[Congressional Record Volume 168, Number 198 (Tuesday, December 20, 2022)]
[Senate]
[Pages S7818-S7819]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                                OMNIBUS

  Mr. PAUL. Mr. President, if this is winning, I am getting tired of 
winning. GOP leadership declared that this bill is a victory--but not 
unless you define victory as adding over a trillion dollars in new 
deficit spending.
  So really, there is a debate--a big debate--within the Republican 
Party. Which is more important? Is it more important to add $45 billion 
to military spending, or is it more important not to add $1 trillion in 
deficit to our overall debt?
  We now have a $31 trillion debt. We are adding over a trillion 
dollars a year, and yet Republican leadership says this is a victory 
because we are getting more military spending. But it is a victory at 
what expense? Are we actually more secure? Are we more safe? Is our 
national security more protected by spending more on the military, or 
is our national security actually more threatened by incurring more 
debt? I would argue the latter, that $31 trillion dollars in debt is 
the No. 1 threat to our national security.
  It is the week before Christmas, and, predictably, Congress is 
considering yet another $1.7 trillion spending bill that we haven't had 
a chance to see or even read.
  Last night, at 1:30 in the morning, the text of this 4,155-page 
spending spree was released. If you thought Congress couldn't possibly 
spend more money than it did last year, you would be wrong. The omnibus 
increases spending by 10 percent compared to last year's budget. You 
would think that nearly 2 years of 40-year-high inflation would create 
some hesitation.
  You would think that a looming recession, spurred largely by 
exorbitant government spending, would give this Congress pause. But 
instead of taking a minute to consider what a responsible Federal 
Government budget looks like, we are, instead, placed behind the barrel 
of a gun, forcing us to choose between letting government expire or 
blindly passing a $1.7 trillion spending package that not only does not 
balance, but, in fact, spends over 10 percent more than last year.
  How does Congress spend taxpayers' money? Well, here are just a few 
examples of how your government currently spends money. We found that 
they spent, last year, $2.3 million injecting beagles with cocaine. It 
seems that their researchers were curious--despite the pain they 
inflicted on these dogs--they were curious to know if cocaine causes 
adverse effects. Guess what. Read the newspaper. Read the news. Look at 
the addicts across our country. You think you need to inject beagles 
with cocaine to know that cocaine is a bad deal?
  And $700,000 was spent to study how male parrots attract their mate. 
Really? We have got people who go hungry in our country. We have people 
that are trying to get out from behind poverty, and we are spending 
$700,000 studying how male parrots attract a female.
  We spent $187,000 to study whether or not dogs help kids cope. Of 
course they do. Ask any pet owner. Any pet owner could have told you, 
and we would have saved the taxpayer $187,000.
  We spent $118,000 to study if a metal replica, a robot, of Marvel 
Comics' evil warlord Thanos could snap his fingers--$118,000. Really? 
They apparently hired some dude to wear metal gloves and then try to 
snap his fingers. You know what? They found out that it is impossible 
to make a snapping sound with metal fingers.
  So robots of the world, be warned: It is hard to snap your fingers.
  While we continue to spend ourselves into oblivion, almost every 
single European nation is working to shrink their deficit. We routinely 
look to Europe, and we say: Look how liberal, look how Big Government, 
look how socialized--and yet, most of Europe actually balances their 
annual budget.
  In 2019, 15 of 26 European countries ran budget surpluses. Another 
eight European countries ran deficits of less than 3 percent of their 
GDP. While here in the U.S., in that same year, our deficit exceeded 6 
percent of GDP.
  Europe is a glaring example that fiscal responsibility is possible. 
It is not a pipe dream. In fact, if we just cut our spending to what we 
spent in 2019--just 3 years ago--we would actually have a balanced 
budget today. Instead, we have jumped from a deficit that was 6 percent 
of our GDP to a deficit that is 12 percent of our GDP.
  We are adding debt at an alarming rate. We are adding debt at a 
greater pace than we ever have in the history of our country. 
Thankfully, some of our predecessors in Congress anticipated this lack 
of restraint, and they gave us some guideposts. They gave us some 
rules. They established guardrails and tools to keep our budget in 
check. For example, there is a rule called the Statutory Pay-As-You-Go 
Act--or PAYGO, for short. It requires that if you have new spending, it 
has to be offset by cuts elsewhere in the budget or elsewhere in the 
spending bill.
  Despite equipping our government with this necessary tool, though, 
Congress, with almost every budget in recent history, abuses its power, 
spends like drunken sailors, and ignores the fact that a day of 
reckoning is coming. Unfortunately, Congress has, virtually 100 percent 
of the time, voted to waive the PAYGO requirements.
  The American people demand accountability for the damage the Big 
Government spenders are doing to our families and to our Nation's 
economic well-being. I will not allow my colleagues to escape 
accountability by hiding behind 4,000 pages of legislative text.
  I, therefore, will raise a budget point of order as this bill comes 
to the floor that will put every Member of the Senate on record as to 
where they stand on fiscal responsibility. Unfortunately, most of the 
Senators--even if they share my sentiments--they know that

[[Page S7819]]

this point of order will be waived. They think they can quietly vote 
this way and no one will notice.
  Well, when American voters finally notice that people here are saying 
one thing at home and doing another, are promising balancing budgets 
and promising that deficits do matter and then come up here and vote 
the opposite way--one day, the American electorate will wake up and 
vote these hypocrites out.
  There are many other points of order that can be raised on this. The 
budget rules are actually of some value if we would actually obey the 
rules. Some of the people, you see them. You see them in their States, 
they are at campaign rallies, they will tell you at townhalls, they 
will tell you on the Senate floor that we absolutely must get spending 
under control. They will tell you that the debt is a problem. They will 
tell you that it is a terrible way to run government to have omnibuses. 
It is terrible to put $6 trillion together in one bill, release it at 
1:30 in the morning, and pass it; and you can read about it and find 
out what is in it later.
  I suspect you will find a lot of promises, though, that will be 
violated as we vote on these PAYGO restrictions. Realize that this is 
the law. The law of the land says you can't do this. Congress, in 
passing this omnibus, is breaking the law. The statute says very 
clearly they cannot do this.
  The only way they actually can evade responsibility is they change 
the law. They say: Oh, well, it would be embarrassing to get rid of the 
law; we will waive the law. So we have laws for decades that could 
actually right our fiscal house and put us on a course towards 
balancing our budget, and the rules are waived. They disobey their own 
rules.
  Congress does a disservice to the economy every time it waives these 
points of orders. What good are these procedures if they are never 
upheld? What started as formal guardrails to keep fiscal health of this 
Nation strong is now merely just a messaging tool with no real 
significance that allows Senators to get away with making promises they 
never intended to keep.
  That is why, in addition to raising this point of order, I am 
introducing an amendment to reform our budget procedures by raising the 
threshold. Let's make it less easy for them to break the rules. 
Currently, 60 Senators can break the rules. Let's make it two-thirds. 
Let's make it 67 Senators necessary to break the rules. Why? Because 
they are bankrupting this country, both sides of the aisle. There is an 
unholy alliance between both parties.
  One party wants more welfare; one wants more warfare. It is either 
the military industrial complex or the welfare industrial complex. But 
what happens inevitably every year is spending goes up. People come and 
the journalists question: What will happen? What will happen with 
Christmas here?
  The only thing that is known to happen is this body--both parties--
will continue to add to the debt. And there is a day--there is a day 
when you wake up and the dollar is worthless. Right now, the dollar is 
losing nearly 10 percent of its value on an annual basis, but there is 
a day when it is 10 percent a day or 10 percent an hour.
  Great countries have succumbed to the destruction of currency, and it 
happens through debt, through deficit financing. And it is coming to 
us. There is a day of reckoning, unless we wake up and say: Enough is 
enough. We are going to do the prudent and rational thing: We are going 
to balance our budget.
  It is time that we take our Nation's health seriously, and it is time 
that we show concern for those who are being damaged and devastated by 
inflation. The inflation at the grocery store, at the gas pump, who 
does it hurt the worst? It hurts those on fixed incomes, senior 
citizens. It hurts the working class and the poor. Those who have most 
of their expenditures that go towards consumption, towards their food 
and groceries and gas, people who spend 90 percent of what they earn on 
buying the stuff that allows them to live are the people that are 
decimated by inflation.
  So if there are people in this body who do care, who do really care 
about those who are struggling with the burden of inflation, the best 
way is to quit digging the hole deeper, quit adding to the debt, and do 
what even European countries can do; and that is, begin to balance our 
budget.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Vermont.

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