Udall Foundation Reauthorization Act of 2023

Floor Speech

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Mr. PAUL. Madam President, Congress is poised to do what no American family would ever do. Congress is poised to spend one-third more dollars than they receive. This is essentially equivalent to a family at home making $45,000 but spending $60,000. No American family can do that. But that is what is happening here.

The spending that has been brought forward for our spending plans this year will lead to a $1.5 trillion deficit. So we bring in about $4.5 trillion, and we are going to spend $6 trillion. It is reckless. It leads to inflation. It is a direct vote to steal your paycheck. Because what happens, as we borrow more money, the Federal Reserve just prints up more money, and they will pay for all the debt that is created today. But that devalues your dollar.

So when you go to the grocery store and your prices have risen 20 percent, you can thank the people today that are all for you, and they are going to give you everything you want. Every program under the sun that grandmother and mother and apple pie wants, they are going to give you. But they are going to borrow the money.

This is a bait-and-switch. It is like: What do you want, America? Here, we will give it to you. It is free. You don't have to do anything.

But it is borrowed. When they give you stuff that they buy with borrowed money, they create inflation. This has been going on for a while. But it has accelerated. It is at an alarming pace now.

With the COVID lockdowns, we were borrowing $3 trillion. Then with the Biden years, we were borrowing over a trillion. We are still borrowing at $1.5 trillion. Why? Because their spending proposals take most of the spending off-limits.

Two-thirds of our spending is entitlements--Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, food stamps. That is two-thirds of the spending. That equals all of the money you pay in taxes.

They have taken that off the limit. They have stuck their head in the sand, and said, ``We will not ever touch entitlements.''

Well, if you don't, you are not a serious person. If you don't, you are part of the problem.

Entitlements is two-thirds of the spending. Do I take joy in knowing that we have to reform these? No. But if you don't reform them, they are an anchor around the neck of America, and they are destroying us by spending money we don't have.

So two-thirds of the spending they are not even going to address. Now, of the remaining third of spending, that is what we vote on-- military spending and nonmilitary spending. They call this discretionary spending. Of that remaining third, they took half of that off the table.

So entitlements is two-thirds of the spending. That is going up at about 5 to 6 percent. The remaining third that we vote on is military and nonmilitary. They say: Well, we have to continue to expand the military. It is going to go up to 3 percent.

So what are we left with? We are left with one-half of one-third, one-sixth of government, about 16.6 percent. And we are going to say: Oh, we are going to really try to rein in spending there. And there what they do is, they almost slow it down to 1 or 2 percent.

This bill spends a third more than comes in. And what it is going to lead to--and has been leading to--is the erosion of your paycheck, the explosion of your gas prices, and the explosion of your grocery bills. Nothing is changing.

And you ask yourself: Where are Republicans? We have a Republican majority in the House, and, ostensibly, Republicans are for reducing the debt.

We have a filibuster-proof minority in the Senate and, ostensibly, Senate Republicans are for taking control of the debt. And yet what happens? Nothing happens. The spending goes on apace. The deficit grows by day.

So when did we get this spending bill? They have months and months to do this. When did we get it? At 2:32 a.m. on Thursday. And now it is: rush, rush, rush; we have got to shovel that money out the door, most of which we don't have or a third of which we don't have. We have to borrow it quickly, shovel it out the door because the government is going to shut down Friday at midnight.

Why is the government shutting down, and why are we up against a deadline? Because they didn't give us the thousand-page bill until 2:30 in the morning on Thursday.

Do you think we ought to read it? Do you think we ought to know what is in it?

Republican and Democrat leadership gave this to us at 2:32 in the morning--1,012-page bill, spends over a trillion dollars. No one will be able to thoroughly read and know what is in this until after it has passed. But it is rush, rush, rush; borrow more money; spend the money; and then try to deceive you into thinking that we gave you--we brought you manna from Heaven. We gave you all these gifts, these baubles. You are going to get a lot of free stuff. Every cause you like under the sun, you are going to get something for it in there. But they won't tell you the truth--that it is borrowed, it leads to inflation, and it is the biggest threat to our country.

We are not threatened by other countries invading our country. We are a strong and mighty country to which I do not believe we have an external threat. But we have a threat internally, and most of it resides in this body. Most of it resides in this body and in the House with profligate spenders who are not adequately concerned with spending what comes in. They are just jolly well borrowing it. They are jolly well borrowing it and sending it abroad.

You know, look, my sympathies are with Ukraine, but my first obligation to my oath of office is to my country. We can't just borrow money to send it to Ukraine.

You know, once the war is finally over, which one day it will be over, the whole country is destroyed with bombs on both sides, and someone is going to be asked to pay for it. That is going to be you. Uncle Sam, Uncle Sucker will be asked to pay for it.

This bill that we are looking at has 138 pages and over 1,400 earmarks, totaling $2 billion. What is an ``earmark''? It is pork. It is not acknowledged by the Constitution. The Constitution says we can tax and spend money for the general welfare. We are allowed to spend money up here, according to the Constitution, only if it is for everyone.

So a bike path in Rhode Island is for people who live in one city in Rhode Island. They should tax the people of Rhode Island. But you don't tax everybody for a bike path in Rhode Island. That is against the principle and the spirit of the Constitution.

Now, these 1,400 earmarks are on top of the 6,000 earmarks we had last week for $12 billion. So total between the two bills in the last 3 weeks, we have over 7,000 earmarks for $14 billion. That is a lot of pork.

Democratic and Republican leadership want this reckless spending bill to pass quickly to make sure that no one has time to read or scrutinize the bill. Likely, no one will ever have the time to review all of the $2 billion worth of earmarks before this is passed.

Now, earmarks and pork barrel spending is not brand new; it has been going on a long time. There was a conservative Democrat by the name of William Proxmire. This was a long time ago, in the old days, when there used to be conservative Democrats who cared about the debt.

And one of the programs that he talked about was--and he gave out a Golden Fleece Award to point out waste--but he said it was one of his favorites. He said the government, in their infinite wisdom, decided to discover whether or not, if you gave gin to a sunfish versus tequila, which would make the sunfish more aggressive?

Think about it. These are oppressing problems: $100,000 to give tequila to sunfish and gin and see which one made them more aggressive.

Now, you would think that is so crazy, certainly it was one off and that we discovered this kind of waste, and we made it better. He talked about this for 15 years. And throughout the 15 years that he talked about the research money going to crazy research like this that not a penny should be spent on increased.

In fact, fast forward to last year--we are now like 30-some-odd years after William Proxmire was talking about this--last year, the main organization that is probably the most wasteful scientific accumulation of grants up here is the National Science Foundation. What did this body do, Republicans and Democrats? They voted to double the budget for the National Science Foundation.

What else do they do at the National Science Foundation? Let's see. Nearly $1 million was spent studying whether or not Japanese quail, if you give them cocaine, whether or not they are more sexually promiscuous-- your tax dollars.

Every time they are bragging about what they are doing--it is worth borrowing the money--you remind them of what they are spending it on: nearly a million dollars to study Japanese quail to see if they are sexually promiscuous when they take cocaine.

Another one was ostensibly for autism. But when they got to the autism and they subgranted it and sent it here and there, and you never know where it is going to wind up, $750,000, and it went to some, let's just call them eggheads--that is the nicest word I can think of--to study what did Neil Armstrong say when he landed on the Moon. Was it ``One small step for man'' or was it ``One small step for a man''? So $750,000 was spent studying what he actually said. They listened to the crackly old audio from the black-and-white tapes from the Moon landing. And in the end, $750,000 later, they couldn't decide, was it ``One step for man'' or ``One step for a man''?

This is the craziness that goes on. Yet it goes on and on and on.

Here is what I will tell you. Even when it is something justified--I have family members who have Alzheimer's. My mother-in-law died not too long ago with it. So I have a great deal of sympathy for the disease. I think we are a big, rich country and government; we could spend money on Alzheimer's disease. At the same time, we can't bankrupt our country.

Let's say we spent $100 million last year on Alzheimer's disease. Am I a cruel person for saying we don't have enough money; we should spend $95 million this year? That never happens. Nothing ever gets smaller around here. Everything gets bigger. Everybody who wants something gets it. Put it on Uncle Sam's tab. We have a $34 going on $35 trillion debt. The biggest payment now in our budget within about a year is going to be the interest on that.

Here are a couple of the new earmarks that are in this bill: $2 million for the construction of a kelp and shellfish nursery in Maine. You might say: Well, kelp might taste really good. I like to eat kelp. Good. There is already a $15 billion private market for kelp. There are companies, including in Maine, that are growing kelp for farms. I say wonderful. I am not so sure if giving it to the government or to government universities is going to help these businesses or compete with them. But I don't think it is the job of the Federal Government to be involved in these parochial concerns.

Another earmark that we discovered in this bill is $1.5 million to encourage video gaming in New York. Now, you know, I have nothing against people who play video games, sure. But $1.5 million to encourage people? I have seen kids. I don't think they need any encouragement. In fact, we might be better off spending $1.5 million to discourage kids from playing video games. I see no reason, when we are down and in the hole this year $1.5 trillion, that we should do this. This is an add-on. These add-ons are earmarks. They are in the name of probably the Senators from New York. They decided they want this video gaming thing in there. Maybe they know somebody in that industry, I don't know--maybe a friend of theirs.

That is why you don't earmark things. That is why things are supposed to be for the general welfare. You don't say: Here is something I am going to give to a specific parochial interest in my neighborhood or my State.

The third item we have is $388,000 for Columbia University. I am sure the people who put this earmark in would be saying: I just love education, and I am just for education. Well, so am I. I am a product of public school education, private school education, lots of education. I am all for it. But do you know what? Columbia University has a $13.6 billion endowment. They make $388,000 in 20 days of interest. You would think maybe they could spend their own money. If you want to take a summer program to get into Columbia--which I think this money may be related to--it costs $12,500 for a 3-week course at Columbia. We are talking about extraordinarily wealthy people paying this and going to this school. But there is no reason for the taxpayers to be giving a rich university that has $13 billion any money.

The next earmark we found was $249,000 for the Baltimore Symphony. People say: Gosh, I love the symphony, and I love music. So do I. The thing is, the way government is supposed to work is if you think that there is a general need for symphony money, you would pass a general symphony bill and we give money to all the symphonies and make them part of government. We don't have the money to do that. Instead, we do something even worse. We shouldn't be in the symphony business. It is not part of the general welfare.

What happens here is the people on the Appropriations Committee who have seniority--that means you have been here between 50 and 100 years most of the time--that is an exaggeration. Let's just say 50 years. They have been here 50 years and rise to the top and, by golly, they get money for their symphony in their city. That is not the way government is supposed to work.

There might even be less complaints if we have a surplus. But this is in the midst of borrowing it. So the $250,000 is going to be borrowed from China. Everybody is all up in arms about China. We are borrowing money from China. We are becoming weaker than China because we keep spending money we don't have.

The next earmark was $1 million for Cambridge, MA, Community Center to install some solar panels. I like solar panels as well as anybody. I think it is kind of cool to get some of your energy from solar panels. This is a rich community. This is where Harvard is. This is where some of the largest, most successful corporations and research are in Boston. You think they can't pay for solar panels? Solar panels aren't for general welfare.

Our Founding Fathers said all spending and taxation had to be for the general welfare. And they went one step further. In article I, section 8, they laid out all the powers of Congress, all the things we are allowed to do. And not listed in those was to buy solar panels for one town.

You would think all the wealth with MIT and Harvard and all that wealth that is attracted to Cambridge, they would be able to buy their own solar panels. It has no place in a budget that is $1.5 trillion in the hole and only makes us weaker. The next earmark is $1 million for Martha's Vineyard Hospital, one of the richest ZIP Codes in the United States. I have been to Martha's Vineyard. It is beautiful. But I could only afford to go one time.

The thing is, if you live there, that is wonderful. I am all for wealthy people. I love that they have all these beautiful homes. I think President Obama may have a place there. The thing is, pay for your own hospital. I have little, tiny hospitals with 40 beds in a really rural community that because of all the rules and resolutions, are barely breaking even in Kentucky, and I don't see sending millions of dollars to Martha's Vineyard.

Once again, why did it go to Martha's Vineyard? Because somebody has been here for 50 years. They are on the Appropriations Committee. They put an earmark and said: I want the pork to go to Martha's Vineyard. Nobody makes a debate about whether Martha's Vineyard needs a bed more than Harlan, KY. They stick an earmark in here and get it because they have been here a long time.

It is a terrible way to legislate, but it is a terrible way to legislate in the context of this enormous debt we are amassing.

This bill is teeming with about $2 billion worth of earmarks at a time when we can't afford the additional debt. Just days into the new year, the Treasury Department announced the U.S. debt had surpassed $34 trillion. That is hard to fathom. The Chairman of the Federal Reserve came out and said it is an urgent problem. Jamie Dimon with JPMorgan Chase came out and said it was an urgent problem. On the heels of people saying it is an urgent problem, what happens? Congress rises to the occasion and borrows more money. Talk about tone-deaf--completely tone-deaf.

We are just going to borrow another $1.5 trillion on the heels of $34 trillion. We are spending at such a rate that right now, we are averaging a trillion dollars to the debt every 90 days. If that pace continues, instead of $1.5 trillion, it could be up to $4 trillion in the next year. Since this year, the United States is borrowing money at $7 billion a day. Think about that. We are borrowing money at over $300 million per hour, and $3 million per minute is being borrowed. We are borrowing money at $85,000 a second. This is just spinning, literally, out of control. If you look at the debt clock online you can see the numbers just spinning like crazy.

If we are to judge the backroom negotiations between the ``uniparty'' leadership in Congress and the White House by its results, we can only conclude that they do not take our spending problems seriously. Even Republicans who talk such a good game about government spending and respect for taxpayer dollars when they are at home cannot be depended upon to fight for fiscal sanity when push comes to shove.

Our Nation's greatest threat comes not from abroad but from within the Halls of Congress, which at every opportunity looks for ways to ignore our spending problem and expedite our economic decline. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office predicts we will add an average of $2 trillion to our debt every year for the next decade.

But there is a breaking point. There is a point at which they print so much money that you can have a catastrophic loss of the value. This is what has happened in South America for decades. It is what has happened in Central America. And we don't want it--at least I don't want it--happening in our country.

The CBO also estimates net interest payments will outgrow defense spending this year and will become the largest item--over $800 billion just in interest.

This reckless level of borrowing and spending is unsustainable. The ever-increasing heights of our debt in a weak economy, high inflation, and confiscatory tax rates--in other words, today's spending threatens tomorrow's prosperity.

We are approaching a predictable economic crisis in the United States. In my time in the Senate, I have proposed spending freezes, balanced budgets, spending cuts designed to get our Nation back on path. Today, though, instead of a balanced budget, I merely ask that this bill be sent back to the Appropriations Committee and that they report to the full Senate about how to responsibly cut 5 percent from this bloated monstrosity.

We wouldn't eliminate everything, but everything you are going to spend money on--grandma, motherhood, apple pie--is going to get 5 percent less. That is what it would take to start balancing our budget.

We wouldn't do it just on this bill because we would actually have to do that to everything in all our spending. Doing it here today shows somebody is serious about the spending.

My instructions even leave the Appropriations Committee open to determine where to reduce the spending. This isn't asking that much. It is a lopsided compromise in which the select handful of Members who wrote this bill get 95 percent of everything they want. That is what it would mean if we were to pass this cut.

Realize that when we vote on this cut though, not one Democrat will vote to cut one penny. Seriously. If we offered an amendment to cut one penny, every Democrat would vote no on it. They are resisting voting no now because they are worried people at home will discover what they are voting for.

It is more than just the Democrats. No Democrat cares about the deficit. Many Republicans profess to care, but half of them will vote with the Democrats as well. This is really a bipartisan problem. Don't let anybody tell you this is just about Joe Biden; it is about the previous administration as well. They borrowed $7 trillion. They shut the economy down. COVID lockdowns led to extravagant borrowing, more than we have ever seen, and we are continuing it now.

But this is a bipartisan problem. It means that rather than spending $1.2 trillion in this package, my proposal would spend $1.14 trillion. Some would look at that and say: Gosh, that is not very dramatic at all. How did you become so moderate? And you know that is true; I am quite the moderate. It would cut $60 billion--$60 billion.

But they will unanimously, on the Democrat side, vote against this because they are against cutting one penny. And our side, half of our people on our side will vote against any cuts also. This is a modest cut and only the beginning of what you would have to do to bring fiscal sanity. I am willing to accept a reasonable compromise, even one that does not balance the budget significantly or even cut the necessary spending. I am willing to vote for something to cut some spending.

By agreeing to this motion, which will be an amendment later today, we can show to our constituents that we respect them as taxpayers and are open to the most reasonable attempts to shave down the unsustainable level of spending.

I ask that all consider a ``yes'' vote on my amendment when the time comes.

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