{"database": "press", "table": "releases", "rows": [["https://www.paul.senate.gov/news-sen-rand-paul-puts-forward-conservative-vision-balanced-budget/", "Sen. Rand Paul Puts Forward Conservative Vision for a Balanced Budget", "2017-01-04", "2017", "2017-01", "Republican", "Senate", "KY", "Rand Paul", "P000603", "www.paul.senate.gov", "paul", "https://www.paul.senate.gov/news/", "scraper", "WASHINGTON, D.C. \u2013 Today, U.S. Senator Rand Paul urged his colleagues to put a stop to Washington\u2019s runaway spending and pass a balanced budget. In a speech delivered on the Senate floor, Dr. Paul explained his opposition to Senate Con. Res 3, legislation he pointed out will add $9.7 trillion to the national debt over the next 10 years without ever balancing. To present a conservative path forward, Dr. Paul will introduce an amendment to the bill that would balance the budget while still repealing Obamacare.\n\n\u201cTen trillion worth of new debt. I\u2019m not for it. That\u2019s not why I ran for office,\u201d said Dr. Paul. \u201cIt\u2019s not why I\u2019m here. It\u2019s not why I spend time away from my family and from my medical practice. It\u2019s because debt is consuming our country.\u201d\n\n\u201cAt the appropriate time, I will introduce an amendment that will strike and replace this budget, and in its place, I will put forward a conservative vision for the country.\u201d\n\nDr. Paul\u2019s balanced budget amendment will:\n\nBalance the budget by 2024 while still repealing Obamacare\n\nFreeze all on-budget spending without making changes to Social Security.\n\nStart in 2018, giving agencies time to prepare for new spending levels.\n\nContain zero specific cuts to any function of government \u2013 allowing the new administration and Congress to work together to prioritize spending.\n\nYou can find a transcript of Dr. Paul\u2019s remarks and a video of his speech below.\n\nCLICK HERE TO WATCH DR. PAUL\u2019S FLOOR SPEECH\n\nTRANSCRIPT:\n\nThe more things change, the more they seem to stay the same. Republicans won the White House. Republicans control the Senate. Republicans control the House. And what will the first order of business be for the new Republican majority?\n\nTo pass a budget that never balances. To pass a budget that will add $9.7 trillion of new debt over ten years. Is that really what we campaigned on? Is that really what the Republican Party represents? Our first order of business will be a budget that never balances. A budget that adds $9.7 trillion to the debt, and they tell us, \u201cOh, but it\u2019s not a budget.\u201d If you listen, they will say, \u201cNo, no. It is a \u2018vehicle to repeal Obamacare.'\u201d And yet I have the title in front of me. It says a \u201cConcurrent Resolution for the budget of 2017.\u201d\n\nWe have special rules when you pass the budget that we may be able to repeal Obamacare, and I\u2019m all for that. But why should we vote on a budget that doesn\u2019t represent our conservative view? Why would we vote on a budget that adds $9.7 trillion to the debt?\n\nBecause we\u2019re in a hurry. We can\u2019t be bothered. It\u2019s just numbers. I was told again and again, \u201cSwallow it. Take it. They\u2019re just numbers. Don\u2019t worry; it\u2019s not really a budget.\u201d And yet the legislation says it is a budget. The numbers say it will add $9.7 trillion of new debt. And so I say, if they\u2019re only numbers, and if the numbers don\u2019t matter what\u2019s in the budget, why don\u2019t we put numbers in that balance? Why don\u2019t we put a vision into the budget that represents what Republicans say they are for? Republicans say they are the conservative party. Are we? When George W. Bush was president for eight years, the national debt went from $5 trillion to $10 trillion. The debt doubled under a Republican president and a partially Republican Congress. And yet the words were, \u201cWell, he had Democrats to deal with, and if we could ever take all three branches of government, things would be different.\u201d\n\nThe Republicans took over the House in 2010. They still didn\u2019t control the Senate, but they said, \u201cIf we only controlled the Senate, we can be the conservative party again.\u201d We\u2019ve had an election. The conservative party, the supposedly conservative party, won. Republicans control the House, the Senate, and the presidency, and the first item of business for the Republicans will be to pass a budget that never balances, a budget that will add $9.7 trillion to the debt over ten years. This sign could have been put up for Obama\u2019s first budget. Every Republican railed and said, \u201c$10 trillion! President Obama will add $10 trillion.\u201d And he did.\n\nPresident Obama doubled the debt again. It went from $5 (trillion) to $10 (trillion). The national debt went from $5 trillion to $10 trillion under George W. Bush, and then it doubled again under President Obama. It went from $10 (trillion) to nearly $20 (trillion), and what are we looking at here? More debt, under a solidly unified Republican Congress and a Republican president. So you might scratch your head and say, \u201cThe more things change, the more they stay the same.\u201d\n\nIs it all smoke and mirrors? Is there really a difference? Are Republicans different than Democrats? Pretty important question. We are in such a hurry to repeal Obamacare. I\u2019m all for it. As a physician, nobody thinks that Obamacare has been worse for the country. Nobody other than me thinks it is a terrible piece of legislation that has not helped the country and has inflated our costs and not helped. And yet, do we have to add nearly $10 trillion of debt in order to get at it?\n\nSo as this moves forward, I will offer a replacement. I will offer my own budget. I will offer to strike and remove $10 trillion worth of debt, and I will offer my own budget that balances within five years. How do we do it? We give the authority to make the cuts, where they should be, where they\u2019re most wasteful in government, and we offer this budget by simply freezing expenditures. You don\u2019t have to cut any expenditures. Every department of government could get what they got the last year. If you think some departments of government need more money, cut other departments of government. Frankly, there are some departments of government you could eliminate, and you would never know they were gone. If the Department of Commerce were gone, a few corporate executives would not be able to fly around on government jets. They could fly around on their own jets. You would never know the whole, entire Department of Commerce were gone.\n\nYou can cut spending. You could actually get to balance by not cutting anything. So here\u2019s what happens. If you freeze the on-budget spending, within a little over five years your budget balances. I remember a time when there were the moderates who were for freezing spending, and the real conservatives were cutting spending. Now nobody is for cutting spending. When I bring it up that you cannot balance a budget, you can absolutely not balance a budget, if you\u2019re not willing to look at entitlements, you know what I\u2019m told by many well-meaning Republicans? \u201cDon\u2019t write it down. Don\u2019t put it on paper because people will be upset with you if you explain that to save Social Security, to save Medicare, you will have to reform these entitlement programs.\u201d They say, \u201cLet\u2019s just talk about waste. Let\u2019s just talk about fraud and abuse.\u201d And I do, and we should eliminate all of those. But guess what?\n\nIf you eliminate all of the budgetary spending that we vote on \u2013 this is called the discretionary spending \u2013 this would be the military and all the rest of the nonmilitary. It is about $1 trillion not including the entitlements: Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid. If you did just the military and the nonmilitary, and you reduced it 10% a year for ten years, and you virtually wiped out all of discretionary spending, you still don\u2019t balance the budget.\n\nSo really you\u2019re not a conservative if you\u2019re not willing to look at all government spending. The budget cannot be balanced, and the budget will never balance, unless you look at entitlements. What does that mean? It means that because of demographics \u2013 this means that we had big families 60 years ago: three, four, five kids a family. And now we have less than three kids a family, probably two kids a family. So you had all the baby boomers born right after World War II. And they\u2019re all retiring, 60 million of them. So this huge population boom, and you don\u2019t have as many workers. So the demographics aren\u2019t working. You add to that the fact that we\u2019re living longer. So when Social Security was started, the average life expectancy was 65. So it worked pretty well as a pension plan because you died. But now it\u2019s great, we\u2019re living on average to 80. And if you make 80, you may well make 90. What a great thing, longevity. But it is not working. Social Security is not working. We spend more on recipients than we bring in in the tax. Medicare is even worse. The average taxpayer pays about $100,000 over their lifetime in Medicare taxes. The average recipient takes out $350,000. How big a problem is this?\n\nMedicare is $35 to $40 trillion in the hole. It is inexcusable that we\u2019re not talking about how we fix Medicare. It is inexcusable that we\u2019re not talking about how to fix Social Security. If you don\u2019t fix them, there\u2019s going to be a cliff. Within about a decade, the cliff is so severe, that everyone on Social Security will suffer a 20% decline in their monthly check. It\u2019ll happen all at once if you don\u2019t fix it. Can you fix it? Yeah, you got to talk about it. But what we\u2019re doing today is kicking the can down. We got our focus on Obamacare, but we\u2019re taking our focus off the debt. As bad a problem as Obamacare is, as much as it\u2019s destroyed and distorted the health care market, it may well be that the debt is a bigger problem.\n\nSo it\u2019s not a popular stand that I take today. I will be the only Republican to vote against the Republican budget. That won\u2019t be popular, but I ran for office \u2013 I left my medical practice; I am away from my family; I spend long hours traveling up here because I am concerned about the debt. We borrow $1 million a minute. The debt threatens the very foundation of our country. And yet here we are. The Republican Party controls the House, the Senate, and the White House, and in their haste, they put forward a budget that\u2019s going to add this much debt. This is what the debt has been doing.\n\nHere\u2019s 1980. You see the growth. It\u2019s become exponential, the growth of the debt. This should worry every American. But here\u2019s the Republican ten-year budget that we\u2019re getting ready to pass. It\u2019s virtually a vertical line of accumulation of debt. People will say, \u201cBut how could we ever cut any spending?\u201d I\u2019ll give you a couple of examples of where your government spends money, and you tell me whether or not we ought to look long and hard about cutting spending.\n\nThere was a grant given for autism. I have a great deal of sympathy. I know children with autism. For $700,000. But you know what they spent it on? They spent it studying Neil Armstrong\u2019s statement. Remember Neil Armstrong? Landed on the moon, and he said, \u201cOne small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.\u201d Well, your government in their infinite wisdom wanted to know, did he say, \u201cone small step for man\u201d or \u201cone small step for a man\u201d? Your government spent $700,000 studying the preposition \u201ca.\u201d Did he say \u201ca man\u201d or just \u201cman?\u201d $700,000. Money that should have been spent on autism was spent on something frivolous.\n\nIs anybody going to fix it? No! Every year, all of the spending bills are glommed together in a 2,000-page bill and not one iota of reform. Do you remember \u2013 Senator Proxmire from the 70s used to have something called the \u201cGolden Fleece Award.\u201d Every one of those things he complained about in the 1970s happens now, but tenfold greater. Nobody fixes it. We don\u2019t pass individual spending bills. We do continuing resolutions, which means we continue doing the same thing we\u2019ve done over and over again. $700,000 spent studying Neil Armstrong\u2019s statement, and you know what their conclusion was? We\u2019re not sure. They spent $700,000, and they\u2019re still not sure. Did he say \u201ca man\u201d or \u201cone small step for man\u201d?\n\nWe spent $500,000 studying whether or not, when you take a selfie, if you\u2019re smiling in the selfie, does it ultimately make you feel better? $500,000. And so what do we do? Do we give these people less money? Teach them a lesson. Give them less money, and maybe they\u2019ll conserve the money. Maybe they\u2019ll eliminate waste if they have less money next year than they had this year. Or, what I\u2019m proposing. Freeze the spending. Is anybody proposing that? No. We say, \u201cThey spent a half a million dollars on selfies? Give them more next year.\u201d So the Republican budget will increase spending every year. It increases spending at about 5% a year. So spending goes up, and they say, \u201cIt\u2019s the baseline.\u201d And they say, \u201cWe\u2019re cutting off the baseline.\u201d No, no, the baseline goes up 5% a year. Spending will increase over the ten-year period. The red line is spending. Part of that is what the Republicans are proposing. They are going to stay on the spending curve.\n\nIf we stay on the spending curve, they will continue to spend $700,000 studying Neil Armstrong\u2019s statement. They will continue to spend a half a million dollars on selfies. They spent another half a million dollars on a climate change game. They spent $45 million to build a natural gas gas station in Afghanistan. $45 million. First problem? Nobody in Afghanistan has a car that runs on natural gas. They discovered this after they built the gas station. The gas station was 86 times cost overrun. The original estimate was about a half a million for the gas station, but lo and behold, somehow it costs $45 million.\n\nIf your government had 86 times cost overrun, would you give them more money or give them less money? I frankly think we should give them less money. If you give them more money, they will not waste it less. They will waste it the same or worse. They should be given less money. Mazar-e Sharif is a city in northern Afghanistan. We built an $85 million embassy there. We signed a ten-year lease. And then somebody looked at the place and decided that since there were tall buildings surrounding the entire entity, that people would shoot down into the courtyard and kill our diplomat, and they said this building can never be occupied, after they spent $85 million, after they spent a ten-year lease. How will they get better? The people who made this decision, were they fired? No. They\u2019re federal employees, and you never fire federal employees. Will they make wiser decisions because we give them less money? No. We give them more money. You would be excused for being upset if you went and voted and said, \u201cI\u2019m going to vote for the conservative party.\u201d If you went and voted and said, \u201cI\u2019m going to vote for the party that\u2019s going to balance the budget. \u201cWouldn\u2019t you be upset? Wouldn\u2019t you wonder which party that is?\n\nThis is the spending curve. We\u2019re going to add $9.7 trillion in ten years. And yet they say, \u201cOh, no, no. This isn\u2019t really a budget.\u201d I\u2019ve got it in front of me, though. It is a budget. There is no reason why Republicans couldn\u2019t have put forward a budget that doesn\u2019t add all the red ink. We\u2019re at $20 trillion. We\u2019re going to go to nearly $30 trillion under the Republican plan.\n\nMy goodness. What happened? Where is the conservative party? Where are the conservatives in Congress that would say, \u201cEnough\u2019s enough\u201d? Now they say, \u201cWe just have to be done with this. Don\u2019t distract the little people. Don\u2019t let the people of the country know that we\u2019re voting on a budget. We\u2019re going to call this the \u2018vehicle to repeal Obamacare.'\u201d Well, that\u2019s not what it is. It\u2019s a budget. And we have special rules for dealing with the budget that allow us to repeal Obamacare, which I\u2019m all for, but this is a budget. And they say, \u201cWell, how could we get the votes?\u201d No Democrats will vote for this budget. This is a Republican blueprint. Not one Democrat will vote for this.\n\nSo this is what Republicans are for. This is the blueprint that the Republican Party says they\u2019re for. $10 trillion worth of new debt. I\u2019m not for it. That\u2019s not why I ran for office. It\u2019s not why I\u2019m here. It\u2019s not why I spend time away from my family and from my medical practice. It\u2019s because debt is consuming our country. There is a time and a place to debate Obamacare, and I\u2019m more than willing to debate that, but this is a budget. This is a vote on a budget. They say, \u201cOh, it\u2019s just a gimmick; it\u2019s just a game. The numbers don\u2019t mean anything.\u201d Well, if the numbers don\u2019t mean anything, put honest numbers in there or put conservative numbers in there.\n\nI for one will put forward a conservative opposition to the Republican majority\u2019s budget. I will put forward a budget that freezes spending and balances the budget over a five-year period. Would there be some agencies that would get less money? Yes. But it would force us to go through the government and pick and choose what is good spending and what is not good spending. If you go through, we have a Waste Report that we put out. If you will look on our Facebook, you can find our Waste Report. Hundreds. I listed four or five of the most egregious. There are hundreds and hundreds if not thousands of things we shouldn\u2019t be spending money on.\n\nI\u2019ll give you another example. We have spent $100 billion, or we have sold $100 billion worth of weapons to Saudi Arabia. They were wanting to spend money giving F-16s to Pakistan. You pay for them and give them to them. Riddled throughout the Pentagon. Look, the Pentagon has never been audited. You\u2019re surprised? Government that\u2019s never been audited. The Federal Reserve\u2019s not audited. The Pentagon\u2019s not audited. And so what is the Pentagon\u2019s response to being audited? The Pentagon says to us, \u201cWe\u2019re too big to be audited.\u201d I don\u2019t know about you, but that makes me kind of angry, that a part of your government, even a necessary part such as national defense, says they\u2019re too big to be audited. Meanwhile, we have $85 million embassies built that would never be occupied, $45 million gas stations that will never be used. I think it\u2019s time that we look at and say, \u201cEnough\u2019s enough.\u201d Don\u2019t give government more money, give them less. Government, they haven\u2019t been a good steward of your money.\n\nIt\u2019s often asked, the question is asked, are the people who spend your money, are the people involved in government inherently stupid? It\u2019s kind of a debatable question. I think they\u2019re mostly well intentioned. I don\u2019t think they\u2019re inherently stupid, but I do think that they don\u2019t get the right incentives, because there is no profit motive in government, because there is no rationale or modus to conserve, money is spent. And because of sheer laziness and ineptitude, we continue to pass the spending bills, glommed together, thousands of pages without reform. But I won\u2019t be party to that. I won\u2019t vote for the spending bills that are not individualized and don\u2019t have reforms in them. I won\u2019t vote for budgets that never balance. So while I may be a lonely voice on this issue, I will continue to bring up to the American people that it is important not to add more debt; it is important to slow down the accumulation of debt. It is important that we have a $20 trillion debt, and I\u2019m not willing to add $10 trillion more in debt.\n\nSo, Mr. President, at the appropriate time, I will introduce an amendment that will strike and replace this budget, and in its place, I will put forward a conservative vision for the country, a vision of a balanced budget that balances within five years. Every Republican in the Congress that has been here for a while has voted for a balanced budget amendment. Interestingly, the balanced budget amendment has \u2013 which would be an amendment to the Constitution \u2013 has within the balanced budget amendment, it has the provisions that the budget would balance in five years. And even when Republicans get around to saying, \u201cOh, we\u2019ll have some gimmicks to balance in ten,\u201d ten is not what the amendment says. Why bother voting on an amendment if you\u2019re not serious about it? Republicans are completely in charge. It\u2019s a Republican document. It\u2019s a document I disagree with, and at the appropriate time, Mr. President, I will be introducing a replacement that will balance within five years and provides a conservative view for the country. Thank you.\n\n###", 1, "2026-03-30T01:40:41Z", "2026-04-08T21:17:04Z"]], "columns": ["url", "title", "date", "year", "month", "party", "chamber", "state", "member_name", "bioguide_id", "domain", "scraper", "source", "date_source", "text", "has_text", "collected_at", "updated_at"], "primary_keys": ["url"], "primary_key_values": ["https://www.paul.senate.gov/news-sen-rand-paul-puts-forward-conservative-vision-balanced-budget/"], "units": {}, "query_ms": 1.5147826634347439, "source": "dwillis/congress-press", "source_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press", "license": "MIT", "license_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press/blob/main/LICENSE"}