Rand Paul Accuses GOP Leaders Of 'Surrender' Over CR Bill In Blistering Remarks

21 hours ago

In remarks on the Senate floor on Friday, Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) spoke out against the Continuing Resolution to fund the government.

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Transcript

00:00Senator from Kentucky. President Trump has pledged to balance the budget. I want

00:06to help him. I want to help him with this task. But to balance the budget

00:10requires much less spending than this current bill entails. Our national debt

00:15now exceeds 36 trillion dollars. That's a hundred and twenty-four percent of the

00:21size of our economy. That should not be a surprise. We're adding two trillion

00:26dollars every year to the debt, this year included. Critics of excessive federal

00:32spending have rightly argued that we should return spending to pre-pandemic

00:38levels. This is something I could support. The spending bill for us, though,

00:43spends four hundred billion dollars more than we were spending before the

00:47pandemic. Spending went through the roof during the pandemic and it never came

00:51back down and the deficits are out of control. In order for this bill to get

00:57back to pre-pandemic levels, it would have to be four hundred billion dollars

01:01less. That's something I could support. Three months ago, when the current

01:05continuing resolution was passed at the end of last year, we were told that we

01:10just needed to clear the decks. President Trump was going to come in and the

01:13Republicans would be in charge and then everything would be okay. Just wait. Pass

01:17it. Pass it along in December. Come March, Republicans will be in charge and

01:22something will happen. And yet the bill before us doesn't change anything. The

01:27bill before us keeps the same Biden spending levels. We were told with

01:32relentless fury that we would fight for the taxpayers. Come spring and we are

01:36given a bill that doesn't change. It doesn't change the course of accumulating

01:42two trillion dollars in debt every year. The powers that be, I believe,

01:48waved the white flag of surrender when they presented the American people with

01:52this bill that fails to make the cuts that are necessary to slow down the

01:57accumulation of our debt. The malpractice is made even worse this

02:02time around. Presidents of both parties pay lip service to the idea that the

02:06national debt must be addressed. Despite tough talk, deficits and debt

02:12inevitably keep rising. We now have over 36 trillion dollars in debt. Unlike past

02:20presidents, though, President Trump created the Department of Government

02:25Efficiency, affectionately known as DOGE, to identify wasteful programs and

02:30eliminate them. Despite DOGE working around the clock identifying appalling

02:37waste of taxpayers' dollars, this bill continues to fund the same programs that

02:44are funding the waste and fraud that's been located. How can that be? If we've

02:48located the waste and fraud, why are we not telling them reduced foreign aid? If

02:53the foreign aid budget is full of all kinds of crazy left-wing advocacy and

02:58nonsense, reduce the amount of money you give them. This bill will give them the

03:02same amount of money they got last year. This bill allows foreign aid to continue.

03:07It doesn't incorporate any of the DOGE cuts. It doesn't cut weight. This bill

03:13embraces the waste. It allows the waste to continue. This bill doesn't respect

03:18the taxpayer. It continues to throw their money away. This bill continues the Biden

03:26levels of spending that caused historic inflation, that caused prices to rise,

03:32that caused people to be outraged to vote for a new president. Why in the

03:37world would we continue the same spending levels that led to the debt,

03:41that led to the inflation that is plaguing us? This malpractice is

03:47compounded by the fact that President Trump and DOGE made it easy for Congress

03:53to fix. They actually told us where the waste was and where the waste and abuse

03:58was and told us how to root it out, how to remove it. The waste found by DOGE

04:04truly shocks the conscience. Taxpayers paid $25,000 for an LGBT trans opera in

04:14Colombia. They spent $2 million on sex changes in Guatemala. They spent $1.5

04:22million advancing DEI initiatives in Serbia. They spent $6 million on tourism

04:28in Egypt. They spent $32,000 for a transgender comic book in Peru. Some of

04:38the USAID's programs have actually gone beyond woke absurdity into pouring money

04:45and support to people who are the enemies of the United States. The agency

04:49provided millions of dollars to EcoHealth, which funded the dangerous

04:54research in Wuhan, which in all likelihood created and caused the

04:59pandemic. From this account, also millions of dollars went to support agriculture

05:04in Afghanistan, including fertilizer for the poppy fields grown by the Taliban.

05:10And yet, even after all that DOGE has uncovered, and I commend them, Congress

05:17is still on the verge of passing a bill that fully funds foreign aid. Many in

05:23this chamber think it's wasteful to do all these things. They say, well, why

05:26should we keep spending money on foreign aid that is paying for sex changes in

05:31Guatemala? And yet the funding levels in this bill stay the same. These are the

05:35same funding levels for the foreign aid that were occurring under the Biden

05:40administration. Let me say that again and clearly. This bill fully funds the

05:46outrageous foreign aid programs that Elon Musk and DOGE have exposed.

05:51Something doesn't make sense here. While Congress seems to show to slow, while

05:57Congress seems slow to open its eyes to waste and abuse, Secretary Rubio has

06:03acted. He recently said that the United States is canceling 83% of the foreign

06:09aid contracts. I'm for that. And in fact, that's what my amendment will do. My

06:14amendment will take the contracts, the dollar amount of the contracts that

06:18President Trump and Secretary Rubio have canceled, and put them into language so

06:23they don't get funded. Why in the world would we not be for getting rid of the

06:27funding for the crazy programs we're trying to get rid of? Something doesn't

06:31make sense here. President Trump and his team identified the cuts that need to be

06:36made, but it is ultimately Congress, not the executive, that has the power of the

06:41purse. Congress has to act to make the cuts identified by the administration a

06:46reality. And on that score, the bill under consideration today is a disappointment.

06:53The bill is a disappointment to those who believe that congressional leadership

06:57should have used the three months since they came into office, since DOGE and

07:03Elon Musk have identified this waste, they should have used that waste and

07:07incorporated into the spending bill. None of the DOGE cuts, none of Elon Musk's

07:12suggestions have been incorporated into the spending bill. The spending bill

07:16continues spending at the Biden levels. The spending bill will be when everybody

07:21wakes up and scratches their head and says, what happened here? The spending

07:25will lead to $2 trillion in debt. People will wake up and say, well, what about

07:30all those cuts? What happened? I thought we were cutting out waste and fraud. And

07:34come September, the deficit for the year will be $2 trillion, because

07:38we're not actually cutting the spending. Congress has to do the heavy lifting. We

07:43owe the American people an answer to this question. Exactly how many

07:48Republicans, how many Republican seats are required in Congress to achieve a

07:53majority that will actually fight to lower government spending? I don't think the

07:58taxpayers need to wait for that fight any longer. I'm not willing to say, oh,

08:02just wait, young man. Wait for another day. We'll be fixing this in six months

08:06from now. It never comes. This is the story of this place. Wait till another

08:12day. Wait till the sun shines. We'll finally cut some spending. Never comes.

08:16Someone must make a stand and fight. To that end, I offer a DOGE cuts 1.0

08:24amendment that would codify the cuts in foreign aid, reducing USAID's budget by

08:3183% and aligning with Secretary Rubio's recent decision to eliminate thousands

08:37of these programs. So what I am doing is not inconsistent with the Trump

08:41administration. What I am doing is in support of the Trump administration. What

08:45I'm doing is taking the preliminary cuts that Secretary Rubio has given to

08:50foreign aid and making them law. Why? Because the whole judiciary is opposing

08:56the president. They're telling him he can't fire people, he can't cut spending,

09:00he needs Congress to step up and do their job. He needs the people who

09:05support the president need to be supporting the president's cuts. They

09:08need to be supporting an amendment, DOGE 1.0, that puts those cuts into law. I'm

09:16not even talking about codifying all of the cuts. I'm only taking a small sliver

09:21of them in foreign aid. This is the low-hanging fruit. This is the worst of

09:26the worst. This is $3 million for girl-centric climate change in Brazil.

09:31This is $4.8 million for social media influencers in Ukraine. This is hundreds

09:39of thousands of dollars spent sending Ukrainian fashion designers to

09:44the parents' fashion show. This is waste, utter and simple waste, and it ought to

09:50be cut. Why would people tell you publicly they're for it and then vote

09:54against it? It doesn't seem to make any sense.

09:59What my amendment does is put DOGE's findings into action, eliminating much of

10:05the funding for an agency that spent its tax hours on woke entertainment and

10:10advocacy. It sets in law the reductions that the Trump administration has made

10:15known to be necessary. I applaud DOGE's work to uncover these many instances of

10:21abuse of taxpayer dollars, and it's now Congress's turn to make the cuts stick.

10:28If we do not adopt my amendment, then taxpayers will simply continue spending

10:35substantial amounts of money to defund components of the government rather

10:40than using savings to pay down our mounting debt. In other words, you might

10:45cut it and think it's cut one day, but what if the courts say you have to spend

10:49it somewhere else? It never comes back. The cuts are never real. The only way the

10:53cuts the administration are making will ever be real, will ever be counted, and

10:57will ever lessen the debt in the country is to vote in Congress. That's what this

11:02is about. It would be the height of hypocrisy for Congress to pay lip service

11:08to DOGE's exceptional work, support it on the superficial, and then vote against it

11:13when you have a chance to vote on it. Continuing to spend at this bill's level

11:18will add two trillion dollars in debt. That is a fact. All the newspapers

11:23reporting yesterday, it was all over the news, record-setting accumulation of debt.

11:27We've accumulated over a trillion and we're not halfway through the year. It's

11:31a record accumulation of debt. It only stops when people stand up and say

11:37enough is enough. The least we can do is make sure that it doesn't include the

11:41egregious spending that has come from the foreign aid, the craziness, the

11:46sex-change operations in Guatemala, trans operas, trans comic books, all of these

11:52ludicrous things that no American supports will only go away and will only

11:56go away with permanence if we vote for it. Before us is a chance to enact about

12:0316 billion dollars worth of DOGE's cuts in foreign aid. These cuts are only real

12:09in the long term if they're reflected in congressional action. If we continue to

12:14fund the federal government at the Biden administration levels, which is

12:18what this bill does, then the money from DOGE's hard-found savings will just be

12:23spent somewhere else. I urge all my colleagues who have praised DOGE's work

12:28to match their actions to their words and vote yes on this amendment. Thank you

12:37and I yield back the remainder.

Rand Paul Accuses GOP Leaders Of 'Surrender' Over CR Bill In Blistering Remarks

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