, for free.
  Isn't there some kind of ramification to so much borrowed money? When 
someone comes to you and says or they call you on the phone and they 
say ``Here is a thousand dollars; all you have got to do is sign up for 
this,'' most people immediately recoil and they say ``Well, that might 
be a scam. Somebody is going to be ripping me off to say that.''
  Well, that is sort of the bait-and-switch of the politics we face 
now. People are saying: We are going to give you free college, free 
cars, free cell phones, free this, free that. Everything in life will 
be free. You won't have to work anymore.
  The problem is, there are ramifications. Money doesn't grow on trees. 
Money has got to come from somewhere. So either we borrow it and we 
become more indebted to foreign countries, we tax people for it, or 
ultimately the way we fix a lot of our deficit problems is we simply 
print the money.
  So when the Federal Reserve prints the money, as we increase the 
money supply, the money that we have becomes worth less and less; it 
loses its purchasing power. This is the insidious tax of inflation.
  The interesting thing about it is that inflation is a regressive tax. 
It doesn't affect everyone the same. In fact, the tax of inflation 
actually affects the working class, the people of lower incomes, and 
those on fixed incomes and pensions, retirees--it affects them much 
worse because they don't have the ability for their income to go up.
  So, right now, we are facing 5 percent inflation because of the 
massive borrowing that, really, both parties instituted in the last 
year. They decided that the result to the pandemic would be to close 
everything down, destroy the economy, and then give everyone free 
money. And, to a large extent, both parties actually did this last 
year.
  Now, this year, the decision has been made by Republicans to say: 
Whoo, this is so much. We have got to stop. We have got to get people 
back to work and let the economy recover.

[[Page S6976]]

  So it has primarily been Democrats this year, but both parties have a 
certain responsibility to this--at least some members of both parties. 
But, as the inflation occurs and as this effect is being transmitted to 
the economy, you find that those who suffer are those who cannot raise 
their incomes, those who have fixed incomes or low incomes.
  One of the things you see here is that, if we have 5-percent 
inflation, what does that mean?
  You say: Well, I don't know. It means I lose my purchasing power by 5 
percent next year.
  But what if it happens year in and year out for a decade, and you 
have lost 50 percent of your purchasing power?
  It means, to make up for that, you really have to have a 50-percent 
increase in your wages.
  So will wages keep up with inflation?
  The dirty little secret is that, in some ways, wages will rise, but 
maybe they rise an equivalent amount or a little bit less, and you say 
a decade later: I am not any better off.
  And there become people mired and more dependent on government as 
government gets larger and larger. They think they are getting free 
stuff, but it is not really free. The allure of something for nothing--
this is the allure of socialism. This is a false allure. It is the idea 
that you are going to be able to get something and you are not going to 
have to pay for it.
  So we have accumulated $30 trillion in debt. Interest payments have 
been fairly low over the past decade or so. Interest payments are at 
about, you know, 1, 2, 2.5 percent, but now interest rates are rising. 
Even at the low interest rates, our interest rate that we pay each year 
has grown to about $300 billion a year.
  So, with $300 billion a year, people say: Well, there is a debt 
ceiling. If the debt ceiling doesn't come up, we will default, and Wall 
Street will become hysterical, and there will be a collapse of the 
stock market.
  Well, there doesn't need to be. Nobody is really for spreading 
discalm or spreading, you know, chaos among the marketplace. We all 
want the marketplace to be calm.
  How could we calm the marketplace?
  Well, what we would say to the marketplace is, we will pay our bills 
and we are not going to default on our currency. And the way you can 
pay for your bills is to pay for them with income. We bring in $3.8 
trillion a year in tax revenue. The interest payment is $300 billion. 
It is less than we bring in in 1 month. So the annual payment on 
interest is less than what we bring in in tax revenue in 1 month.
  Why can't we pay the interest? Why would we ever not pay the interest 
on our debt? Why?
  Because we are overdrawn and because all the rest of the spending is 
crowded out by the interest.
  We have got plenty of money to pay for the interest. We just don't 
have enough left to pay for the cocaine studies with Japanese quail. 
That is, you know, about a million bucks.
  You say: Oh, it is only a million bucks.
  Well, they studied Japanese quail to see whether or not Japanese 
quail on cocaine are more sexually promiscuous.
  How did we get to a $30 trillion debt?
  Because there are studies like that littered throughout the budget. 
In fact, the group that does these studies, the National Science 
Foundation, we just increased their budget by two-thirds. It was mostly 
the Democrats, but, once again, many of the Big Government Republicans 
voted for this too. So we have exploded the National Science 
Foundation.
  Now, was there any warning that the National Science Foundation was 
one of the most wasteful parts of our government?
  Well, yes, since 1972.
  There was a Senator at the time named William Proxmire. He was a 
conservative, or a maverick, Democrat from the Midwest, and he started 
an award. He called it the Golden Fleece Award. The first award he gave 
was for a study from the National Science Foundation. It was over a 
study that was $50,000. That was when $50,000 was a lot of money. And 
the study was to see what makes people happy.
  Really?
  People were aghast that we were spending $50,000 on it. He 
complained, and he gave them a booby prize and a Golden Fleece Award.
  And, lo and behold, we are still doing it. The same organization, 
last year, did a million-and-a-half-dollar study that if you take a 
selfie of yourself while smiling and then look at the selfie later on, 
does it make you happy? That cost a million-and-a-half bucks.
  Why do people like each other? Why do people fall in love?
  These aren't studies for taxpayer dollars. But these are small ticket 
items. They say: Oh, you could never balance the budget on that.
  Well, what about the $70 million spent on a hotel in Kabul, and the 
contractor ran off with the money, and it was never built?
  What about a $48 million gas station--no; strike that--natural gas 
gas station in a remote area of Afghanistan?
  Well, very few, if anybody, in the United States has a car that runs 
on natural gas.
  Why was the U.S. Government building a natural gas gas station in 
Afghanistan?
  Because we have gone ``woke'' on the green climate. We are for the 
green climate. We have got to combat climate change and reduce the 
carbon footprint of Afghanistan.
  Really?
  I thought the military was supposed to kill the enemy and defend the 
country, but we are reducing the carbon footprint in Afghanistan.
  Somebody put this up--I think it was Rod Dreher--the other day. It 
was a little video clip. It was tragic, but somewhat hilarious in its 
tragicness.
  He said: This is when we lost the Afghan war.
  It had a picture of a urinal. I think it was by Marcel Duchamp, some 
Dadaist artist back in, like, 1917, and I guess he thought it would be 
really hilarious to put a male urinal in a museum and call it art. I 
don't know if it was really art or if it was a joke, but the thing is 
they were having these Afghan men and women in robes and veils and 
everything studying Dadaist art--a male urinal--and asking them what 
they thought of this. You could see a couple of women just sort of 
shaking their heads with utter incomprehension.
  When we are spending money sending Ph.D.s over to Afghanistan to 
teach Dadaist art--that a male urinal is somehow art--I think that is 
why some of them think that we are actually the culture that is in 
decay, not theirs.
  But the thing is we are spending money right and left. The right 
spends it on military adventures, and the left spends it on welfare, 
and the compromise that always happens around here is that right comes 
together with left, and they all agree: Well, you know, we might as 
well just spend it on both.
  So everything goes up. The military budget went up. We already spend 
more than all of the countries. More than 10 countries combined is our 
military budget--$750-some-odd billion. Republicans and Democrats just 
raised it $25 billion more.
  In the midst of ending a war, where is the peace dividend? What 
happened?
  We ended a war. I thought we would have a little more money left 
over.
  So, today, I tried to take $6 billion that is supposed to go to the 
Afghan Reconstruction Fund, to the old Afghan Government. There is no 
Afghan Government. They have been overrun by the Taliban.
  I would love for Americans who are watching this to call me today, at 
my office, and tell me why the Taliban should get money.
  I asked that we take that money away, put it back in the Treasury, 
and spend some of it on the Iron Dome for Israel, and it was objected 
to by the Democrats because, by golly, they will spend money, but they 
don't want to offset it with any spending cuts.
  Well, really?
  We should have zero dollars being sent to any government in 
Afghanistan.
  I asked Secretary Blinken about this, and his response was: Well, I 
can't guarantee it, and if they--you know, if they are meeting 
expectations and they are acting and behaving properly, they might get 
this money.
  Really?
  I don't see a scenario or a world in which U.S. taxpayer dollars 
would be going to the Taliban. It makes utterly no sense at all.

[[Page S6977]]

  But we have spending that is literally out of control. The only time 
I have ever heard a Democrat--most of the time, they are honest in that 
they don't care about the debt. But the only time I have ever heard 
them say anything about it is when they say: Well, you know, it happens 
because you cut taxes.
  Well, you know, it is verifiably false. You can go back to the Reagan 
tax cuts, when the rates went from 70 to 50, and then from 50 to 28.
  Do you know what happened?
  The government got more revenue because, when you tax people less, 
when you let them keep more of their own money, guess what. Their 
incentives to produce go up, and the economy grows by leaps and bounds. 
So when Reagan cut taxes dramatically, the economy responded and grew 
tremendously.
  When we cut taxes in 2017, it was the same thing. It was the same 
thing: Revenue didn't go down. Revenue went up.
  So how did the deficit get worse? Why did the deficit get worse? Was 
it because we cut taxes in 2017?
  No. It was because we piled on the money. We just were spending money 
like there was no tomorrow.
  So, before we got to the extraordinary times we have now, where 
everything is about COVID and we are just going to spend money like 
there is no tomorrow, we were borrowing $1 trillion a year. The main 
segments of government--Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, food 
stamps, other welfare, and military--probably comprise three-fourths or 
more of government.
  If you look at that on an annual basis, before you get to the 
extraordinary binge over the last 2 years, we were already $1 trillion 
short every year--$1 trillion short. So, last year, we added a couple 
trillion more, and our deficit for the year--for 1 year--was $3 
trillion. We have never, ever borrowed that much.
  There are going to be ramifications. You are already seeing some of 
the ramifications. You are seeing the prices in the grocery store go 
up; you are seeing the prices at the pump go up; you are seeing 
sometimes wages go up. But you are also seeing prices rising faster 
than wages, which often happens in an inflationary cycle.
  Some people have trouble comprehending these numbers.
  What is a billion? What is a trillion?
  Reagan had an analogy he did. He said: If you want to know how big 
``a billion'' is, take thousand-dollar bills and put them in your hand, 
and when you have them about 4-inches high, you have got $1 million. 
But if you want to know how much or how tall a stack of $1,000 would be 
if you had $1 trillion, it would be 60 miles high--over 60 miles high.
  That is what kind of money we are talking about. That was to get to a 
trillion.
  So we have $1 trillion of institutional debt that is added every 
year, but now we are talking about a time when they are talking about 
adding, in one bill, $3.5 trillion. The bill that they have before us 
has $1 billion in spending for every page. Every page of the bill has 
an extra billion dollars in spending. It is extraordinary. We have 
never, ever seen anything like this.

  What happens when a country destroys its currency?
  We have examples in history. In Germany, in 1923, the money was 
starting to lose its value in about September. A loaf of bread might 
have cost 100 mark when, before, it cost 1 mark. Two weeks later, it 
was 1,000 marks, but then 2 weeks later, it was 10,000 marks, and then 
it was a million, and then it was several million. This happened in a 
2-month period of time.
  People say: Oh, when it comes, when the currency unravels, it will be 
gradual.
  In Germany, it happened in a 2-month period.
  In Venezuela, the currency is completely worthless. It is the same in 
Germany. It is almost better to burn your currency for fuel or warmth 
than it is to spend it. This is what happens when you have runaway 
spending and out-of-control deficits. Venezuela is one of the richest 
countries in South America. They have more oil underground than Saudi 
Arabia, but, frankly, socialism doesn't work. Socialism is this borrow 
and spend. It has this alarming tendency to want to offer everybody 
everything and say it is going to be free. Many of these things 
backfire.
  For the last year, we have been saying: Oh, gosh. We feel sorry for 
workers, so we are going to pay them while they are unemployed.
  But guess what. If you pay them more than the market wage, more of 
them will choose unemployment, and more of them will choose 
unemployment, and more of them will stay unemployed for a longer period 
of time. We found this out in the 2008 recession.
  During the 2008 recession, we extended unemployment. It is normally 
26 weeks, paid for by a tax, and it largely works within the confines 
of a State-run program. We extended it to 99 weeks--almost 2 years.
  But do you know what the studies found?
  This is part of the syndrome we have around here. It is sort of the 
``big heart, small brain'' syndrome. I think many of these people want 
to help people; they just don't understand that what they are doing is 
actually hurting the same people they are trying to help.
  So if you extend unemployment to 99 weeks, and then, all of a sudden, 
the guy, at 99 weeks--or woman--says, ``I need to get a job,'' and they 
go to the employer and say, ``I have been out of work for 99 weeks, and 
I have been on unemployment,'' and the other person who is applying for 
the job says, ``Well, I have been out of work for 10 weeks, and I am 
looking for a job,'' who do you think the employer hires?
  Every time, it is the person out of work for 10 weeks.
  As for the person who hasn't worked for 99 weeks, they are like: 
There might be something wrong here. We might have gotten to the point 
where we have lost the work ethic.
  So what have you done to the people who you try to help?
  You have actually kept them out of the workplace so long that they 
become unemployable.
  After they become unemployable, what do they become?
  They become the permanently unemployable, the nonworking part.
  Do you wonder who this is?
  Sixty-two percent of the country is in the workforce, and 38 percent 
is not. These are people who are permanently out of the workforce. 
These aren't people who can't work. These are just people who, for one 
reason or another, are no longer in the workforce.
  Now, some of them really can't work, and we have sympathy for that, 
but many of them are people who just stayed out of work too long or 
took the wrong incentives or became addicted to drugs or alcohol 
because they weren't working.
  So there are things we can do in our country, but if we are not 
careful, it is going to slip away from us. I don't want our country to 
be Venezuela, and I don't want our country to destroy its currency, but 
what we are offering is a more difficult sell because the other side is 
going to give you free college and free daycare and free cars and free 
cell phones.
  What we are offering is opportunity. What we are offering is the 
freedom to try to strive. We are offering equality before the law, not 
equality of outcome after you have done your work, after you have tried 
to participate--equality before the law.
  One of the interesting things that I think isn't often grasped by 
people is that if you want equal outcomes, if you want everybody to be 
the same and you want to equalize everybody, you actually have to treat 
them unequally.
  In our country, it took a while, but we have gotten to the point 
where people truly believe in the concept of equality before the law. 
But if you also want to believe in equal outcomes at the end, realize 
you can't believe in both. They are mutually exclusive. You cannot 
believe in equality before the law if you want equal outcomes.
  If you want this so-called equity at the end, you want everybody to 
be equal at the end, you have to treat them unequally because some 
people are either born with more talent, born with more money, born 
with more sense, luckier, work harder--there are a lot of reasons.
  If you put 100 people in a room and you give them all 5 bucks, within 
an hour, somebody will have more. Somebody had some cigarettes. 
Somebody really wanted to smoke, and they have a dollar. The money 
spreads around the room. They have done these experiments. Money 
doesn't stay in one

[[Page S6978]]

place, but it is by and large, in a free society, based on work. But 
once the government becomes in charge of things, it becomes less of a 
meritocracy and becomes more of a society based on who you know.
  There are rich people--don't get me wrong. When you look at 
socialism, there are rich people: Maduro, Chavez, Castro--incredibly 
rich people. They own their own islands. They have billions of dollars. 
Their relatives are all rich.
  So instead of a society mostly based on merit--we talk about the 
greatness of America. One of the most important things about capitalism 
and freedom and what happened in America is, for the first time, it 
wasn't based on who you were; it wasn't based on royal lineage. For the 
most part, Europe was, you know, longtime landowners and royalty, and a 
very small percentage of the public did very well.
  In fact, before 1820, before the Industrial Revolution, virtually 
everybody in the world--96, 98 percent of the world lived in extreme 
poverty. A bare subsistence level. Barely enough to eat. There was no 
obesity because there was barely enough food. You just scraped by. That 
was 98 percent of the world.
  Fast-forward to today, after we have adopted what Adam Smith talked 
about as far as trade, division of labor, and capitalism, do you know 
what we have now? When you look at poverty--less than $2 a day in the 
world--it is less than 10 percent of the world. You won't find this on 
television. There is not going to be any good news on television or in 
the newspaper. The poorest people in our country actually are 
equivalent to the middle class in most countries. We are a huge 
success, but we are a country misguided and led astray by media that 
aren't honest.
  For example, if you watched CNN, you would think that nobody is 
getting vaccinated, and it is a complete disaster, and, whoa, we are 
stuck in this rut because no one is vaccinated. It is completely 
untrue. Over 90 percent of people over 65, who are the most vulnerable, 
are vaccinated. Now, sure, there are a lot of younger people who aren't 
vaccinated, and there are some older people, but 90 percent is a pretty 
good success. Over age 50, it is like 75, 80 percent of people. People 
are informed. They know this is a disease that can affect any age but 
affects primarily the older ages.
  For example, the one truth you won't be told is that an 85-year-old 
has a 10,000 times greater chance of dying than a 10-year-old. Now, you 
think we should treat them the same? If you were their doctor, do you 
think a 10-year-old should get the same healthcare and the same 
prescriptions for what they need to do as an 85-year-old? That makes no 
sense at all.
  I see 10-year-olds and I see 5-year-olds out on the Mall--my wife and 
I were walking down to the Lincoln Memorial the other day, and I saw 5-
year-olds in groups, led by teachers, wearing masks outside. There is 
no science to that.
  We have Dr. Fauci spreading mistruths across the country, saying we 
have to forcibly vaccinate the kids? There is no science behind any of 
that. In fact, England is rejecting what we are doing. In England, 
because of the age skew, because of what they are seeing--that the 
people most at risk are of an older age--they are actually saying: 
Instead of forcibly vaccinating children, why don't we try to make the 
vaccine doses available for the elderly? Why don't we target our care 
to those who are at highest risk?
  We have a problem in our country. We have people who have so 
politicized science that there are people struggling and dying every 
day because they have never heard about monoclonal antibodies. We have 
people dying every day because the government, at the behest of Dr. 
Fauci and a few other people, has said: You can't get monoclonal 
antibodies if you are in the hospital.
  I talk to people every day who really have not yet heard of 
monoclonal antibodies, who get COVID again after being fully vaccinated 
or sometimes not being vaccinated and are not getting the treatment 
because Dr. Fauci says: If you are in the hospital, you don't get it.

  So we have medicine that is coming from on high, from a central 
authority like the politburo, and doctors are afraid to prescribe. This 
has never happened in our country before. Doctors were able to make 
their own decisions based on their own experience, based on studies, 
based on real-life examples, but using their own discretion. Now 
doctors are afraid to prescribe monoclonal antibodies, and many of them 
are disallowed from prescribing it to an inpatient.
  Realize the ridiculous nature of that. You are in the emergency room. 
You are sick, and you are coughing. You might be dying from COVID. You 
get to the emergency room. You don't know what to say. You can barely 
talk. Your spouse has to be able to tell the doctor ``Please stop'' in 
an emergency room. Give them the monoclonal antibodies before they are 
admitted because once they are admitted, we won't treat them. It is the 
same way with symptoms. You have to have symptoms within the first 10 
days. If you don't have symptoms--if you are on day 11, you won't get 
monoclonal antibodies. It is completely arbitrary, it is capricious, 
and it has to do with government-mandated guidelines.
  Let's take some of the other truths or mistruths that are out there.
  I have said over and over again that cloth masks don't work because 
they don't. Peer-reviewed studies have shown time and time again that 
cloth masks don't work. But when Dr. Fauci tells you that all masks 
work, when he comes in all draped with three masks on himself with 
little insignias, clever insignias of different sports teams, he is 
actually spreading a mistruth that causes lives to be lost.
  Why? Let's say you have a 75-year-old woman and she gets COVID, and 
her husband is taking care of her. Do you think the advice to go into 
the room to feed her, bathe her, help her get in and out of her clothes 
while she is sick, while wearing a cloth mask is a good idea or a bad 
idea? It is malpractice. Yet, for some reason, the leftwing media has 
lauded this man as the second coming, and what he is telling you is 
absolutely verifiably dangerous to your health.
  The only mask that really works of any real value is the N95 mask. 
The surgical masks have some value but not very much. Most of the air 
is going around the mask. They just aren't of value. But you have to 
submit. The man is telling you to do it; you got to do what you got to 
do. But the thing is, when you tell people something is safe, they tend 
to react to that and have behavior, and in their behavior, they are in 
favor of something that may well actually be risky behavior for them.
  The vaccinations--because we ignore natural immunity, we directed the 
vaccine to the wrong people and still are. For example, because of Dr. 
Fauci's lead--India is accepting his lead as well, and India does not 
have enough vaccine. They have a billion people. They can't vaccinate 
enough people fast enough. So if you have a billion people and you have 
200 million doses of vaccine, who do you think you should give it to? 
Should you give it to the 10-year-old the same as the 85-year-old? No. 
That is ridiculous. But what about two 65-year-olds and one of them has 
had COVID and one of them hasn't?
  The studies are plentiful. The studies are throughout that say that 
if you have already had it, you have natural immunity to COVID, as good 
or better than the vaccine.
  Do you think it makes good public health policy to say that everybody 
who is 65 should get it instead of saying: Have you had it? Why don't 
we check you for antibodies if you think you have had it? Maybe you 
should wait until we have vaccinated every 65-year-old who doesn't have 
immunity.
  These are real things. These are real discussions. But if you have 
these, unless it is on the Senate floor--actually, that is not even 
true. You can say this on the Senate floor, and YouTube will take it 
down. I have had it happen. I have given speeches on the floor that 
YouTube takes down.
  So this is a world in which people need to realize and get back to 
the ideas of classical liberalism where we debated things. Classical 
liberalism was about skepticism; it was about you having your opinion 
and me having my opinion. But the difference between the elitist or the 
collectivist point of view and the individual right point of view is, I 
believe you have every right to your opinion.
  But if you are a collectivist and you believe that, from the very top 
down, all medical decisions come from Dr. Fauci, and if he doesn't want 
you to

[[Page S6979]]

fly, you don't get to fly--see, it is different from individual liberty 
because I think if you have a differing opinion, you are welcome to 
your opinion.
  If an airline has a policy I don't like, maybe I choose not to fly, 
but the idea that we are going to restrict everyone's behavior based on 
what they decide to do--what is next? People eat too many 
cheeseburgers. We are not going to give them a heart stent because we 
think they haven't behaved and haven't listened to the doctors on what 
they should be eating?
  There is no end to this. But in the end, if we are not careful, we 
are going to spend this country into oblivion. COVID is a big cause of 
the extra spending we have now, but I can tell you, there are 
ramifications that are coming quick. They are coming in the form of 
higher prices. But there is no reason in the world for us to default. 
We have plenty of money. We should simply pay for the interest based on 
what comes in every month.
  With that, I would like to reserve my time and turn it over.
  Mr. LEE. Will the gentleman yield for a question?
  Mr. PAUL. Sure.
  Mr. LEE. Senator Paul, when you and I were both elected to the Senate 
back in 2010, I remember the national debt was an issue then. It was 
becoming large enough that people were concerned about it. As it 
mounted, sometimes we had conversations about how long it might 
continue--how long it might continue to spiral upward.
  Are you surprised to see that here we are, 11 year later, 11 years 
after you and I arrived here, and where it has gone since then?
  Mr. PAUL. I guess ``surprised'' is not the word I would choose; I 
would say disappointed.
  You know, the tea party movement--we had 100,000 people on the Mall 
out there. People were concerned about the debt. They were concerned 
about constitutional government.
  I remember you and I meeting for the first time and talking about how 
we needed to reverse some of these terrible precedents that had allowed 
government to grow large and that the courts need to reform government, 
as well as government be reformed from its elected officials.
  But, yes, we had a great debate that summer. In the summer of 2011, 
we said we wouldn't raise the debt ceiling without reform.
  Mr. LEE. If the gentleman would yield for a question again, I believe 
it was during that summer that a number of people started focusing on 
emerging economic research, including research proposed by Professors 
Rogoff and Reinhart at Stanford University suggesting that whenever the 
debt-to-GDP ratio exceeds a certain level, exceeds roughly 100 percent, 
1-to-1, certain things start to happen, and economic growth becomes 
more elusive.
  As I recall, we were nowhere close, yet, to the 1-to-1 ratio. Now 
that we have blown past that, what do you think that ought to tell us 
about the fact that, even as we have blown past that point, we are now 
being asked to raise the debt ceiling by larger and larger amounts or 
as sometimes----
  Mr. PAUL. Without any reform.
  Mr. LEE. For a time period without any reform.
  Mr. PAUL. Yes. I remember when, a couple of years after that, we 
actually became that--our economy was equal to our debt. So the gross 
domestic product--how much everything is worth that is produced in the 
whole country--was about 17 or 18 billion at the time, as the debt sort 
of crossed that.
  We are now, depending on how you measure it, some say at like 140 
percent of our GDP, and the interesting thing is, that is about where 
Greece was when Greece began to declare its bankruptcy and was unable 
to pay its bills.
  It is alarming. It is foolish and unwise for us to say: Oh, there are 
no consequences. I think there will be consequences, and the No. 1 
thing that we are seeing now is inflation.
  Mr. LEE. Now, we have seen, with--our status as the United States 
having the world's reserve currency, the U.S. dollar, has given us some 
flexibility in that area, flexibility that other countries like Greece 
haven't had.
  Do you think there is some risk of becoming overly confident in that 
world reserve currency status? In other words, could we be jeopardizing 
the very thing that we fought so hard to achieve and that so few 
nations ever achieve?
  Mr. PAUL. Yes. And I think that you are right. Having the world's 
currency allows us--you know, many countries trade in dollars. You will 
go into marketplaces all around the world, and what they are actually 
exchanging is dollars. So as we have bought more goods than we have 
exported, we import more than we export, we paid for that in dollars. 
Some have described that as being able to export our inflation.
  People have also said: Well, the dollar isn't perfect. It is a fiat 
currency. It is being inflated.
  But everybody else is so bad that we are sort of the cleanest shirt 
in a closet full of dirty shirts.
  So, yes, I think being the reserve currency has allowed us to last 
longer, but there are immutable rules of economics that eventually 
catch up to a country, and I think we approach those. I don't think 
anybody can predict exactly when we get there, but I think we are 
approaching a time--and it may not be a gradual unraveling. You know, 
if you look back at the history of our marketplace, we have had these 
black swan events. We have had these events where the marketplace, in 7 
or 8 days in our history, most of the losses have happened 
calamitously.
  Even in 2011, when the market went down, there was a debate. They 
said: Oh, it is because we risked the debt ceiling.
  Well, many of us thought that the marketplace went down at that time 
because we actually continued to borrow without reforming the process.
  Mr. LEE. In an economy where currency and circulation isn't backed up 
by any tangible object and where the government has effectively the 
ability to just print more money, even if that currency happens to be 
the world's reserve currency, at some point after you keep printing 
money, doesn't that cause problems?
  Mr. PAUL. It is based on faith, and so when does the faith end? Faith 
is not something particularly--it is hard to determine faith in the 
dollar. One way you can determine it is, will people buy our bonds. One 
of the indications that people lose faith in our currency is that when, 
to borrow money, you see your bond prices rise; you see interest prices 
rise. I think that is coming.
  You know, we are already seeing inflation at a 5-percent rate. 
Typically, you will see the interest rates rise as well. And there is 
going to be a time there are going to be repercussions. I fully believe 
that you cannot continue to borrow at this rate without ultimately 
suffering, perhaps, an economic calamity. And I want to stop that for 
our country.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Utah is recognized.
  Mr. LEE. Mr. President, we have a debt ceiling for a reason. It is 
not completely arbitrary. It is not just made up. It is not something 
that someone came up with for their own amusement. No. When the sheer 
numeric volume, the quantity, the amount of our national debt ceases to 
cause panic; when the principle of jeopardizing our children's future 
loses effect; when the sacrifice it would cost taxpayers to pay the 
debt becomes laughably large; when all else fails, Congress sets a cap 
and says: Here, here, here. We have to think about this. We have to 
think about this debt problem.
  There is a reason why we have that. They are sound reasons rooted in 
logic, rooted in mathematics, rooted in the inevitability of our own 
future if we don't control the way that the Federal Government spends 
money. Now, nearly half of the Members of this entire body--almost the 
entirety of the Senate Republican conference--wrote a letter almost 2 
months ago, saying that we would not raise the debt limit. We committed 
that we were finally going to make a change for the sake of families 
back home and generations still unborn. We were going to make a change 
to rein in reckless spending.
  Now we are faced with more spending and more debt than our country 
has ever seen before. Our debt-to-GDP ratio has now reached a 
staggering level of 125 percent.
  The national debt is rushing toward $30 trillion, and far too 
quickly, this body is signaling a willingness and, I might dare say, an 
eagerness to sign on

[[Page S6980]]

the dotted line without thinking through the consequences or at least 
without thinking through the consequences of everyone outside this 
building, without thinking through the consequences of those who are 
wealthy and well connected and will probably fare just fine regardless 
of the Federal Government's reckless practice of effectively just 
printing more money.
  Let me tell you why that is such a problem and why I think it is so 
dangerous. First of all, as I mentioned a moment ago in my exchange 
with the Senator from Kentucky, once we pass this 1-to-1 debt-to-GDP 
ratio, economists have scoured the landscape and looked at economies 
all over the world throughout human history, throughout periods of time 
in which any records have been kept at all, and they have concluded 
that this 100 percent debt-to-GDP ratio is tragic; it is dangerous; it 
is perilous. Once you cross that Rubicon, you are in some very, very 
tough positions. Economic growth starts to sputter. It staggers. It 
becomes more and more difficult to get out of the death spiral.
  You see, in the past, even as our national debt has been on the rise, 
we have been OK insofar as it has increased, more or less, to a degree 
commensurate with the size of our economy. Economic growth has been 
such that it remained, more or less, constant--less constant lately, 
but it has remained somewhat proportional to the size of our economy. 
Economic growth has propelled that, but that is the problem. It is the 
goose that laid the golden egg. And we know what happens when you get 
rid of that goose or when you meaningfully impair its ability to lay 
those golden eggs.
  Once we reach that point, we pass the 100 percent debt-to-GDP ratio, 
we know that our economic growth will stall, and it will become far 
more difficult to pay off. We also know that it matters on a very 
personal level, for reasons I will get into more in just a moment, for 
poor and middle-class American families everywhere, throughout Utah and 
across America. People who are living paycheck to paycheck or otherwise 
on a fixed income or fixed budget, like most American families, find 
that when the government just prints more money--as it tends to do when 
we start to borrow and then spend trillions of dollars at a time more 
than the Federal Government is bringing in--that brings about 
inflation. It is as though there are a basket of goods that the economy 
is capable of faithfully, consistently producing from one year to 
another. The basket of goods might grow or shrink a little bit from 
year to year, but it is going to tend to fluctuate mostly at the 
margins. The big picture is going to look fairly consistent.
  So what happens when the government just prints more money and puts 
that into circulation? The purchasing power of each dollar is 
diminished. Now, this tends to work out fine. In fact, it can work out 
really well for wealthy and well-connected individuals. The rich 
usually figure out a way to get even richer off of this dynamic. They 
can hedge against it. They can figure out a way to benefit in one way 
or another from the chaos and sometimes even from the government 
spending. But where does that leave everyone else? Well, for most 
people--and by ``most people'' I mean 99 percent of Americans--it is 
not going to make them wealthier. It is going to make them poorer 
because most people are still living with more or less the same income, 
more or less the same resources. They have still got more or less the 
same basket of goods in the economy, but when you have got more dollars 
in the American economy because we are effectively printing more, each 
dollar matters less. It buys less--everything from gas to groceries, 
from housing to healthcare. Poor and middle-class American families 
suffer while the wealthy and well connected might benefit. And a small 
handful of politicians receive a pat on the back, thanking them, 
congratulating them as they congratulate themselves and each other for 
what they characterize as a job well done.
  Sure, they will always be able to point to someone who benefits from 
the programs they are sponsoring that they are creating. Some of those 
people won't be wealthy and well-connected interests. Some of them will 
be deserving families, some of them, poor and middle-class American 
families. But, you know, most families are just made poorer as 
government expands its footprint.
  Let's look at what happened last year alone. During the last few 
years before the pandemic, we were bringing in about $3 trillion a year 
in tax revenue. We were spending about $4 trillion--a massive, 
embarrassing, disgraceful, indefensible deficit, an annual deficit of 
about a trillion dollars a year. It was inexcusable, especially at the 
height--at the peak--of an economic cycle.
  Then the pandemic hit. Last year, we still brought in about $3 
trillion in tax revenue, just as we had expected, just as we had during 
the previous 2 years. Only this time we didn't spend $4 trillion. We 
spent $6.6 trillion. We brought in $3 trillion, and we spent $6.6 
trillion. We spent more than double what we brought in. We spent more 
money that was borrowed than the money that was paid into the Treasury.
  What did that do? Well, it dramatically increased the money supply--
abruptly, in a way that hurts poor and middle-class American families. 
It is a predictable, foreseeable result.
  Look, if you are playing Monopoly and all of a sudden you decide to 
just double the amount of money that everyone gets in the game, it 
doesn't make everybody better off; it just increases the prices that 
are paid.

  What happens when that is real money and those are real people, when 
it is not just plastic game pieces at stake, but it is hungry mouths 
that need to be fed and sheltered and cared for? That is where it 
hurts. And that is what is so tragic when the Government colludes with 
itself, with a small handful of people on the outside encouraging it to 
do so, some whispering in the ears of the politicians, telling them 
that they will be doing so many great things; that the expenditures and 
the expansion of government is worth the investment.
  They are not doing it with their own money. No, they are doing it 
with the money of America's poor and middle class. It is really a sort 
of reverse Robin Hood sort of thing. We are stealing from the poor to 
give to the rich and the well connected and to give good headlines to a 
small handful of politicians. Shame on us. Shame on us all. Shame on 
this institution as we have done that.
  Look, I came to the U.S. Senate 11 years ago, committed to reducing 
the size, the scope, the reach, the cost, and the overall footprint of 
the Federal Government and its impact on the lives of everyday 
citizens. I did so based on the understanding and based on the 
indisputable fact that whenever government expands its reach, it does 
so at the expense of individual liberty and individual prosperity.
  It doesn't mean that government doesn't have a place. It doesn't mean 
that we don't need government; quite the contrary, we do. But it just 
means that there is always a balancing that has to be taken into 
account. You can't expand government without hurting average, everyday 
people who are subject to those things.
  Unfortunately, 11 years later, that same government is larger, more 
expensive, and more burdensome than ever before. In a farcically futile 
system, Americans now work for months out of every year just to pay 
their Federal taxes. Then, after all that is done, they are insultingly 
demeaned and told that it is not enough; in fact, it hasn't been enough 
for a long time.
  Even though some of you who are now taxpayers and now voters have now 
worked months--at least weeks, maybe months--out of every year just to 
pay your Federal taxes, and even though a lot of this debt may have 
been accumulated before some of you were old enough to vote or some of 
you were even born, no matter. You have got to pay it. This is making 
that worse. We are making it worse for present living Americans, those 
who are of voting age, working age, taxpaying age, and those who are 
not. And it is also adding burdens to those who have not even been 
born, whose parents have yet to meet. The regulatory state is growing 
ever more costly in terms of its economic impact.
  I have been studying the cost of the Federal regulatory system for 
about 25 years. I first started thinking about it while I was in law 
school. I remember a guest speaker came to speak at our

[[Page S6981]]

law school, and he explained that the Federal regulatory system adds 
what he characterized as sort of a backdoor, invisible, de facto tax on 
poor and middle-class Americans. He explained that it is a backdoor 
invisible tax, it is regressive, and that it affects everyone and 
disproportionately the poor and middle class because of the fact that 
nowhere is any consumer able to identify the precise cost to them. In 
fact, most of them don't even know that it exists because unlike their 
tax bill, there is no return at the end of the year. Unlike their sales 
tax that typically will show up on someone's receipt or a property tax 
or anything else, there is no written indication of it that tells any 
one taxpayer or citizen what it is costing them every year. But it is 
there.
  Anyway, back in I think 1996 or 1997, he explained that the Federal 
regulatory system was imposing this backdoor, invisible, highly 
regressive tax on Americans to the tune of $3 or $400 billion a year. I 
remember thinking, this is staggering, because that is a lot of money. 
It is a lot of money that could otherwise go toward other priorities, 
whether in the government, you know, shoring up Social Security or 
Medicare; or some other program providing for soldiers, sailors, 
airmen, and marines with what they need; or in the lives of families, 
providing for housing, education, for nourishment or other needs of our 
children. It just goes into the cost of complying with Federal 
regulations.
  So, yes, Americans do pay for that, we explained; they just pay for 
it in a way that they can't quite see. There is no single bill that 
tallies the size of the expense for it, but they do pay for it 
nonetheless. They pay for it with higher prices on goods and services, 
everything they buy, and they also pay for it with diminished wages, 
unemployment, and underemployment.
  So here we are 25 years later. No one knows for sure what the Federal 
regulatory system costs, but most estimates I have seen of late put the 
number at about $2 trillion a year--$2 trillion. That is the backdoor, 
invisible tax that Americans pay through higher prices on goods and 
services, diminished wages, unemployment, and underemployment, due to 
what it costs to comply with Federal regulations.
  Most people don't even think much about Federal regulations, and with 
good reason. People have other, better things to do. Those who do think 
about them are perhaps inclined to think--maybe because they have been 
taught to think or because they have never been taught otherwise--that 
these costs are borne by billionaires; that they are borne by big, blue 
chip corporations or a type of industrial tycoon whom you would 
associate with a Monopoly game piece perhaps. But they are, in fact, 
borne by poor and middle-class Americans everywhere. That is money they 
can't get back, on top of the money they had to pay after working weeks 
or months out of every year just to pay their Federal taxes, and then 
being told: By the way, after the $2 trillion that you as a people were 
required to pay through this backdoor, invisible, highly regressive 
regulatory tax, so to speak, and on top of the $3 trillion that you 
paid on your taxes, it is still not enough because we are now nearly 
$29 trillion in debt. It is sad. It is insulting. It is discouraging.
  I mentioned inflation a minute ago, and I want to get back to that 
for a moment. It is the natural, foreseeable consequence of a 
government that really knows no limits on what it is there to do and 
knows essentially no limits on what it can spend. These days, if the 
Federal Government can dream it, if politicians can desire it, they can 
fund it.
  There has never been an institution on planet Earth that had access 
to more capital than the Federal Government does. There has never been 
a government in the existence of planet Earth that has had the ability 
to produce the amount of wealth that this Nation has and the ability of 
its people to produce that wealth and the ability of the government to 
spend that amount of money. Because of that, this government also has 
tremendous bargaining power, and it has correspondingly tremendous 
borrowing power that goes along with that.
  In other words, because the American economy has been strong and 
because the U.S. dollar has been the world's reserve currency of 
choice, that has given us this ability. It might make it seem like 
money, while not growing on trees technically, can be sort of printed 
into existence, just taken out of thin air, and that we won't feel the 
consequence for it.
  Now, you can get away with that a little bit longer when you have the 
world's reserve currency and in an economy as large as ours, with 
credit that has been relatively good compared to that of other 
sovereign nations, but it does have limits, and we are seeing those 
limits now. We are seeing them in ways that we haven't seen yet. I was 
worried about this, scared to death of it 10, 11 years ago when I first 
got here, but it is so much worse now. It is so much worse now because 
we have behaved in a way that has made it worse. You can't hide it for 
that long. The piper eventually has to be paid, and the consequences 
can eventually make themselves known. It is finally starting to harm 
American families by reducing their real earnings and undercutting 
their purchasing power.
  In new research that we just released this week, the Joint Economic 
Committee, Republicans--and I am the ranking Republican on that 
committee--found that these rising prices are brought about as a result 
of a mix of two types of inflation: transitory inflation and more 
lasting inflation brought about by runaway government spending. We 
found that government stimulus measures have ignited more lasting and 
more systemic inflation. These inflationary pressures are building on 
transitory inflation, and they are pushing prices higher.
  That is why I am really concerned that, over a year after the 
recession officially ended, Congress continues undaunted, unhindered, 
and seemingly more eager than ever in its desire to pursue new massive 
government spending measures, including a $3.5 trillion budget 
resolution--the single largest spending package in history.
  If Congress continues to pursue spending packages that boost consumer 
demand while at the same time depressing employment and investment, 
which is exactly what we are doing, then government-induced inflation 
will increase even further, with even more drastic, painful 
consequences for us all but especially for America's poor and middle 
class. The wealthy and well connected will do just fine. The wealthiest 
among us will probably get richer as a result. The politicians among us 
who vote for these things will probably be patted on the back, 
congratulated by a compliant, dutiful news media, and, most 
importantly, congratulated by each other, while poor and middle-class 
Americans will be left silently carrying the bill and bearing the pain 
of what they are doing to them.
  Congress should consider the inflationary risks of this pattern of 
unfettered, unrestrained government spending. My colleagues should be 
aware that the costs go beyond the simple sticker price of new 
spending.
  The American people will be better served by policies that are geared 
toward returning Americans to work and removing barriers to business 
investment in American workers. But we are not doing that. We are going 
in the opposite direction of where we should, and as a result, 
Americans are paying the price, especially poor and middle-class 
Americans.
  It is certainly affecting people in my home State of Utah. Eighty-
five percent of Utahans who were polled recently said that they were 
concerned about inflation, and they have reason to be. We have data 
from all over the country. Look, nationwide, overall, prices are up 5.3 
percent over last year, just in 1 year alone--5.3 percent overall 
nationwide. In some areas of the economy, it is particularly acute. You 
see it in meat prices, which are up 8 percent overall from last year. 
Beef is an astounding 12 percent more expensive than last year. Milk is 
10 percent more expensive. Gasoline costs 50 percent more than it did a 
year ago. In the Salt Lake City area, home prices are up 26 percent 
above where they were last year. So everything from gas to groceries 
and from housing to healthcare--they are all going up in like fashion.
  Global supply chains, quite frankly, can't keep up. Warnings are 
already being raised about holiday shortages and huge price increases 
as there just

[[Page S6982]]

aren't enough goods in the entire economy to meet demand, because, 
again, you just add more money to it. It doesn't make it more 
affordable; it makes it less affordable. More spending and therefore 
more money chasing fewer goods will only cause prices to rise even 
more. That hurts the poorest Americans the most.
  The Federal Government prioritizes those who are already wealthy and 
well connected with its spending, and its politicians right here in 
this Chamber congratulate themselves and each other and are 
congratulated by a compliant mainstream news media that for whatever 
reason always wants to praise the expansion of the Federal Government 
even when it hurts America's poor and middle class, which it does.
  Americans are paying the price. Poor and middle-class Americans are 
paying the price--those least able to do anything about it. Yes, we are 
causing that. Those we prioritize, helping the wealthy and well 
connected with this kind of spending--those Americans who don't have 
paid lobbyists are left in the dust, holding the bags and harmed the 
most.
  We aren't cold or calloused for rejecting more spending--no, no. We 
are considering those who end up paying the price for this Monopoly 
money ploy to spend without end. The everyday Americans, the hard-
working Americans shouldn't be harmed like this. Yet they are going to 
be. They are already feeling that. It is indefensible.
  So we are nearing the point of nearly $29 trillion in our national 
debt. It is the highest debt in our Nation's history. The debt-to-GDP 
ratio is now over 125 percent. As I mentioned a few minutes ago, debt-
to-GDP ratio, where economic growth around the world throughout human 
history--growth tends to stall out once we cross that 100 percent debt-
to-GDP ratio. Just a couple of years ago, we were still in the 80-
percent range, and now we are at about 125 percent.
  Politicians have promised to deal with the national debt for decades. 
They promised it over and over and over again, and now the argument has 
shifted. Some on the other side of the aisle are saying that debt 
doesn't matter or that it might even be good. In fact, they are saying 
that it is so necessary that if we don't add to it, if we don't augment 
it, if we don't feed this beast, then we are somehow going to cause an 
economic catastrophe.
  Now, look, it may be good for their socialist makeover of America. It 
is disastrous for the people back home, especially those who they claim 
will be benefitting from it. The debt has reached absolutely 
unimaginable levels. It is almost $230,000 per taxpayer, nearing 
$87,000 per citizen.
  Meanwhile, businesses across the country are struggling to keep their 
doors open among labor shortages, skyrocketing prices, heavy 
regulation, vaccine and other mandates, and people losing their jobs.
  Because the President of the United States is using authority he 
doesn't have through an order he is unwilling to even share with us, 
they are going to choose, in some cases, between getting a vaccine that 
in some cases might be hazardous to their health based on unique 
circumstances and the judgment of their own doctor--yet they have to 
choose between getting the vaccine and losing their job.
  Many businesses are barely inching along. So, no, they don't need 
more government spending. In fact, talking to countless business owners 
in Utah, more spending is the last thing they need. But it is certainly 
the last thing that poor and middle-class Americans need. What happens 
when we do that is they all get poorer, even as we are congratulated 
and we congratulate each other for expanding government yet again.
  I have had recent conversations with a number of businessowners who, 
because of the heavy hand, the heavy spending practices of government, 
have been unable to keep themselves even in business.
  I spoke to one of many restaurant owners recently who explained his 
inability, even after increasing repeatedly the offering price, 
offering huge, huge sign-in bonuses--$15, then $16, then $18, then $19, 
then $20 an hour on top of that hiring bonus just to hire people to 
work in his restaurant in a college town with a lot of young people who 
are usually willing to work in restaurants. They couldn't do it because 
of government interference. The government was competing with them. The 
government was paying people more to not work than they could be paid 
to work. This is only compounding the problem.
  None of this would be possible if we weren't effectively operating 
this government with a printing press that makes the American people 
poorer.
  So, yes, I signed that letter 2 months ago, along with 46 Republican 
Senators, almost the entire Senate Republican Conference. I signed that 
not just because the letter looked neat, not because it would get 
praise--I know we would get the opposite of that in the press--but 
because of the people we represent, especially the poor and middle 
class we represent, who will be made poorer and less secure every 
single time we do this.
  I can't vote to raise this debt ceiling, not right now, especially 
given the plans at play to increase spending immediately by another 
$3.5 trillion, which according to some is only as low as $3.5 trillion 
because of creative accounting. But the real number might be more than 
$5 trillion. Regardless, we can't do that. We can't afford that.
  It is not that the government can't physically do it--we know its 
ability to do it--but we also know that when it exercises that ability 
to do that, poor and middle-class Americans suffer.
  I can't do this to them, neither should any of us.
  Thank you.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Kaine). The Senator from Wyoming.
  Ms. LUMMIS. Mr. President, I rise to address the elephant in the room 
that almost no one is talking about. Everyone is talking about the debt 
limit, but almost no one is talking about the debt.
  I am a rancher, and I often think about policy in ranching terms. 
This is ``all hat, no cattle'' politics.
  We are starting down a track of a $29 trillion national debt. Let me 
say that again: a $29 trillion debt.
  When I first came to Congress, it was just under $10 trillion, which 
seemed at the time an insurmountable debt. Now, we are getting closer 
to $30 trillion. Certainly, if the spending that is being entertained 
by the majority party and the Biden administration passes, we will be 
well over $30 trillion.
  In the immortal, but edited, words of Jimmy MacMillan--``the rent is 
too [dang] high,'' guy--the debt is too dang high.
  Another sobering statistic that was raised by the last speaker, in 
February, the Congressional Budget Office said that the national debt 
would surpass the economy's size this year, meaning the debt-to-GDP 
ratio has long been an indicator of the country's fiscal health and 
countries have historically tended to decline once their debt surpassed 
their gross domestic product. This year, that country is us. It is the 
United States of America. Remember, countries historically decline once 
their debt passes their gross domestic product. That is what is 
happening here.
  

  It is a very sobering thought, but not a thought that is part of the 
debate for raising the debt ceiling. The debt ceiling increase that is 
being discussed now is so more spending can occur without addressing 
our debt-to-GDP ratio. We cannot go on like this. It is irresponsible 
at the deepest levels.
  Now, I understand and I appreciate the concerns that have led to this 
short-term debt limit deal, but the fact of the matter is, unless we 
actually address the spending problems that are driving our national 
debt--and soon--we are already saddling future generations of people in 
my State of Wyoming and all the American people with a debt that they 
will never be able to repay. And soon, interest payments on that debt 
will crowd out other spending. The only reason it hasn't happened 
already is because interest rates have been relatively low.
  But we have to pay interest on our debt before we pay other things, 
including the things that are in the majority party and the Biden 
administration's $3.5 trillion plan. I believe this is unforgiveable.
  

  Now, I am new to the Senate, so I was not here the last time we had 
to address the debt ceiling issue. But the last time it came up, it was 
Republicans who were the majority party and were on the dance floor by 
themselves.

[[Page S6983]]

Since Republicans were in power in Senate, Democrats left the 
Republicans to dance by themselves and raise the debt limit alone. So 
anyone talking about this issue today needs to recognize that history.
  It is normal for the party in power--where now the Democrats control 
the House, the Senate, and the White House, it is normal for them to 
raise the debt ceiling.
  The problem is that both when Republicans have been in the majority 
and have raised the debt ceiling and now Democrats are in the majority 
and are going to raise the debt ceiling, neither party seems to talk 
about the debt. They only talk about raising the debt ceiling.
  It is really kind of shocking that the main focus of this debate, 
whenever it occurs, is never on how we got here. It is never on why we 
spend too much. It is never on the debt itself. It is always on just 
raising the ceiling or suspending the ceiling so we can spend more, so 
we can run up more debt, so we can have higher interest payments that 
can crowd out other spending, that can create the vicious cycle that 
creates deficit after deficit after deficit.
  Our colleagues on the left can throw back at any Republican here that 
spending has gone on like drunken sailors, even among Republicans, and 
they are not wrong--and, also, I mean no disrespect to the Navy in 
referencing sailors. Happy birthday to the Navy, celebrating its 246th 
birthday yesterday.
  There is a lot of blame to go around here. What I would like to see 
us do is get together, both parties, all colleagues who are interested 
in this subject, come up with a way to address our debt, to balance our 
budget, whether it is freezing spending or addressing our trust funds 
or recognizing how we can fix our entitlement programs or how we can 
make the Social Security fund solvent, which we know how to do and do 
not have the political courage to do. We have to contain these massive 
interest payments. We must start addressing this issue.
  Earlier this year, I proposed the Sustainable Budget Act to create 
bipartisan solutions to our long-term spending. The Sustainable Budget 
Act should be on the table.
  

  My colleagues Senators Romney and Manchin also introduced the Trust 
Act to shore up the long-term fiscal solvency of our trust funds. That 
is another bill that should be on the table at the same time that we 
are debating raising the debt ceiling.
  Both of these ideas are worthy proposals that we should be discussing 
now on a bipartisan basis because this problem isn't one that only 
affects one party. When the time comes to pay the bill, our debt 
holders don't care--won't care--if you are a Republican or a Democrat. 
They only care about getting paid, and we are swiftly approaching a 
time when we will be unable to do so.
  You know, one of the reasons that I became so interested in digital 
currencies, in nonfiat currencies, is because they are not issued by a 
government. Bitcoin is not issued by a government, so it is not 
beholding to the debts that are run up by governments, including the 
greatest government that has ever existed on the face of the Earth, the 
United States of America.
  

  The United States of America is now at the point where our debt 
exceeds our GDP ratio. It is the point at which nations decline. If we 
are going to let the dollar decline, having the lessons of history in 
front of us, and failing to act, we are truly irresponsible.
  In the event that that contingency occurs, I want to make sure that 
nonfiat currencies--currencies not issued by government, currencies not 
beholden to political elections--can grow, can allow people to save, 
can be there in the event that we fail at what we know we have to do.
  There is no proof yet in the 21st century that we are going to make 
this right. Time and again, in the U.S. House and the Senate, time and 
again, Presidents of both parties have run up the debt irresponsibly, 
with no plan to address it. So thank God for bitcoin and other nonfiat 
currencies that transcends the irresponsibility of governments, 
including our own. That is an indictment of our responsibility--
Democrats and Republicans, Presidents and Congress--our responsibility 
to address this looming, predictable, massive issue.
  Thank you.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Texas.


                          Government Spending

  Mr. CRUZ. Mr. President, I rise to speak for the generations of 
Americans who this body is irresponsibly drowning in debt.
  Now, to be clear, debt is a bipartisan problem. Debt is a problem 
both parties bear substantial responsibility for.
  To understand just how true that is, we need look back just 21 years. 
In the year 2000, when this century began, our national debt stood at 
roughly $5 trillion.
  Mr. President, I want you to pause and think about that. The year 
2000 wasn't that long ago. Five trillion dollars is the total amount we 
owed.
  In 2001, George W. Bush became President. During the 8 years of 
Bush's Presidency, the debt doubled from $5 trillion to $10 trillion. 
My party bears a significant degree of responsibility for that growth.
  Then in 2008, Barack Obama was elected President; and over the next 8 
years, the debt doubled again, from $10 trillion to $20 trillion.
  I want you to pause and reflect on that. The $5 trillion debt that we 
started the 21st century with had been accumulated by 42 Presidents 
over two centuries; and then two Presidents, over 16 years, one a 
Republican and one a Democrat, took our debt and increased it by 300 
percent, quadrupled the Nation's debt in 16 years.
  As we stand here today in 2021, some 9 months into the Joe Biden 
Presidency, the debt is roughly $29 trillion.
  My home State, the great State of Texas, has roughly 29 million 
residents. That means the national debt is $1 million for every man, 
woman, and child in the State of Texas. That is reckless and 
irresponsible.
  Now, my Democratic colleagues point out that Republicans spent too 
much during the Trump Presidency. I agree. Much of that spending I 
voted against. And I would note last year was an extraordinary year 
with a pandemic unlike anything any of us have ever seen in our lives. 
I wish Republicans had been better at exercising fiscal responsibility 
when we had control of the White House and both houses of Congress.
  The unfortunate reality in this body, though, is that when you have a 
multitrillion-dollar spending bill, you can usually count on the votes 
of every single Democrat and about half the Republicans. So on spending 
bill after spending bill, we see 75 to 80 Senators coming together--
usually all the Democrats and half the Republicans.
  And there are about 20 of us who try to say: Why are we bankrupting 
our kids and grandkids? Why are we digging the hole deeper and deeper 
and deeper?
  But that is--at least right now--a minority view in this body.
  But the fact that my party bears significant responsibility for the 
debt we have today is not to draw an equivalency between what has 
happened in the past and what is happening right now, because, Mr. 
President, what Senate Democrats, what House Democrats, and what 
President Biden are doing now has no precedence in our Nation's 
history. It is an order of magnitude different. Senate Democrats, House 
Democrats, and President Biden, if the spending proposals they have put 
forth pass, within a 12-month period, they will have spent $9.5 
trillion.
  One of the problems people have at home is understanding big numbers. 
A million, a billion, a trillion--they have all got an ``illion'' in 
them. It is hard to tell the difference. That just sounds like a lot of 
money.
  Well, let's put $9.5 trillion in context: $9.5 trillion is more than 
twice what the United States spent to win World War II. The entire 
course of the war, it cost us less than half of that to save the free 
world and defeat the Nazis. And Washington Democrats are trying to 
spend that in 12 months. It is wildly irresponsible. It is reckless.
  They are trying to accompany that with trillions of dollars of new 
taxes. If the Democrats get their way, every tax you can think of is 
going up. Individual income tax is going up. Corporate taxes are going 
up. Small business taxes are going up. Capital gains taxes are going 
up. The death tax is going up. Farmers are paying more in taxes. 
Ranchers are paying more in taxes. Small businesses are paying more in 
taxes. Working families are paying more in taxes.

[[Page S6984]]

  Joe Biden campaigned promising no one who makes $400,000 a year or 
less will see their taxes go up. That statement was a flat-out 
falsehood.
  And, by the way, look, I recognize Joe Biden and I are of a different 
party, so maybe you are inclined not to credit me with my assessment of 
the truth or falsity of President Biden's promise.
  Well, if you don't take my word for it, take the Joint Committee on 
Taxation's word for it, that analyzed the Democrats' tax program and 
found, for roughly 80 percent of Americans, taxes either stay the same 
or go up; that it is cutting taxes for a very small portion of 
Americans. It is raising taxes on people with incomes as low as $40,000 
a year.
  By the way, it is also worth noting part of the Democratic talking 
points is that the deficit is driven by the 2017 tax cuts. Those are 
good partisan talking points. Those will get a round of applause in any 
Democratic gathering. Although I say that, with all candor, Mr. 
President, I haven't been to many Democratic gatherings, but I feel 
confident that is accurate; that Democrats like: ``Yes, too many tax 
cuts.''
  Before you are inclined just to believe that political rhetoric, 
however, you might at least pause to look at the facts, to look at the 
numbers. And the facts and numbers show that, after we passed the 2017 
tax cuts, cutting taxes on working families across this country, that 
we saw record prosperity; we saw the lowest unemployment in 50 years; 
we saw the lowest African American unemployment ever recorded; we saw 
the lowest Hispanic unemployment ever recorded; and we saw Federal tax 
revenues go up.
  So the next time you hear a Democrat say the debt comes from the tax 
cut, it just ain't so. The next year, the Treasury got more money in 
taxes than it had the year before. So the Democratic narrative about 
tax cuts driving the debt is--to borrow a term from the current 
President--malarkey.
  The debt that we are facing as a result of this wild spending spree 
is going up and up and up, and one of the consequences of that spending 
and that debt is we are seeing an inflation bomb going off in this 
country.
  Now, for younger Americans, inflation may not sound very real. 
Inflation is not something we have lived with in recent times. We have 
been in this sort of weird holiday from economic history with inflation 
being very, very low.
  Mr. President, you and I are both old enough to remember the 1970s. 
We are both old enough to remember double-digit inflation, 21-percent 
interest rates.
  Inflation is a cruel tax, and it is a tax on everybody, but it is 
particularly cruel on the most vulnerable.
  You know who gets hammered with inflation? Senior citizens, seniors 
who spent their whole lives saving. And they suddenly see the values of 
their savings going down and down and down because Washington 
politicians are devaluing their money--seniors who are on a fixed 
income get the same amount of money each month, but suddenly the cost 
of everything goes up.
  Right now, today, all across this country--in Texas, in Virginia, and 
in every other State--prices are going up. The cost of gasoline has 
skyrocketed as a direct result of Joe Biden and the Democrats' 
policies. The cost of food is going up. The cost of rent is going up. 
The cost of lumber is going up. The cost of homes is going up.
  According to the chief economist at Moody's Analytics, for households 
earning the U.S. median annual income, which is about $70,000 a year, 
the current inflation rate has forced them to spend another $175 a 
month in food and fuel and housing. That works out to $2,100 a year.
  So each month, if your family is at the median income level in the 
United States, the Democrat inflation tax is about 175 bucks a month. 
And that is before their massive tax rates kick in, and that is before 
this body passes the Bernie Sanders socialist budget.
  It is worth noting just how radical these Democrats are. President 
Biden is in the White House; that is true. But in the Senate, Senate 
Democrats have the slimmest majority possible. This is a 50-50 body. It 
is only by virtue of the Vice President's tie-breaking vote that they 
have any majority at all. Yet Democrats have interpreted this 
incredibly close election as a mandate to radically transform this 
country.
  Joe Biden didn't campaign on that. Joe Biden campaigned as a nice, 
happy, centrist moderate. No more mean tweets. Nothing to scare you at 
home. We are just going to return to the halcyon days of yesteryear.
  Five years ago--well, let's go back even further than that. Nine 
years ago, Mr. President, when you and I were both elected to the 
Senate--we arrived here the exact same time. Nine years ago, there was 
exactly one socialist in this body that admitted he was a socialist. 
That was Bernie Sanders.
  If you asked Senator Sanders, he would say: I am a socialist. I am 
not a Democrat. I am running as a socialist.
  And most of the Democrats in this body would say: No, no, no. That is 
not me. I am not a socialist like him.
  That was a fringe view. Even in the 2020 election, Joe Biden, when he 
was running in a primary against Bernie Sanders, said: No, no, no. I am 
not a socialist.
  Well, today, Bernie Sanders is the chairman of the Budget Committee. 
We are in the midst of debating, passing, the Bernie Sanders socialist 
budget--$5.5 trillion. That is radical. That is extreme. And I think 
our Democratic colleagues are too scared of the left flank in their own 
party to dare stand up to it.
  Now, in addition to the reckless spending, to the reckless taxes they 
are trying to ram through, to the massive debt they are trying to ram 
through, we also have a radical agenda across the country, including on 
our southern border, where we are facing a crisis on our southern 
border. Over 2 million people are expected to cross illegally this 
year. The highest rate of illegal immigration in 21 years, and 
congressional Democrats refuse to do anything about it.
  Joe Biden and Kamala Harris have handed the agenda over to the open-
border radicals, and we are seeing a public health crisis; we are 
seeing a national security crisis; we are seeing a humanitarian crisis 
as a result.
  As bad as the economic and domestic policy has been, the foreign 
policy has been even worse, including the greatest national security 
disaster and foreign policy disaster in a generation--the utterly 
incompetent and calamitous surrender in Afghanistan.
  All of that extreme agenda is being pushed by Joe Biden and Chuck 
Schumer and Nancy Pelosi, which brings us to our present crisis, the 
debt ceiling crisis.
  Our national debt is roughly $29 trillion. Yet Democrats want to add 
trillions more to that. How many trillions? We don't know. They are 
battling within their conference just how many trillions more with 
which to saddle this country, but it is going to be a lot.
  But do you know the curious thing? This crisis is 100 percent 
manufactured by Democrats. Why is that? Because for the entirety of 
this Congress, Democrats have had complete, 100-percent power to raise 
the debt ceiling anytime they have wanted.
  How is that? Well, ordinarily, in this body, the way legislation 
moves, it needs 60 votes to move. It is called the legislative 
filibuster. But there is an exception to that, and it is a big 
exception. It is called budget reconciliation. It comes from the Budget 
Act of 1974. Under budget reconciliation, you only need 50 votes, not 
60 votes. It is the biggest exception that exists to the filibuster 
rule.
  Democrats, unfortunately, have 50 votes in this body. They have a 
majority in the House, and they have the White House. That means 
Democrats, using budget reconciliation--and it is clear, by the way, 
that you can raise the debt ceiling by using budget reconciliation--
could have raised the debt ceiling in January. They didn't. They could 
have raised the debt ceiling in February. They didn't. They could have 
raised it in March or April or May or June, July, August, September. 
They didn't. We are in October. Democrats could have raised the debt 
ceiling today. They didn't. They could have done it with only 
Democratic votes, and there would not have been a single thing 
Republicans could have done to stop them. They know that. They don't 
dispute that.
  So why are we facing a crisis? If, for 10 months, Democrats could 
have done this anytime they had wanted, why didn't they? Well, it is 
because there are at least some Democrats who realize that drowning the 
Nation in debt

[[Page S6985]]

and spending and taxes is not popular back home. The voters don't like 
it.
  So, instead, Majority Leader Schumer has not once, not twice, but 
three times tried to move a legislative vehicle to raise the debt 
ceiling that requires 60 votes. He didn't have to do it. He could have 
done it using reconciliation and using only Democratic votes. He had 
the total power to do that, but he didn't want to do that. He wanted to 
use it--to move it forward in a way that required at least 10 
Republicans to join with him. Why? There is one and only one reason for 
this. I would challenge any Senate Democrats to ask Majority Leader 
Schumer if there is any other reason he proffered for not doing what he 
could have done at any time, day or night. The only reason is to 
obscure accountability. The only reason is to blame some of that debt 
on Republicans so that Senate Democrats could claim: Hey, both parties 
did it.
  What the Democrats are doing right now is unprecedented. It is 
radical. They know it, and they are scared of it. So what are we seeing 
instead? We are seeing Chuck Schumer tell the American people: We are 
on the verge of a default. We are seeing Joe Biden threaten that the 
United States will default on our debt. We are seeing the Treasury 
Secretary threaten that the United States will default on our debt. Joe 
Biden's threats to default on the debt are wildly reckless and 
irresponsible.
  Let me be clear so that no one is confused: The United States should 
never, ever, ever default on our debt--period. All 100 Senators in this 
Chamber agree with that. There is not a single Senator in either party 
who believes the United States should default on our debt.
  Why does Joe Biden go on national television and threaten to default 
on the debt when he could have raised the debt ceiling anytime he 
wanted? Because he is playing a game of political brinksmanship, 
threatening a calamitous result on the American economy because he 
wants to browbeat Republicans into serving as a smokescreen to help 
hide the responsibility Democrats pay for their massive spending and 
debt.
  I have got to say, for the last several months, I was proud of my 
party. The Republicans were united. We were standing together. We were 
standing as one. And every single Republican--all 50 Republicans were 
telling anyone who would listen: We will not participate in raising the 
debt ceiling. If the Democrats are going to raise trillions in 
spending, they need to raise the debt ceiling and own the debt that 
their reckless spending is producing. Our party was completely united.
  The Republican leader and I--and he and I have had significant 
disagreements over the years, but on this question, we were in exactly 
the same place. We were saying exactly the same thing. Our conference 
has a wide range of views from conservatives to moderates to 
libertarians. All 50 of us were on the same page. The Democrats have 
the power to raise the debt ceiling on their own. They are engaged in 
wildly reckless spending, and if they are going to do that, they need 
to be the ones to vote for this debt.
  We were united for 2 months. Indeed, 46 of us signed a letter to 
Chuck Schumer, I think 2 months ago, making clear what our position 
was. I helped write that letter. It was not a fringe position of a 
couple of members of the conference; we got 46 out of 50 Republican 
Senators to sign it. So Schumer knew. Pelosi knew. Biden knew. But they 
chose to engage in reckless brinksmanship.
  Now, I believe the end result of this game of chicken was clear: that 
Democratic Leader Schumer was on a path to surrender. He was on a path 
to doing what he should have done a week ago or 2 weeks ago or 3 weeks 
ago or a month ago or 2 months ago, which is moving a reconciliation 
bill and raising the debt ceiling.
  I can tell you there were Democratic Senators--multiple Democratic 
Senators--coming to me and coming to the other members of my party, 
saying: OK. How much time would it take to move a reconciliation bill? 
Can we get it done in time for the October 18 date that the Treasury 
Secretary has laid out?
  To a person, Republicans answered: Yes, there is plenty of time, 
under the rules of reconciliation, to move forward. There is no 
barrier. You have all the time you need.
  I believe Democratic Leader Schumer was on the verge of surrendering, 
and then unfortunately, yesterday, Republicans blinked. I think that 
was a mistake. I think that was the wrong decision.
  Now, I will tell you, the reason Republican leadership made that 
decision to blink was because Senate Democrats threatened to nuke the 
filibuster, to eliminate the filibuster. I don't know if that threat 
was real. I don't know if they would have carried through on it or not. 
But I understand why Republican leadership blinked. Ending the 
filibuster would enable the Democrats to pass an even more radical 
agenda than the one they are doing right now. It would enable the 
Democrats to pass things that would profoundly alter this Nation, 
perhaps irreparably. So I understand why Republican leadership blinked, 
but I wish they had not. I wish they had not because I believe we were 
on the verge of victory.
  The American people agreed with us. The Democratic position, on its 
face, was objectively unreasonable. Here is the Democratic position: We 
have complete power to raise the debt ceiling anytime we want, but the 
only way we will do it is if Republicans do it with us. Otherwise, we 
will default on the debt.
  Even the Capitol Hill press corps--and, Mr. President, in your 
quieter moments, you will admit it leans very far left--even the 
Capitol Hill press corps knew that was ridiculous.
  So unfortunately, yesterday, we were on the verge of victory, but we 
turned that victory into defeat.
  Now, let's be clear what the order of magnitude of this defeat is. We 
are soon going to vote on moving to take up the debt ceiling. The 
political games played by Democratic Leader Schumer may have prevailed 
in the short term by cajoling 10 or more Republicans to vote with the 
Democrats to allow a vote on the debt ceiling. I hope that doesn't 
happen. I hope we defeat that vote. I am certainly going to vote no, 
and I am urging my colleagues to vote no. But if 60 or more Senators 
vote to take up the vote, then we will see a clear divide. On the debt 
ceiling, all 50 Republicans will vote no. On the debt ceiling, all 50 
Democrats will vote yes. We will see a clear divide. I wish it had 
happened without the political games, without the political theater, 
that Democratic leadership played.
  One of the reasons I think it was a mistake for Republican leadership 
to give in to the demands, to the hostage-taking, to the political 
terrorism of the other side, is that it significantly hurts the 
credibility of the Republican conference. The Democratic leader is no 
doubt telling every Democratic Senator: You see, they won't hold their 
ground. They will give in. All we have to do is stand strong, and they 
won't stand and fight against us.
  Now, I hope that proves nothing more than hot air. I hope that proves 
a bad estimation of what Republican Senators will do. I can tell you 
this conference remains absolutely united that the Bernie Sanders' 
socialist budget of $5.5 trillion, with trillions in taxes, is wildly 
and recklessly irresponsible and would do massive damage to this 
country. I hope and believe we will stay united on that. But we could 
have stayed united on the debt ceiling as well. We could have stayed 
united in making clear that the Democrats had every ability to do this 
on their own, but sometimes in a poker game, a bluff wins the pot. In 
this case, to mix my metaphors, which would make my high school English 
teacher very angry, in the game of chicken, Chuck Schumer won this game 
of chicken. As two trucks drove toward each other on a country road, 
one or the other was going to turn or you were going to have a lot of 
dead chickens.
  I wish Republicans had not blinked. We shouldn't have done that, but 
the strategic mistake by our leadership should not distract from the 
fundamental divide in this body.
  I don't know why it is the Democratic Senators look at this last 
election--an unbelievably close election--and conclude that there is no 
need for bipartisanship in the Senate, that their mandate is to ram 
through a radical and socialist agenda.
  And let me be clear by the way: The first major bill the Democrats 
took up was a $1.9 trillion spending bill, a so-

[[Page S6986]]

called COVID relief bill. I say so-called COVID relief because only 9 
percent of the bill was healthcare spending on COVID. It was a liberal 
wish list, paying off special interests that support the Democrats.
  You know, Mr. President, you and I were both at Joe Biden's 
inauguration. We sat on the steps of the Capitol. We heard President 
Biden give what I thought was a pretty good speech; a speech about 
unity, a speech about coming together, a speech about healing.

  Sadly, that speech didn't even last the time it took for the words to 
be transmitted over the airways to the people listening at home.
  It would have been easy for President Biden and Democrats to pass a 
bipartisan COVID relief bill--easy. There were Republicans eager to do 
so. And to show that that is not just empty posturing, that that is not 
just partisan language, last year, when we had a Republican majority in 
the Senate, we passed bipartisan COVID relief bills not once, not 
twice, not three times, not four times--five times. Five times.
  When Republicans had the majority, we didn't ram through COVID relief 
bills that were hard partisan bills, but, instead, we worked together 
with the other side.
  When Joe Biden, who promised healing and unity, the first big bill he 
had, he made a choice: Do I want to honor what I said, or do I want to 
give into the angry socialist left?
  And he rammed through a bill--a $1.9 trillion spending bill--that in 
the House of Representatives got zero Republican votes, and in the 
Senate got zero Republican votes.
  And I have got to tell you, Senate Democrats didn't want a Republican 
vote. There wasn't even a minute of discussion of negotiation. There 
wasn't an attempt to make it bipartisan. It was: We have the power by 
the narrowest, narrowest margin, and we are going to abuse that power.
  And, sadly, it hasn't changed. It has continued.
  This Bernie Sanders, socialist budget--$5.5 trillion--is reckless and 
partisan, and it will get zero Republican votes in the House, it will 
get zero Republican votes in the Senate--because the Democrats believe 
they have a short window to fundamentally transform this Nation and to 
destroy the free market system that has produced the greatest 
prosperity this Nation has ever seen.
  This is tragic, and I, for one, will continue doing everything 
humanly possible to lead the fight to stop this radical agenda that 
threatens the lives, the safety, the security, the liberties, the 
constitutional rights, and the financial future of 29 million Texans.
  Bankrupting our kids and grandkids is serious business, and the 
political games from the Democrats are meant to distract from that.
  And let me note, finally, there is legislation I have supported all 9 
years I have served in this body. It is legislation introduced by the 
Senator from Pennsylvania, Senator Toomey, called the Full Faith and 
Credit Act, although I actually prefer a different name for it.
  The name I prefer is the default prevention act. It is legislation 
that says, in the event the credit limit is not raised, the United 
States will never ever, ever default on the debt; that even without the 
credit limit being raised, there are tax revenues coming in every 
month.
  So the default prevention act makes clear we will prioritize those 
tax revenues to interest on the debt, to paying our Active Duty 
military, and to Social Security and Medicare.
  Government by crisis would end, or at least be substantially 
mitigated, if we pass the default prevention act.
  Earlier today, I was on a radio program--Sean Hannity's radio 
program, where he played an interesting clip of Democrats all talking 
about debt ceiling denial or default denial.
  And I would commend the other party. One of the things the Democrats 
do really well is message discipline. When they come up with talking 
points, it is remarkable. Every Democrat in these United States of 
America, from Joe Biden down to the county dog catcher, they repeat the 
exact same words.
  So Sean Hannity played a whole series of just clips of Democrats 
using the identical talking points: Debt ceiling denial, default 
denial.
  You know who is in denial is the Democrats. They are in denial that 
the debt ceiling exists. They are in denial of the $29 trillion that is 
bankrupting our kids and grandkids.
  And they like these crises. Why do I know they like these crises? 
Because they don't want to pass the default prevention act.
  If the Democratic Senators who give speeches about how bad a default 
would be, if they actually believed that, we could come together today 
and we could ensure the citizens of Texas, the citizens of Virginia, 
the citizens of Utah that there will never ever, ever, ever be a 
default of our debt.
  But if we did that, it would mean that Senator Schumer and Nancy 
Pelosi and President Biden couldn't engage in the kind of theatrics, 
the kind of reckless brinksmanship that we have seen over the last 
several weeks. That would jeopardize their radical agenda.
  I hope and pray that this body, the Senate, serves as the last 
bulwark to stop the radical socialist agenda that Washington Democrats 
are trying to ram through.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from South Carolina.
  Mr. GRAHAM. Mr. President, I missed most of what Senator Cruz said, 
but I think I have a general idea of what he was going to say.
  So what is this all about tonight? Why are we here?
  So the bottom line is we have a debt ceiling increase that is coming 
due under our law. The debt ceiling has been dealt with numerous times 
since I have been here.
  What is this all about?
  My Democratic colleagues--we worked together to pass a $1.2 trillion 
bill for roads, bridges, ports, and electrical vehicles. I was 1 of 19 
Republicans. Made sense to me.
  The reason we have got a debt ceiling problem beyond the normal 
course of business is that my Democratic colleagues, through 
reconciliation, are going to keep on spending from $3\1/2\ to $5 
trillion that has got zero to do, in my view, with infrastructure as we 
know it. It is more about expanding the size and scope of government.
  They have every right to pursue this, and we, as Republicans, have 
every right to make it hard.
  So Senator McConnell has been saying for 2 months now that if you are 
going to spend the money through reconciliation, you need to raise the 
debt limit through reconciliation. And there has been a change of heart 
here at the last minute, but we will be doing this again in December.
  So here is my point: I think you should do that. I think the 
reconciliation process is available to you. I think you should be 
required to use it, and I don't intend to help you spend any more of 
this money.
  Now, what does reconciliation mean?
  It means that you can do it by yourself through a process that allows 
50 votes, not 60.
  As Budget ranking member, I am willing to waive the 3 days. I am 
willing to try to make the process less painful. But the point is that 
you need to own this, and that was our position until recently.
  We will be doing this again in December, and this idea that the rules 
of the Senate may change because of this issue or any other issue--I 
want to get something off my chest.
  When President Trump was President, we had the House and the Senate, 
and there was enormous pressure on Republicans to change the rules to 
get everything we wanted, and a lot of Democratic colleagues standing 
up for the constitutional filibuster--legislative filibuster. We sent a 
letter with over 60-something names on it basically saying to the 
leaders of the Senate: Let's don't make the Senate the House.
  All of a sudden, you are now in charge of 50-50, and there is a 
constant stream of threats, coming from the President this time, to 
change the rules of the Senate to raise the debt limit because you 
don't want to use reconciliation.
  If you have no more respect for the Senate than that, go ahead and 
change the rules.
  I am not going to live the rest of my political life under threat. I 
am asking no more of you than I ask of myself.
  So if the reason the Republican Party has changed its position is 
because we think somehow what we were

[[Page S6987]]

doing would put the Senate in peril, well, then, the Senate was in 
peril a lot more than we thought it was.
  It never entered my mind to go to Democratic colleagues and say: If 
you don't do a few things that I need to have to get people off my ass 
at home, then I may have to do carve-outs of this and that.
  I didn't do it because I don't think it is the right thing to do. I 
am not going to tolerate it now.
  Now, I will work with you when it makes sense, but what you are doing 
makes no sense to me, and you need to pay a political price for it 
under the rules.
  I am not doing anything illegal. The Republican Party wasn't doing 
anything backdoor. We said there is a way forward on the debt ceiling. 
It is reconciliation. And that is the process you should use because of 
what you are doing in terms of spending all this money, and we are just 
not going to be part of making it easy for you to spend all this money.
  And here we are. Ten Republicans are going to be voting here pretty 
soon. I will not be one of them.
  And to my Republican colleagues: I understand where you are coming 
from. I don't fault you for your vote. You know, I was 1 of 19 
Republicans that voted for an infrastructure package. A lot of you 
didn't agree. Some of you were vocal about it. I can take criticism 
from within my party and without. I try to be respectful.
  I will be respectful tonight, but here is our problem as Republicans: 
We said for 2 months we are going to do one thing, and at the end we 
have done another.
  What does it really matter?
  I don't know. I think it matters to the people who listen to us and 
have some faith in us.
  So to my Democratic colleagues: If we get through the night, we will 
be doing this again. And I promise you, come December, I will be doing 
everything I can to give you a reasonable reconciliation process to 
make it as painless as possible in terms of process, but this is what 
you should be doing because this is what you are doing to the country.
  And to my Republican colleagues: We will have another bite at this 
apple, and we need to decide who we are and what we believe. And if we 
are not going to pursue this strategy anymore, let's just tell the 
people of the country up front it was a bad idea, we shouldn't have 
done it. I think it wasn't a bad idea, but let's not mislead people 
here. Let's not say one thing and do another.
  So I am hoping that we can find a way to do some things together 
before now and 2022. There are some things on Section 230. The 
colleague, the Presiding Officer, is one of the best people in the 
world to do things with if you are looking for bipartisanship on 
immigration. We have got a broken border, we have got DACA at risk. 
Maybe we can do a small deal on immigration.
  But the point for me is this was a self-inflicted wound, and we need 
not do this again.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Utah.
  Mr. LEE. Mr. President, we had a number of Senators come to the floor 
over the last couple of hours talking about some of the problems that 
we face as a country. They are real, they are serious, and they are 
being made more severe still and more severe than they need to be by 
virtue of the step that the Senate is, I fear, about to take.
  When we extend the debt limit without any plan as to how you are not 
going to be back in the same position in just a few more months and you 
are raising it or, as we have been doing it lately, just suspending the 
debt limit, you are creating sort of a debt limit Mardi Gras, an era in 
which any amount of additional borrowing is permitted during that 
period.
  It becomes especially dangerous during times like this one, where we 
are spending not just to the tune of billions, not just to the tune of 
hundreds of billions, not just to the tune of a trillion more than we 
take in, but to the tune of many trillions more than we take in each 
and every year. That is what is hurting poor and middle-class American 
families. It is a reverse Robin Hood that is so perverse. It is a 
reverse Robin Hood effect. We are effectively borrowing--stealing from 
the poor and giving it to the rich and well connected, and we are 
giving the praise that accompanies it to the politicians who clamor for 
attention as a result of other people spending other people's money 
that other people will have to work for to earn back and to pay it 
back. Some of those people aren't old enough to vote yet; some of them 
have not been born; and some will be born years from now to parents who 
have not met.

  It is not fair for us to do that, and that is why this isn't just 
another debt ceiling debate. It is not just another debt limit 
discussion. This one is so much bigger than it has been in the past. 
The effects are being felt so much more directly than they have at any 
other time in the past when we have raised this.
  I know that this can come across to a lot of people as an intensely 
partisan place. I understand how people can think that. In some ways it 
is. Everything about it reminds people of that, especially the visual 
images that they see. You know, we have got 100 desks in here; 50 of 
them are on that side of the aisle, and 50 of them are on this side of 
the aisle. And there are a number of issues on which there is a 
division of thought, a set of pretty deep disagreements that sometimes 
lead to votes that break down more or less along partisan lines. There 
is a lot of that.
  In my view, it doesn't reflect a petulant desire to disagree for the 
sake of being disagreeable. It tends to reflect something a little 
deeper, a little more heartfelt, and, more than anything, it reflects a 
genuine difference of opinion among the people we represent.
  We don't like to disagree around here. In fact, I like agreeing. I 
don't like being disagreeable with those on the other side of the 
aisle. Many of my very favorite people in the U.S. Senate are people 
who don't share my party affiliation and who are at the opposite end of 
the ideological spectrum for me. It makes it that much more fun to work 
with them because there are a number of areas where we can and where we 
do agree.
  So there are ways in which this place is portrayed in the 
entertainment media and in the news media that are accurate, insofar as 
they show this sometimes heated debate that occurs across party lines. 
There is some of that that occurs. It is an incomplete picture because 
there are a lot of areas where we agree, where we reach conclusions 
that are good, and we reach them together.
  There is another feature of that, though, that is very seldom 
portrayed in the news media, in the entertainment media, or elsewhere 
in our society and in our culture, and it worries me. And that is about 
the areas where there is bipartisanship--a bipartisanship that maybe is 
good for people in this Chamber, but leaves a lot of people out in the 
cold. It is good for politicians whether they have an R or a D after 
their name, but it is bad for everyone else, especially the poor and 
middle class. That part concerns me. It worries me a lot. You know, we 
didn't get to this point, going into the pandemic at the peak of an 
economic cycle, where we were spending a trillion dollars a year more 
than we were taking in--we didn't get to that point without a lot of 
bipartisanship.
  We didn't get to the point of trillion-dollar annual deficits without 
a whole lot of Republicans and a whole lot of Democrats agreeing 
together to spend a trillion dollars more each year than we were taking 
in with record-low unemployment, with strong economic growth. We were 
still borrowing that much. Twenty-five percent--$1 out of every $4 
spent by the government--was borrowed. There is a lot of bipartisanship 
in that, but not all bipartisanship is equal and not all bipartisanship 
is good for hard-working poor and middle-class Americans. Some of it is 
downright harmful.
  We didn't get to the point where we spent last year more than double 
what we brought in. We brought in $3 trillion, miraculously, during the 
height of the pandemic, and yet we spent $6.6 trillion last year. We 
didn't get to that point without a whole lot of bipartisanship and 
without a whole lot of Republicans agreeing with a whole lot of 
Democrats to spend that much more than we had.
  We didn't get to be almost $30 trillion in debt without a whole lot 
of bipartisanship. That was a whole lot of Republicans and a whole lot 
of Democrats

[[Page S6988]]

agreeing to do something that might have felt good in the moment--might 
have done a lot of good in the moment--but didn't take into account the 
forgotten man and the forgotten woman in the picture. The poor and 
middle-class family that finds it harder to get by, to buy everything 
from housing to healthcare, from gas to groceries, it didn't take them 
into account. So, no, not all bipartisanship makes sense. Not all 
bipartisanship has the best interests of the American people at heart.
  Sometimes you need someone in the room to express hesitation, to 
express reluctance. Sometimes it is one or two, and sometimes it is 
half. That is why I was elated. I was pleased when a few months ago 
nearly every Member of the Senate Republican conference, 46 out of the 
50 of us, signed a letter.
  Now, the letter explained a few things, a few things that I think are 
pretty important to remember. It explained, for example, that we don't 
ever want to see the Federal Government default on its debt, pointing 
out that not raising the debt limit is a different decision than a 
decision to default on the debt. We bring in more than enough money 
every month and every year to meet the debt service obligations of 
every month and every year--a significant amount more, in fact.
  Sometimes changing the prioritization of spending can allow us to 
borrow less than we would otherwise. So nearly every Member of the 
Republican Senate conference signed this letter acknowledging that we 
don't want to default. And we do find ourselves in an untenable 
position in which Democrats are wanting to pass a $3.5 trillion bill 
that really, according to the nonpartisan Committee for a Responsible 
Federal Budget, would end up costing more like $5 trillion. And we 
don't think it is right in that circumstance to just suspend the debt 
ceiling and that we are not going to do it.
  So we signed this letter. We said, we, the undersigned Republican 
Senators are letting Senate Democrats know and the American public know 
that we will not vote to increase the debt ceiling, whether that comes 
through a stand-alone bill, a continuing resolution, or any other 
vehicle. This is a problem created by Democratic spending, and 
Democrats will have to accept sole responsibility for facilitating.
  I want to be clear. It is not saying that the underlying problem was 
created entirely by Democrats. But it is saying that what the Democrats 
were about to do and are still planning to do is the driving reason why 
we are unwilling to just suspend the debt ceiling. Remember, when we 
are suspending it, we are not just raising it by a certain amount. We 
are creating a period of debt ceiling Mardi Gras, a period in which any 
amount of additional borrowing is allowed under the law. And when you 
have got one party that wants to add to the tune of many trillions of 
dollars to our already out-of-control debt, one that is now in the 
range of about 125 percent of our GDP, that is a problem. It was not 
unreasonable for us to make that commitment. It would have been 
unreasonable for us not to make that commitment. Sometimes you need 
someone who is willing to say: Maybe this isn't such a good idea.
  I commend those who signed the letter. I implore all who signed it to 
remember that commitment, to remember it to their voters. I don't think 
it helps for us to just suspend the debt ceiling anyway, and I don't 
think it helps to dismiss this simply as a cloture vote.
  The point of the letter was that the Democrats have the ability to do 
this on their own through the reconciliation process. If they want to 
do it, they should use that process. They haven't used that process. In 
light of that, we have no business facilitating it.
  I see we have an additional colleague here who is interested in 
speaking. In deference to him, I am going to let him proceed.
  Before I do so, Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to have 
printed in the Congressional Record a copy of that letter, dated August 
10, 2021, signed by 46 Republican Senators.
  There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

                                                  U.S. Senate,

                                  Washington, DC, August 10, 2021.
       To Our Fellow Americans: Since taking total control of the 
     United States federal government, with the Presidency, a 
     narrow majority in the House, and Vice President Harris 
     providing the deciding vote in an evenly split Senate, 
     Democrats have embarked on a massive and unprecedented 
     deficit spending spree. Without a single Republican vote, 
     they passed a $1.9 trillion ``Covid relief'' bill in March 
     even though $1 trillion was still unspent from previous 
     bipartisan Covid relief bills.
       Now they have passed a $3.5 trillion Budget Resolution, 
     again without a single Republican vote. The non-partisan 
     Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget has calculated 
     that a more honest score of this budget resolution will 
     likely exceed $5 trillion. Senate Democrats shamelessly 
     estimate their tax and spending plan will result in a $45 
     trillion debt level by 2031.
       In order for this spending to occur, our nation's debt 
     limit will have to be increased significantly. Because 
     Democrats are responsible for the spending, they need to take 
     responsibility for increasing the debt ceiling. They have 
     total control of the government, and the unilateral ability 
     to raise the debt ceiling to accommodate their unilateral 
     spending plans. Indeed, Democrats have the ability to raise 
     the debt limit through the Budget Resolution by introducing 
     appropriate language in the upcoming reconciliation process 
     (or a subsequent reconciliation). Doing so would not require 
     a single Republican vote, and would appropriately require 
     each and every Democrat to take responsibility for their out-
     of-control spending.
       We should not default on our debts under any circumstances. 
     If Democrats threaten a default, it will only be because they 
     refuse to vote for the debt ceiling increase necessitated by 
     their own irresponsible spending. Democrats, at any time, 
     have the power through reconciliation to unilaterally raise 
     the debt ceiling, and they should not be allowed to pretend 
     otherwise.
       We, the undersigned Republican Senators, are letting Senate 
     Democrats and the American public know that we will not vote 
     to increase the debt ceiling, whether that increase comes 
     through a stand-alone bill, a continuing resolution, or any 
     other vehicle. This is a problem created by Democrat 
     spending. Democrats will have to accept sole responsibility 
     for facilitating it.
         Mitch McConnell, Mitt Romney, Mike Lee, Patrick J. 
           Toomey, Marsha Blackburn, John Barrasso, James Inhofe, 
           Steve Daines, Deb Fischer, John Cornyn, Cindy Hyde-
           Smith, Lindsey Graham, Ted Cruz, Mike Crapo, John 
           Thune, Chuck Grassley, John Boozman, Ben Sasse, Tom 
           Cotton, Roger F. Wicker, Roger Marshall, Bill Cassidy, 
           Mike Rounds, Ron Johnson, Josh Hawley, Cynthia M. 
           Lummis, Tommy Tuberville, Rick Scott, Thom Tillis, Rand 
           Paul, James Lankford, Mike Braun, Marco Rubio, Roy 
           Blunt, Richard Burr, Tim Scott, James E. Risch, Bill 
           Hagerty, Joni Ernst, Dan Sullivan, Shelley Moore 
           Capito, Kevin Cramer, John Hoeven, Jerry Moran, Todd 
           Young, Rob Portman.

  Mr. LEE. Thank you.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Ossoff). The Senator from Montana.
  Mr. DAINES. Mr. President, first of all, I want to thank the Senator 
from Utah for his courtesy.
  Thank you, Senator Lee.


                   Unanimous Consent Request--S. 2196

  Mr. DAINES. Mr. President, Americans across the country, people 
around the world, and myself believe that in this room, they know that 
President Biden is failing at our southern border. That is not a 
secret. We have had months of record-shattering numbers of illegal 
immigrants crossing our southern border.
  We have had unfathomable amounts of illegal drugs produced by Mexican 
cartels--meth, fentanyl, heroin--coming into our country. It is making 
its way across that southern border and into States like my home State 
of Montana.
  Many of you have probably heard me say that Montana is a northern 
border State with a southern border crisis. Well, that is true. The 
crisis at our southern border, created by President Biden, is out of 
control, and we all know we must do something to change the status quo 
to protect our families and our communities.
  But what I am here to talk about today is how President Biden is also 
failing at our northern border--the border between the United States 
and Canada. While our southern border remains wide open to illegal 
drugs, illegal immigrants--many potentially COVID-positive or 
unvaccinated--our northern border remains closed because of President 
Biden.
  The hypocrisy here is stunning. It is infuriating. It is 
unexplainable. There is no reason or rationale behind President Biden's 
decision. It can't be because of COVID-19 or because of vaccination 
rates. Canadians are over 80

[[Page S6989]]

percent vaccinated--80 percent. Haitians, on the other hand, coming 
across the southern border, have less than a 1-percent COVID 
vaccination rate. So if COVID-19 and the vaccination rates were the 
issue, then why did President Trudeau lift his restrictions and start 
allowing Americans to travel to Canada on August 9? It makes no sense.
  President Biden is prohibiting Canadians from traveling into the 
United States. They can't come into Montana.
  Who is paying the price for President Biden's hypocrisy? Montanans 
are paying the price. Montana families and Montana businesses are 
paying the price. Montana border communities and northern border 
communities across the country are paying the price. President Biden's 
inexplicable policies are hurting Montana's economy, destroying jobs, 
shuttering businesses, and hurting our families.
  In fact, let me give you an example. Great Falls, MT, which proudly 
calls Malmstrom Air Force Base its home, reported that they have seen a 
20- to 25-percent decrease in revenue due to the continued border 
closure. This is, sadly, the story we are hearing from many communities 
and business owners across Montana as Canadians are no longer able to 
come visit our beautiful State.
  This has been going on for far too long. Since the President will not 
do the right thing, to use some good old-fashioned Montana commonsense 
to listen to Montanans and open our northern border, I have introduced 
a bill to do just that.
  And, by the way, I have seen some of my colleagues across the aisle 
join me in calling on this administration to reopen the northern 
border, and I am grateful for that, but actions speak louder than 
words.
  Today, we have the opportunity to stop putting the power in the hands 
of President Biden to make the right decision here--he hasn't made it--
because we know that won't happen. Today, we can pass my bill, called 
the Restoring the Northern Border Travel Act, and require the Biden 
administration to reopen the northern border. Let's help revitalize 
Montana. How about the other northern border States? Let's put an end 
to this irrational closure and this hypocrisy. A wide open southern 
border and a closed northern border, it doesn't make any sense.

  So I urge my colleagues on both sides of the aisle to join me in 
passing my bill.
  Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Homeland 
Security and Governmental Affairs be discharged from further 
consideration of S. 2196 and the Senate proceed to its immediate 
consideration. I further ask that the bill be considered read a third 
time and passed and that the motion to reconsider be considered made 
and laid upon the table.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection?
  The Senator from Delaware.
  Mr. CARPER. Mr. President, reserving the right to object, I 
appreciate my colleague from Montana's efforts to get the northern 
border travel back to normal. I understand that this is an important 
issue in Montana, and it is important to families along our northern 
border, not only Montana but across our Nation.
  I just want to flag a couple of things, if I can. This legislation 
has not been considered just yet in the Homeland Security and 
Governmental Affairs Committee on which I serve and formerly chaired. 
Given the importance of this issue, I will be more than happy to work 
with my colleague from Montana on a path forward from this time.
  I am concerned, having said that, that this legislation, as is, is a 
bit too broad and could have unintended consequences, including making 
it harder to address future challenges at our borders. Having said 
that, fortunately, the Biden administration is already taking action to 
safely and responsibly reopen our border, including the recent 
announcement to expand the eligibility of travelers to enter the U.S. 
via air travel that will go into effect--I believe it is next month.
  Again, I appreciate my colleague's efforts here and am ready to work 
with him, as I said to him just a few minutes ago, more than willing to 
work with him on this bill within the Homeland Security Committee where 
I serve as a senior Democrat, and we can look at changes to refine the 
legislation and help build bipartisan support for it.
  Unfortunately, however, tonight I have to object.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The objection is heard.
  The Senator from Montana.
  Mr. DAINES. Mr. President, I am grateful for the support the Senator 
from Delaware has offered here. The reason I am down here asking for 
the unanimous consent this evening is to provide a sense of urgency to 
try to get this done now.
  President Trudeau opened up the Canadian border on August 9, and 
President Biden has kept the border shut down to Canadians coming in 
during that entire time. It doesn't make sense. COVID is a concern. We 
agree on that. However, it should not be a concern at the U.S.-Canadian 
border, with Canadians having an 80-percent vaccination rate.
  Canada began letting fully vaccinated Americans cross the border 2 
months ago. Canada has a higher vaccination rate than the United 
States. I find it a bit hypocritical to talk about the concern about 
vaccination rates and relating that to the northern border and, at the 
same time, the southern border is wide open with vaccination rates, for 
example, of Haitians of less than 1 percent.
  So anyway, we want to get this resolved. We are seeing businesses and 
families suffer in northern border States. This administration 
continues to have a wide open southern border policy while keeping the 
northern border closed. Montana can't figure that one out. Many of us 
who live in northern border States see the same thing. The hypocrisy 
has to end. The travel at the U.S.-Canadian border needs to be restored 
immediately.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Delaware.


                      Unanimous Consent Agreement

  Mr. CARPER. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to yield back the 
remaining time on both sides.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  All time is yielded back.


                             Cloture Motion

  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Pursuant to rule XXII, the Chair lays before 
the Senate the pending cloture motion, which the clerk will state.
  The legislative clerk read as follows:

                             Cloture Motion

       We, the undersigned Senators, in accordance with the 
     provisions of rule XXII of the Standing Rules of the Senate, 
     do hereby move to bring to a close debate on the motion to 
     concur in the House amendment to S. 1301, an act to provide 
     for the publication by the Secretary of Health and Human 
     Services of physical activity recommendations for Americans, 
     with amendment No. 3847.
         Charles E. Schumer, Ron Wyden, Jack Reed, Richard J. 
           Durbin, Richard Blumenthal, Tina Smith, Amy Klobuchar, 
           Jacky Rosen, Christopher Murphy, Chris Van Hollen, 
           Jeanne Shaheen, Mazie K. Hirono, Tim Kaine, Debbie 
           Stabenow, Angus S. King, Jr., Robert P. Casey, Jr., 
           Jeff Merkley.

  The PRESIDING OFFICER. By unanimous consent, the mandatory quorum 
call has been waived.
  The question is, Is it the sense of the Senate that debate on the 
motion to concur in the House amendment to S. 1301, an act to provide 
for the publication by the Secretary of Health and Human Services of 
physical activity recommendations for Americans with amendment No. 3847 
offered by the Senator from New York, Mr. Schumer, shall be brought to 
a close?
  The yeas and nays are mandatory under the rule.
  The clerk will call the roll.
  The legislative clerk called the roll.
  Mr. THUNE. The following Senator is necessarily absent: the Senator 
from North Carolina (Mr. Burr).
  The yeas and nays resulted--yeas 61, nays 38, as follows:

                      [Rollcall Vote No. 411 Leg.]

                                YEAS--61

     Baldwin
     Barrasso
     Bennet
     Blumenthal
     Blunt
     Booker
     Brown
     Cantwell
     Capito
     Cardin
     Carper
     Casey
     Collins
     Coons
     Cornyn
     Cortez Masto
     Duckworth
     Durbin
     Feinstein
     Gillibrand
     Hassan
     Heinrich
     Hickenlooper
     Hirono
     Kaine
     Kelly
     King
     Klobuchar
     Leahy
     Lujan
     Manchin
     Markey
     McConnell
     Menendez
     Merkley
     Murkowski
     Murphy
     Murray
     Ossoff
     Padilla
     Peters
     Portman
     Reed
     Rosen
     Rounds

[[Page S6990]]


     Sanders
     Schatz
     Schumer
     Shaheen
     Shelby
     Sinema
     Smith
     Stabenow
     Tester
     Thune
     Van Hollen
     Warner
     Warnock
     Warren
     Whitehouse
     Wyden

                                NAYS--38

     Blackburn
     Boozman
     Braun
     Cassidy
     Cotton
     Cramer
     Crapo
     Cruz
     Daines
     Ernst
     Fischer
     Graham
     Grassley
     Hagerty
     Hawley
     Hoeven
     Hyde-Smith
     Inhofe
     Johnson
     Kennedy
     Lankford
     Lee
     Lummis
     Marshall
     Moran
     Paul
     Risch
     Romney
     Rubio
     Sasse
     Scott (FL)
     Scott (SC)
     Sullivan
     Tillis
     Toomey
     Tuberville
     Wicker
     Young

                             NOT VOTING--1

       
     Burr
       
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Murphy). On this vote, the yeas are 61, 
the nays are 38.
  Three-fifths of the Senators duly chosen and sworn having voted in 
the affirmative, the motion is agreed to.
  The majority leader.
  Mr. SCHUMER. Mr. President, in a few moments, the Senate will pass an 
extension of the debt limit through early December, avoiding a first-
ever, Republican-manufactured default on the national debt.
  On Monday morning, I said we needed to pass a bill to address the 
debt limit by the end of the week, and that is exactly what we did.
  Republicans played a dangerous and risky partisan game, and I am glad 
that their brinksmanship did not work. For the good of America's 
families, for the good of our economy, Republicans must recognize in 
the future that they should approach fixing the debt limit in a 
bipartisan way.
  What is needed now is a long-term solution so we don't go through 
this risky drama every few months, and we hope Republicans will join in 
enacting a long-term solution to the debt limit in December. We are 
ready to work with them.
  Leader McConnell and Senate Republicans insisted they wanted a 
solution to the debt ceiling, but said Democrats must raise it alone by 
going through a drawn-out, convoluted, and risky reconciliation 
process. That was simply unacceptable to my caucus, and, yesterday, 
Senate Republicans finally realized that their obstruction was not 
going to work.
  I thank very much my Democratic colleagues for our showing our unity 
in solving this Republican-manufactured crisis. Despite immense 
opposition from Leader McConnell and the Members of his conference, our 
caucus held together and we pulled our country back from the cliff's 
edge that Republicans tried to push us over.
  This is a temporary but necessary and important fix. I appreciate 
that, at the end of the day, we were able to raise the debt limit 
without a convoluted and unnecessary reconciliation process that, until 
today, the Republican leader claimed was the only way to address the 
debt limit.
  Let me say that again. Today's vote is proof positive that the debt 
limit can be addressed without going through the reconciliation 
process, just as Democrats have been saying for months.
  The solution is for Republicans to either join us in raising the debt 
limit or stay out of the way and let Democrats address the debt limit 
ourselves. Those are the two choices, and it is very simple.
  Senate Democrats want a long-term solution to the debt limit to make 
sure financial markets remain stable and our economic recovery stays on 
track. America's full faith and credit must never be used as a 
political bargaining chip. I hope my Republican colleagues relent from 
trying to make it one when we revisit this issue soon.
  So now that Republican brinkmanship has relented, Senate Democrats 
will focus on passing the Build Back Better agenda so we can finally 
build up ladders of opportunity for people to climb up to the middle 
class, to help people already in the middle class stay there, to fight 
climate change, and create the good-paying jobs of tomorrow and 
rekindle that sunny American optimism that has long been the course of 
our national identity.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Cloture having been invoked, the motion to 
refer and the amendments pending thereto fall.


                          Amendment Withdrawn

  Under the previous order, amendment No. 3848 is withdrawn and all 
postcloture time is expired.


                        Vote on Motion to Concur

  The question occurs on agreeing to the motion to concur in the House 
amendment to S. 1301 with amendment No. 3847.
  The yeas and nays were previously ordered.
  The clerk will call the roll.
  The senior assistant legislative clerk called the roll.
  Mr. THUNE. The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator 
from Tennessee (Mrs. Blackburn) and the Senator from North Carolina 
(Mr. Burr).
  The result was announced--yeas 50, nays 48, as follows:

                      [Rollcall Vote No. 412 Leg.]

                                YEAS--50

     Baldwin
     Bennet
     Blumenthal
     Booker
     Brown
     Cantwell
     Cardin
     Carper
     Casey
     Coons
     Cortez Masto
     Duckworth
     Durbin
     Feinstein
     Gillibrand
     Hassan
     Heinrich
     Hickenlooper
     Hirono
     Kaine
     Kelly
     King
     Klobuchar
     Leahy
     Lujan
     Manchin
     Markey
     Menendez
     Merkley
     Murphy
     Murray
     Ossoff
     Padilla
     Peters
     Reed
     Rosen
     Sanders
     Schatz
     Schumer
     Shaheen
     Sinema
     Smith
     Stabenow
     Tester
     Van Hollen
     Warner
     Warnock
     Warren
     Whitehouse
     Wyden

                                NAYS--48

     Barrasso
     Blunt
     Boozman
     Braun
     Capito
     Cassidy
     Collins
     Cornyn
     Cotton
     Cramer
     Crapo
     Cruz
     Daines
     Ernst
     Fischer
     Graham
     Grassley
     Hagerty
     Hawley
     Hoeven
     Hyde-Smith
     Inhofe
     Johnson
     Kennedy
     Lankford
     Lee
     Lummis
     Marshall
     McConnell
     Moran
     Murkowski
     Paul
     Portman
     Risch
     Romney
     Rounds
     Rubio
     Sasse
     Scott (FL)
     Scott (SC)
     Shelby
     Sullivan
     Thune
     Tillis
     Toomey
     Tuberville
     Wicker
     Young

                             NOT VOTING--2

     Blackburn
     Burr
       
  The motion was agreed to.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Under the previous order, the motion to 
reconsider is considered made and laid upon the table.

                          ____________________