coming in. what would happen if we didn't raise the debt ceiling? if you don't raise the debt ceiling you've got a balanced budget. is it really so offer to conceive that we would only spend what comes in. every american family does it. every american family only spends what comes in. i think it would be gl good for the country to do that. but there's even a better way. when many conservatives have offered is called cut, cap and balance. this is a way we could raise the debt ceiling and we would temporarily raise it for about a five-year period. we would raise the debt ceiling in a gradual manner over about a five-year period. and the reason you would do that and the reason i would vote for that is i would vote for it because we would be balancing the budget. so cut, cap and balance would cut the deficit in half in one year. it's the best way to get on a good footing.

let's go ahead and cut out a significant amount in one year and then it makes it a lot easier in the successive years if you'll hold the line. calvin coolidge was incredible at this kind of stuff, and in emily slays' book, she goes through a wonderful detail of how he ended up balancing the budget. in those days, the president was paid a pretty good amount for those days, it was about $100,000, but everything came out of their salary. so when the ambassador from france would come for dinner, the dinner came out of coolidge's salary. so coolidge would be down in the kitchen after dinner saying i noticed we cooked five hams. i think we could have done with four hams. that was the kind of handle he had on expenditures. he also had a handle on expenditures throughout government and he met every week with the treasury department, he met every week with the cabinet secretary to say this is how we're going to stop spending money. this is how we're going to stop wasting money.

cut, cap and balance is an alternative to what we're putting forward here, and i think if we were a true and open and deliberative body, we would have a vote on that, but no vote has been scheduled for cut, cap and balance, so those of us -- and i think there were a significant number who said that this deal is not a good deal. those of us who believe it to be not a good deal were not allowed the opportunity to have an alternative. the alternative we have is called cut, cap and balance. in cut, cap and balance, we would cut the deficit in half in one year. we would cap spending. well, this deal actually does the opposite of capping spending. this deal actually gets rid of the caps and exceeds the caps on spending. we would cap spending at 18% of g.d.p. that means you would multiply 18% by the total dollar amount of the economy, and that's what we would spend. now, why did we choose 18%?

we chose 18% because that's about what comes in historically on average. if you look over the past 20 years, we have occasional times where we would bring more money in, occasional times when we would bring in less but on average we would bring in about 18%. so really if you want to balance your spending, which would be the responsible thing, if we were responsible adults and we cared about the american people and cared what they thought and cared that they were worried about the debt we were adding, we would spend about what comes in. so 18% is about what comes in. if we spent 18%, we would have a balanced budget. and i think people ought to think about it in this perspective. we bring in $3 trillion. our problem isn't so much how much money comes in. our problem is that we spend in excess of what comes in. couldn't we really just spend what comes in? couldn't we spend $3 trillion? couldn't we have a strong country? i think we would actually be a

stronger country if we spent only what comes in. we wouldn't have no government, and in some ways we might have a government that was even bigger than i desire. but if we only spent what comes in, if we spent the $3 trillion and that's all we spent, think of how strong we would become again as a country. think about the strength of our marketplace, the strength of the stock market, the strength of our job creation if we were only spending what comes in. this is not a new problem. it's accelerated under this president, but i think we should be very ecumenical with the blame. there's enough blame to go around. i really think there is an unholy alliance, and really the problem in washington is not lack of cooperation. it's too much cooperation. we have decided right and left that we want to spend more money, but we don't have the money, so what do we do? we say we're going to simply borrow it.

but there are repercussions to borrowing. there are repercussions to spending money we don't have. i think this is a point in time when we should re-evaluate. it's a point in time where maybe you ought to spend time and go home. i know when i'm at home, i don't meet anybody that's for this deal. those who vote for this deal, maybe if you're from a state that isn't concerned about the budget, isn't concerned about the debt, you may get away with it, but i think people are going to have a rude awakening when they get home, because outside of d.c., the antipathy for this deal is rising, the anger is rising, the belief that basically everybody needs to be sent home from washington is a rising sentiment in the country because we don't appear to be listening. if you ask people, and i ask people all the time do you think we ought to have term limits, the answer is yes.

would the parliamentarian inform me of how much time remains? the presiding officer: the senator has 19 minutes remaining. mr. paul: okay. when i have discussed this issue with folks at home, with constituents in kentucky, the question they -- they ask me is how can you give the president an unspecified amount to borrow? weren't you elected to try to stop this? i was elected in 2010 when the tea party movement arose, and the tea party movement arose, and this is an interesting, maybe some say historic fact, historical fact. the tea party arose really not so much in criticism of

democrats. the tea party folks weren't those who really believe the democrats would be fiscally responsible. the tea party arose because they were concerned that republicans weren't being fiscally responsible. the tea party rose largely as a rebuke to the republican party. the tea party arose and said you know what? bailing out the banks wasn't something that the average middle class ordinary conservative republican supported. we didn't support the bailouts. we didn't support president obama's huge and enormous government stimulus, nearly a trillion dollars. we also don't support borrowing or lending money for these programs. there are two ways you can stop this. you can stop this by voting against the spending, which there doesn't seem to be a significant amount of will in this body on either side of the aisle to stop and discontinue

this profligate spending. so it's spending and borrowing, spending and borrowing. which comes first? well, they go hand in hand, but it is a real problem. it is a problem i think that threatens the very fabric of our country, and it's why i ran for office. the reason i ran for office is because i was concerned that we were accumulating so much debt, that we were piling on debt that ultimately can lead to the destruction of our country. people say well, we're a strong country. the debt will never bring us down. but we are at a point where our debt basically just about equals our economy, 100% of our economy, and that is a tipping point. many economists who look at the economics of nations have looked at that and said we are at a tipping point. we are at a point where if we do nothing, if we continue to give a blank check to the government, if we give a blank check to this

president for his final year in office, what might happen? this is a president that's going to add more debt than all of the previous presidents combined, and we're going to give him a blank check? those who vote for this deal will be giving the president a blank check. they will say you can borrow whatever you want, fill in the blank. that ought to be the title of this bill. fill in the blank. how much debt do you want? fill in the blank. there is no specific amount. this bill will allow for unlimited addition of debt. this bill is exactly why people are upset and angry with washington. the fact that this bill is going to slide through is exactly why congress has about a 10% approval rating. people up here scratch their heads and can't figure it out. this is why.

they don't want you to act like adults and govern over this enormous debt. they want you to act. they want you to do something. they want you to quit the borrowing and spending. but the lesson that needs to be learned is that this isn't one-sided. this is not the fault of one party. this is a two-party problem. these are the two parties getting together in an unholy alliance and spending us into oblivion. people say well, how will we defend the country? don't we need more money? we have increased military spending by 50% since 9/11 in real dollars. there is waste in the pentagon. i have been arguing that we should audit the pentagon.

the pentagon says they are too big to be audited. how insulting. it goes on and on. the frustration of the american people is that as it goes on and on, nothing ever changes. the establishment in washington is completely and utterly tone deaf to the way america feels about this. all you've got to do is drive outside the beltway and enter into america and ask the first person you meet at a supermarket do you think we should keep borrowing more money? i don't care what party they are in, i defy you to drive outside the beltway, stop at a gas station, stop at a supermarket and ask the first person do you think we should increase the debt and increase spending at the same time? do you think we should increase the debt, do you think we should increase the debt ceiling with

an unspecified amount? ask any parent of a college aged kid whether we should give them a credit card with no limits. your child comes to you and has $2,000 on the credit card. what do you do? you tell them they have to watch their spending. do you give them more money? no. should we give congress more money? hell no. congress is bad with money. they're not good with money. do not trust them with any more money. it's a mistake, a huge mistake to give this body any more money. we should be doing the opposite. we should be binding this body with the chains of the constitution that say only certain powers were delegated to congress. only certain powers under article 1, section 8. and we shouldn't allow for

unlimited government. our founding fathers were concerned about a big government, but if he were also concerned about a big and overwhelming military that was there all the time and tend to grow. even some of our greatest heroes. president eisenhower worried about the military industrial complex. so there have been leaders in the past who have said we have to be careful that we don't get to a point where the contractors are driving congress, where the contractors are creating a situation in which their concerns and their well-being is more important than the well-being of the country. would the parliamentarian report on the time remaining? the presiding officer: the senator has 13 minutes remaining. mr. paul: some will criticize this exercise of keeping the senate awake at night, the

rumblings can be heard, but what i would say is that the future of the country is worth the time spent on this. one of the reasons we are spending the middle of the night discussing this is that we don't have an ordinary process for proposals. we don't have an ordinary process for amending bills. were there to be an ordinary process where conservatives would be allowed an alternative such as cut, cap and balance, we actually did that in 2011 when the opposite party was in charge. we did have a vote on cut, cap and balance. it actually passed. it passed in the house overwhelmingly and was defeated in the senate. but the thing is, is that there are other alternatives. there isn't just one alternative. it shouldn't be the only alternative is that we continue to go further and further into

debt. sometimes people say well, i can't even conceive of a trillion dollars. it's just this enormous money, this enormous amount of money. what is a trillion dollars? well, to illustrate what a trillion dollars is, imagine if you had $1,000 bills in your hand and you had $1,000 bills stacked four inches high. that would be a million dollars. but if you want to imagine a trillion dollars, in $1,000 bills, it would be 63 miles high. that's what we're talking about adding. while they have not specified how much debt they're going to burden us with, many are estimating it will be over a trillion dollars. so when you think about what your government's doing to you tonight, think about how much of a burden of debt that the next generation will get in just the next year just from this bill over the next year and a half. over a trillion dollars. if you want to know how much that is, imagine a thousand

dollar bills stacked 63 miles hour. that is the burden that we are passing on to the next generation. none of this is an argument for no government. none of this is an argument for no federal government. in fact, this is an argument for just spending what comes in. we actually have a lot of money that comes in, $3 trillion comes in. could we not simply live with the $3 trillion that comes in? what would happen to the country if we only spent what comes in? would there be some sort of calamity? i think it would be actually the opposite. i think you would send a signal to the world that we are serio serious, that we are going to make america great again, that america's greatness, which was founded upon fiscal sanity, small government. liberty thrives when government is small. we need a government that is small and restrained by the

constitution. if we had a government that was restrained by the constitution, we wouldn't be in this fix. many of the functions of government that we do up here are not written into the constitution and were never delegated to the federal government. that's the reason we've gotten into this fix, because we've gotten away from the confines of the constitution. jefferson once said that the chains of the constitution will bind government. patrick henry said that the constitution is not about restraining the people. the constitution was intended to restrain the government. there's been a long history of this. this is not something that's occurred overnight. if you want to go back and see the history of people trying to restrain their government and keep their government small, you can probably go back to the plains of runnymede in 2015. when magna charta was passed, that was one of the first

explicit sort of explosions of people saying to, enough's enough, the king does not have unlimited power. this goes against the character and the charter of the magna charta, which tried to limit the power of the monarch. instead, we were giving unlimited power to borrow to the president. so if you look at the character of the magna charta and you look at the character of our founding fathers who wanted to have restraint, who wanted government to be restrained by rules, what you find is we're going headlong in the wrong direction. what we really need is to obey the constitution once. and when we obey the constitution, i think what would happen is your budget would balance almost automatically. it would balance every year. washington does need to have compromise but this is the wrong kind of compromise. the compromise is going in the

wrong direction. what we need is compromise that actually reduces spending. instead we have compromise, or so-called compromise, that is actually increasing spending. this deal will give the president unspecified and unlimited power to borrow money without limits. and the president's last year in office, he will be able to borrow whatever, no limits whatsoever. we are abdicating our role as a constitutional body to limit and check the power of the presidency with this. and some will say, oh, you're only saying this because it's the president of the opposite -- it's a president of the opposite party. i would be saying this if it were a president of either power because we've allowed too much power to gravitate to the presidency and this allows even more. will the parliamentarian give us an update on our time remaining? the presiding officer: the gentleman has 5 1/2 minutes

remaining. mr. paul: in the remaining time, i'd like to talk about a budget point of order that i'm going to be put forward. this legislation does something that many in this body have been critical of in the past. it actually takes money from the obligations to social security and transfers them to a more immediate program. specifically written into the budget rules, though, were rules that say, you know what, if you're going to take money, if you're going to steal money from social security, from people who are retired who have put it in there and you're going to spend it on something else, that there is a special budget point of order that says, in order to do this, you will need 60 votes. so we will be putting forward a budget resolution that says, do you know what? if you're going to steal money from social security, if you're going to take money from social

security and you're going to spend it on other concerns, people will say, oh, well, we're going to spend it on disability. well, the social security fund was put forward as a pension plan. you have an obligation to those who put the money in. so stealing money from people who will be getting money in the future to pay for media concerns is robbing peter to pay paul. so those in this body will be asked tonight to vote on whether or not you're willing to vote to take money from social security to spend it on immediate concerns. this is sort of like saying, all right, i have a pension fund. let's say i have $100,000 in my pension plan but i want to go to the racetrack and i need some money this week so i'm willing to take the $100,000 out and i'm willing to pay a $30,000 penalty but i'm willing to do it because i am an addict and i am addicted to spending and i've got to spend the money now. that's what it is and you're all

guilty of it, right and left. you're going to take money out of the social security fund and you're going to spend it on an immediate fix. and by fix, i mean not fixing the program. by fix, i mean what a junkie does. a junkie is addicted to spending. that's what this problem -- the problem is here, is that we're addicted to spending. so, mr. president, at this point, i would like to raise a point of order against the pending motion pursuant to section 311-a of s. con. res. 11, the concurrent resolution on the budget for fy 2016. the legislation reallocates payroll between the retirement and disability programs and, therefore, breaches the budget act. i ask for the yeas and nays. mr. cornyn: madam president? the presiding officer: the senator from texas. mr. cornyn: madam president, pursuant to section 904 of the congressional budget act of 1974 and the waiver provisions of

applicable budget resolutions, i move to waive all applicable sections of that act and the applicable budget resolutions for purposes of the house message. and i ask for the yeas and nays. the presiding officer: is there a sufficient second? there appears to be. the yeas and nays are ordered. the yeas and nays have been ordered. is there further debate on the waiver? if not, the question is on the waiver. the clerk will call the roll. vote:

vote:

the presiding officer: are there any senators in the chamber wishing to change their vote? if not, on this vote the yeas are 64, the nays are 35. three-fifths of the senate duly chosen and sworn having voted in the affirmative, the motion is agreed to. mr. mcconnell: madam president?

the presiding officer: the majority leader. mr. mcconnell: the senate is not in order. the presiding officer: the senate will be in order. will senators take their conversations out of the chamber. the majority leader. mr. mcconnell: i move to table the motion to concur with the amendment. the presiding officer: the question is on the motion. all in favor say aye. all opposed no. the ayes appear to have it. the ayes do have it. the motion to concur with the amendment is tabled. mr. mcconnell: i know of no further debate on the motion to concur. the presiding officer: is there further debate? if not, the question is on the motion to concur. is there a sufficient second? there is. the clerk will call the roll.

vote:

vote:

vote:

the presiding officer: is there any senator wishing to vote or to change their vote? if not, on this vote the yeas

are 64, the nays are 35. the motion to concur is agreed to. mr. mcconnell: madam president? the presiding officer: the majority leader. mr. mcconnell: i move to proceed to calendar 153, s. 1140. the presiding officer: the clerk will report. the clerk: motion to proceed to s. 1140, a bill to require the secretary of the army and the administrator of the environmental protection agency to propose a regulation revising the definition of the term waters of the united states, and for other purposes. mr. mcconnell: i send a cloture motion to the desk. the presiding officer: the clerk will report the cloture motion. the clerk: cloture motion. we, the undersigned senators, in accordance with the provisions of rule 22 of the standing rules of the senate, do hereby move to bring to a close debate on the motion to proceed to calendar number 153, s. 1140, a bill to require the secretary of the army and the administrator of the environmental protection agency to propose a regulation revising the definition of the

term waters of the united states, and for other purposes, signed by 17 senators as follows. mr. mcconnell: i ask unanimous consent the reading of the names be dispensed with. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. mcconnell: i ask unanimous consent that during the upcoming adjournment of the senate, the majority leader and the senior senator from mississippi be authorized to sign duly enrolled bills or resolutions. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. mcconnell: i ask unanimous consent the senate be in a period of morning business with senators permitted to speak therein for up to ten minutes each. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. mcconnell: i ask unanimous consent that when the senate completes its business today, it adjourn until 10:00 a.m. tuesday, november 3. following the prayer and pledge, the morning business be deemed expired, the journal of proceedings be approved to date and the time for the two leaders be reserved for their use later in the day. further, following leader remarks, the senate resume consideration of the motion to proceed to s. 1140, with the time until 12:30 equally divided between the two leaders or their designees. further, that the senate recess from 12:30 until 2:00 p.m. -- 2:15 p.m. to allow for the

weekly conference meetings. finally, that notwithstanding the provisions of rule 22, the vote on the motion to invoke cloture on the motion to proceed to s. 1140 occur at 2:30 p.m. tuesday, november 3, with the time from 2:15 until 2:30 equally divided in the usual form. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. mcconnell: if there is no further business to come before the senate, i ask that it stand adjourned under the previous order. the presiding officer: the senate is adjourned until 10:00 a.m. on tuesday,