addiction be passed along to their kids. and this is a big issue in our states right now, all of our neonatal units back home in our hospitals are dealing with it. there is legislation there to help our first responders with training and with narcan, certainly to help them deal with this fentanyl danger that they fiscal, the risks they face every day. we have the programs in place. there's not adequate funding for some of those programs to respond to the many requests coming in. this is one place for us to provide some help. the cures legislation goes directly to the states. that legislation was passed as part of an appropriations process to help the states be able to identify where they had the highest priority. some of that, frankly is in training individuals who can be counselors. we talked about the importance of not just providing medicine to help people get over their addiction, but also to surround them with the kind of treatment that they need, the kind of support that they need.

in other states it was a matter of building treatment facilities. $1 million of this or so was used in columbus, ohio, for a very innovative program where there is now a new emergency room that is dedicated to people who overdose, which is better for the individual who overdoses and better for the taxpayer rather than taking him to an emergency room that has the capability to handle the gunshot wounds and trauma and so on, this is dedicated just to overdoses. most significantly in the statement facility with the overdoses go, you have a 50-bed treatment center. people are treated for the overdose maybe in a detox unit, but then there's no treatment center there. there is no treatment bed available. that person goes back to the community, back to the old neighborhood, and during that waiting period, even though they're ready for treatment coming out of the overdose because often they've got -- they've seen their life flash before their eyes, there's not

the availability and sure enough that person gets back into the use of the drug, heroin, fentanyl, prescription drugs, ends up again overdosing again and sometimes again and again and again. and you hear this from your first responders. go to your firehouse. you will hear in every firehouse in america, i will guarantee you, about this issue. i will guarantee you in most firehouse, certainly all of them i've been in ohio and i've been to many, it's the number one thing that people are doing. in other words, there are more calls for overdoses than there are calls for fires. there are more calls for overdoses than there are calls for heart attacks. this is an issue that again it affects every one of us, whether we feel it directly or not. so this is an opportunity for us to get these people into the emergency room setting, to save their lives using this miracle drug narcan, using the best help of our incredible medical professionals who are doing an awesome job on the front lines, but then to get them right into treatment. and say, by the way, here's an

opportunity right here. come right now. we think that's going to close that gap and help to avoid this issue of people not getting the help that you want them to get. probably eight out of ten people are not getting the treatment that they should be getting. i'm encouraging my colleagues to vote for the legislation this afternoon or this evening, whenever we vote on it, in part because it does have that legislation in it regarding the opioids. it does have this new funding, an unprecedented level of funding. it's going to be left to the appropriations committees here to deal with it as to how it's spent. again, i know they have a lot of great ideas, including legislation that we already passed called the cara act, the cara, comprehensive addiction recovery act. we had five conferences here in washington. we had best practices from around the country. this is all about sending funds out to programs that have been studied, that do have good results. it's not just a matter of throwing money after this problem .d we've got -- after

this problem. we've got to be sure it's done effectively and it leverages more money at the local level. the millions of dollars that went into the treatment center in ohio, it was matched by private sector money, individuals who were giving funds to this because they realized what a problem it is. that's how we should work together. ultimately, this is not going to be solved again here in washington, d.c. it's going to be solved in our communities. it's going to be solved in our families. it's going to be solved in our hearts. because this is an issue that ultimately is going to require all of us getting engaged on. mr. president, i thank you for the time today. i note the absence of a quorum. the presiding officer: and the clerk shall call the roll. quorum call:

quorum call:

a senator: mr. president. the presiding officer: the senator is recognized. mr. lee: i ask unanimous consent to suspend the quorum call. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. lee: mr. president, there is good news, there is great news, and then there is the story of lucas warren of dalton, georgia.

i don't personally know mr. lucas. in fact, he is only 18 months old. he of course has the good sense not to engage with politicians, to get to know politicians, especially in washington. but there are so many millions of americans who have not met lucas. i will never forget him. you see, mr. president, yesterday the gerber baby food company selected little lucas as its gerber spokesbaby for the year of 2018. lucas' winning photograph, sent in by his parents jason and courtney, was selected from more than 140,000 entries. even at a glance, it's not at all hard to see why. but, mr. president, this picture deserves much more than just a mere glance. i don't just mean because of the bow tie. you see, lucas warren was born with down syndrome, which is to say jason and courtney warren

are among those americans blessed to know, to love, and to be loved by someone with down syndrome. according to the global down syndrome foundation, only 38% of americans are so lucky. lucky, mr. president. those of us who are so lucky know the warmth and the tender cheer of individuals with down syndrome, the warmth and tender cheer that they carry with them everywhere they go. how with little more than a smile like lucas' in this picture, they make gentle the life of the world. all of us are born with that mission, but we don't always fulfill it. children like lucas and parents like the warrens don't just carry their share of that burden. they carry some of ours, too. we owe them more than we can possibly know. i am a child of god, begins a

children's song of my faith, and he has sent me here. has given me an earthly home with parents, kind and dear. i am a child of god, and so my needs are great. those lyrics take on a particularly special poignancy when you know families with special needs children. for children with special needs, not only deserve special love, they give it. they give it unceasingly and unreservedly, just like the god who first knitted them together in their mother's wombs. we should all commend the gerber baby food company for its choice of its new spokesbaby and especially thank the warrens for the gift of little lucas. in washington, we are often reminded of the old maxim that there are no solutions in this life, only trade-offs.

and sometimes it's tempting to believe that's true. but this photograph proves otherwise. in this fallen world of ours, that smile, that little boy is a pure good, a blessing to us all. we heard yesterday after the announcement, lucas' mom, courtney, said he may have down syndrome, but he is always lucas first. we're hoping when he grows up and looks back on this, he will be proud of himself and not ashamed of his disability. not ashamed of down syndrome. so should we all hope for lucas and for the rest of the world, too. thank you, mr. president. i yield the floor. i note the absence of a quorum. the presiding officer: the clerk shall call the roll. quorum call:

quorum call:

quorum call:

mr. cassidy: mr. president. the presiding officer: the senator from louisiana. mr. cassidy: i'd like to speak some louisiana-specific issues -- the presiding officer: the senate is in a quorum call. mr. cassidy: i ask that the quorum call be vitiated. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. cassidy: madam president, i ask to be speaking on some issues relating to the spending bill, some things which have happened in louisiana. louisiana had two catastrophic floods in 2016 affecting not just our state but louisiana and texas with over 100,000 disaster victims who became eligible for s.b.a. or s.b.a. disaster assistance loans. here's one picture. oh, my gosh. here's the window. the water is this high inside the patio area as outside and the woman has got a face of despair. and here's another picture which kind of just shows a family being evacuated in a boat.

obviously the neighborhood with stop signs and nice trees and street lights, and they're being evacuated. you can imagine what their family home looked like. 56 of louisiana, 64 parishes have federal disaster declarations. the august storm alone caused an estimated $10 billion in damage to private property which apart from hurricanes, made it the most expensive u.s. disaster in the last 100 years. the most devastating thing was how little time people had to react. the storm was missing key cyclone characteristics so the national hurricane center had no expectation of how devastating the storm would be. and the first parishes hit by the flooding had no time to evacuate or prepare. many families that were impacted by the great floods of 2016 in louisiana lived outside of what are called special hazard zones

and were not required and did not carry flood insurance. indeed, about 80% of flooded homes did not have flood insurance. last year i worked with a louisiana delegation to obtain about $2 billion in community development block grants to help cover portions of those uninsured losses for louisiana families and small businesses. we also got about $500 million in disaster tax relief to help with the uncompensated disaster losses. but with cdbg or community development block grant funding which is distributed through the restore louisiana homeowner assistance program, it is an arcane -- there is something which is an arcane and arbitrary rule called duplication of benefits. the duplication of benefits rule states that an individual who is eligible and/or received a loan from the small business administration, that individual is ineligible for a grant from

the restore louisiana assistance program. the rule makes no sense. an individual who did the right thing, drew upon all available resources to rebuild their home, and put their life back together, they are denied relife. language to fix this issue was included in the disaster shrel shrel -- supplemental passed by the house last year. the senate was prepared to consider this in december, but the legislation was delayed, frankly, held hostage by the minority party, using it to gain leverage to get more government spending as part of the budget negotiations we are now in. now that this disaster supplemental has been rolled in, we saw the fix to the benefits rule was added but only covered texas, florida, and puerto rico. so i worked with my fellow

louisiana senator, senator kennedy to make sure that louisiana is treated the same as texas and other states. now this provision applies to individuals who are eligible to receive an s.b.a. loan but did not take a loan. what does that mean? according to the s.b.a., 100,000 homeowners were allowed to apply. 38,000 applications were received, 18,000 were approved. so, as i am told, if you're eligible but even don't take a loan you don't qualify for the restore louisiana grant. again, if you're eligible, i'm told, if you're eligible but did not take the loan then from the s.b.a. you're not eligible then to receive the restore louisiana grant because of the duplication of benefits rule.

so there's roughly 82,000 home owners who could potentially be eligible to receive relief from repealing or altering this duplication of benefits rule. there is some confusion in my state, i want to be clear, this does apply to the $2 billion cdbg grants that the louisiana delegation received to recover from the 2016 floods in louisiana. senator kennedy and i secured additional army corps resources to fully fund the comey river diversion that takes floodwaters from the comey river to the mississippi and would have preefned many -- prevented many homes from being flooded, probably these homes that were flooded in the great flood of 2016. we also secured $12 billion in mitigation grants for louisiana

and five other states. again, this senate bill is more dollars for more -- same number of dollars but for fewer states, therefore more targeted than in the house bill. the disaster relief portion of this legislation has taken some steps in the right direction. however, we still need additional clarification around duplication of benefits issues and legacy fema appeals matters. i thank my senate colleague from louisiana for his work on this. i hope to receive further commitments from the appropriations committee to continue to work on these important disaster recovery issues. madam president, i yield the floor and note the absence of a quorum. the presiding officer: the clerk will call the roll. quorum call:

quorum call:

quorum call:

mr. mcconnell: madam president. the presiding officer: the majority leader. mr. mcconnell: i ask that

further proceedings under the quorum calldispensed with. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. mcconnell: madam president, here we are at a quarter to 6:00. funding for the government expires in just a few hours. the bipartisan agreement before us funds our troops at the level requested by the pentagon, addresses the opioid crisis which is extremely big in the state of kentucky and around the country, funds our veterans and many other shared priorities. the speaker of the house supports the bill, is waiting for it to pass the senate. the president of the united states supports the bill and is waiting to sign it into law. i understand my friend and colleague from kentucky does not join the president in supporting the bill, and it's his right, of course, to vote against the bill, but i would argue that it's time to vote.

mr. schumer: if i might. the presiding officer: the minority leader. mr. schumer: and i very much appreciate my good friend, the junior senator from kentucky, his fidelity to spending, something we don't agree with, his fidelity to trying to get his amendments on the floor, debated, something we do agree with. we -- i recently supported that right when the fisa bill came up, which i know was very important to him. the difficulty we have here is that the government will shut down. we still have the house that has to vote. and frankly, there are lots of amendments on my side, and it's hard to make an argument that if one person gets an amendment, that everybody else won't want an amendment, and then we'll be here for a very long time. so i would plead with my colleague, given the exingenesis

that if maybe a budget point of order, which would make the same point. that is, he believes the spending is too high, might work, and we could move forward and get a bill done and not risk a government shutdown. we're in risky territory here, as the -- my both friends from kentucky know. so if that would be -- that would accomplish the same thing, not hold us up here, let the house do its will, and then maybe get the bill to the president because we would want to move things forward. and i yield the floor. mr. mcconnell: madam president. i am going to propose a unanimous consent that would give the senator from kentucky an opportunity to make a budget point of order, which would give him a vote on the substance of the matter he is concerned about. therefore, i ask unanimous consent that notwithstanding rule 22, at 6:00 p.m. today, the

senate vote on the motion to invoke cloture on the motion to concur in the house amendment to the senate amendment to h.r. 1892, with a further amendment. further, that if cloture is invoked, all postcloture time be yielded back and senator paul be recognized to make a budget point of order, that the majority leader or his designee be recognized to make a motion to waive, and that following the disposition of the motion to waive, the senate vote on the motion to concur with further amendment with no intervening action or debate. the presiding officer: is there objection? mr. paul: madam president. the presiding officer: the senator from kentucky. mr. paul: reserving the right to object, i ran for office because i was very critical of president obama's trillion-dollar deficits. now we have republicans hand in hand with democrats offering us trillion-dollar deficits. i can't in all good honesty and all good faith just look the other way because my party is

now complicit in the deficits. but really, who is to blame? both parties. we have a 700-page bill that no one has read that was printed at midnight. no one will read this bill. nothing will be reformed. the waste will continue, and government will keep taking your money irresponsibly and adding to a $20 trillion debt. there are no amendments being allowed. this is the most important debate we will have in the year over spending, and no amendments are allowed. we should have a full amendment process. we have been open for business ten hours today. you can do four amendments an hour. we could have done 40 amendments. so it's a canard to say we can't have one amendment and can't spend 15 minutes debating whether or not it's good for the country to add a trillion dollars in debt. so, madam president, i object. the presiding officer: objection is heard.

a senator: madam president. the presiding officer: the senator from kentucky. mr. paul: today the senate will vote on a bill that will add $1.5 trillion to the debt over the next ten years. this is a large amount of money and something that we should be very wary of. this is in addition to what we were already running debt of nearly a trillion dollars.

it's adding a couple extra hundred billion dollars a year to a budget and a country and a congress that had already recklessly let spending get out of control. the bill is nearly 700 pages. it was given to us at midnight last night, and i would venture to say no one has read the bill. no one can thoroughly digest a 700-page bill overnight, and i do think that it does things that we really, really ought to talk about and how we should pay for them. one of the things this bill does is going to add $500 billion in spending over a two-year period. this bill increases spending 21%. does that sound like a large amount? is anybody at home getting a bonus or an increase in your paycheck of 21%? and yet your government is going to spend 21% more without really having a full debate, without having amendments. the exchange you just watched was me asking to have a 15-minute vote. i have been asking all day.

i have been asking all week for it. we could have literally had dozens of votes today, but we squabble because people don't want to be put on the spot. so the reason i'm here tonight is to put people on the spot. i want people to feel uncomfortable. i want them to have to answer people at home who said how come you were against president obama's deficits and then how come you're for republican deficits? isn't that the very definition of intellectual dishonesty? if you were against president obama's deficits and now you're for the republican deficits, isn't that the very definition of hypocrisy? people need to be made aware. your senators need to answer. people need to answer this debate. we should have a full-throated debate. my amendment says this simply -- we should obey the budget caps. what are budget caps? these are limits we placed on spending, both military and nonmilitary.

we placed them in 2011, and guess what? for a year or two, government actually shrunk. but now government's taking off, and this new stimulus of deficit spending will be as big as president obama's stimulus. don't you remember when republicans how old to high heaven -- howled to high heaven that president obama was spending us into the gutter, spending us into oblivion, and now republicans are doing the same thing. so i ask the question, whose fault is it? republicans? yes. whose fault is it? democrats. yes, it's both parties' fault. you realize that this is the secret of washington, the dirty little secret is the republicans are loudly clamoring for more military spending, but they can't get it unless they give the democrats welfare spending. so they raise all the spending. it's a compromise in the wrong direction. we should be compromising in the direction of going toward spending only what comes in. and yet, this goes on and on and

on. you will hear people say well, the military has hollowed out, we have not enough money for our military, and yet we doubled the amount of money we spend on the military since 9/11, 2001. look, i have family members in the military. i have retired members of the military in my family, and i care very deeply about our soldiers. in fact, do you know what i would do? i would bring them all home from afghanistan. the war is won. people talking about making a parade. declare victory in afghanistan, bring them home, have a parade, and give them all a raise. and yet we go on and on and on, finding new wars to fight that make no sense where we have no idea who the good guys are and who the good guys are that are so murky that halfway through the war we sometimes change sides, or the people we support change sides. so we're at war in afghanistan after 16 years. it costs $50 billion a year. so they need more money for the military because we're in too many places for too long, we

have no exact mission of why we're there, and it is not a militarily winnable situation in afghanistan. there will never be a victory in afghanistan. there may be a negotiated settlement, and they may flee when we come, but as soon as we leave, they come back. are we to be there forever? for the umpteenth time, congress is going to exceed their budget caps. we had something passed back in 2010 that was called pay-go. it was supposed to say if you're going to pay new money, you had to go find an offset somewhere else. you could only pay as you go. it was sort of like a family would think about. if you're going to spend some more money, you either have to raise your income or you have to save some money. do you know how many times we have evaded it since 2010? 30-some odd times. when i try to get them to pay attention to their own rules, three or four people will vote to pay attention to the rules. we are in a terrible state as a

country. $20 trillion in debt is bigger than our entire economy. you wonder why the stock market is jittery? well, one of the reasons is we do not have the capacity to continue to fund a government like this. we have been funding it with phony interest rates that are concocted and given to us by the federal reserve, but they aren't real. what if interest rates become real again? anybody remember when interest rates were 5%, 10%, 15%? i remember as a teenager them being 19% or 20%. but historically they have often been at least five. you know what happens to the government when our interest rate goes to five and they have to borrow for social security and medicare and all the other stuff we do? there will be a catastrophe in this country. already interest rates are ticking up. the stock market is jittery. if you ask a question why, maybe it has something to do with the irresponsibility of congress spending money that we don't have. the bill's going to exceed the

budget caps by $296 billion. and that's not counting the money they don't count. all right, so these people are really, really clever. imagine them running their fingers together and saying how can we hide stuff from the american people? how can we evade the spending caps so we can be even more irresponsible than we appear? so $296 billion is the official number, about $300 billion that will be in excess of the budget caps. there's another $160 billion stuck into something called an overseas contingency fund. the budget caps don't apply there. so we're $300 billion for two years over the budget caps, and then we're another $160 billion over the caps, they just don't count it. they act as if it doesn't matter. we're just not going to count it. then we come to catastrophes. you might say to yourself i have great sympathy for those people whose houses were flooded in texas and florida. i do. my sister's house was flooded in

houston or near houston. so i have great compassion. but even for my family, i can't take the money from you or borrow it from the next generation and say here's a pot of money. go rebuild your house. we should do it in a responsible fashion. we've already, i think, spent 30 some-odd billion on emergency relief for the hurricanes. there's another $90 billion. you know what i've said? instead of just plunking $90 billion down or actually printing it over at the federal reserve, or borrowing it, instead of just doing that, why don't we take the $90 billion from somewhere in the budget that it shouldn't be. people come to me all the time and want something from government. i say if you want something from government, tell me where to take it from because i'm not going to borrow any more. we should take it from some other place in the budget. where do you get the $90 billion from? i've had some suggestions. you know how many votes i get? about 10 or 15 people will vote with me. i say let's not send it to pakistan this year. they burned our flag.

they put christians in jail. they put the guy in jail, a doctor afridi who helped us to find bin laden. we got bin laden. he had been living high on the hog in the middle of a town a mile or two from a military academy. everybody probably knew he was there in the pakistani government, and he lived uninterrupted. we finally got him. when we got him dr. afridi gave us information. you have know what pakistan did to this doctor? he's in jail for 33 years. ufp know what -- you know what ne did by a christian named bibi. she went to a well to draw water. as she was drawing water the women in the village began stoning her and beating her with sticks. as she lay on the ground bleeding and everybody watched and gawked as she lay on the ground bleeding, she was crying out for help and the police finally arrived and she thought she had been saved, only to be arrested for being a christian. yet, we've given $33 billion to

pakistan over the last decade. good money after bad. almost everybody up here loves it. they just want more of your money to go to pakistan, saudi arabia, china. you name it, they'll send your money anywhere. and we've got a country that needs it here. instead of nation building abroad, why don't we build our country here at home. why don't we do some nation building here at home. we have $90 billion that we need for emergency relief. even as conservative as i am, i would say we could probably find that. we're a great, rich country. we can probably rebuild and the government can be part of that. you tpho he with -- you know wh? why don't we quit sending it to pakistan? quit sending it to countries who burn our flag and chant death to america. why don't we keep that money at home. why don't we say to the government that they have to spend a little bit less. anybody ever have less money this year than you had last?

anybody had a 1% pay cut? you deal with it. that's what government needs, a 1 #% pay cut. if you take a 1 #% pay cut across the board you have more than enough money to pay for the disaster relief but nobody's going to do that because they're fiscally irresponsible. who are they? republicans. who are they? democrat. who are they? virtually the whole body is careless and reckless with your money. the money will not be offset by cuts anywhere. the money will be added to the debt, and there will be a day of reckoning. what's the day of reckoning? the day day of reckoning may wee the collapse of the stock market. the day of reckoning may be the collapse of the dollar. when if comes, i can't tell you exactly but i can tell you it has happened repeatedly in history when countries ruin their currency, when countries become profligate spenders, when countries begin to believe that debt does not matter. that's what this bill is about. but here's the confusion.

some at home will say we just want them to cooperate. if they would just hold hands and sing kumbaya, everything would be fine. guess what? that's what you've got. you saw both of the leadership of both sides opposing me because they are now clasped hand in hand, everybody's getting what they want. everybody's getting more spending. the military, the right is getting more military spending. the left is getting more welfare spending. and you're getting stuck with the bill. not even technically you. it's the next generation being stuck with the bill. your grandkids are being stuck with the bill. but mark my words, the stock market is jittery. the bond market is jittery. there is an undercurrent of unease amidst this euphoria you've seen in the stock market. a country cannot go on forever spending money this way. and what you're seeing is recklessness trying to be passed off as bipartisanship. so we've gotten together.

they're all holding hands, and there's only one bad guy standing in the way. one guy that's going to keep us here until 3:00 in the morning. you have know what? i think the country's worth a debate until 3:00 in the morning frankly. i think it is worth a debate on whether or not we should borrow $1 million a minute. we borrow $1 # million a minute. i think it brings it home. i was talking to my staff today, you know what, it's almost $2 million a minute now. $2 million a minute. can you imagine? this is exploding. this deficit is skhroegd. -- exploding. there isn't the alarm you should see. every one of these people, you'll see them come home and they'll tell you how earnest they are and how the government is bad and big government spending is bad and we have to reduce waste. it's dishonest. they're not doing anything about the waste. the waste has been out there for probably half a century or more. nothing's been done in the last

40 years for one precise reason. there is no oversight. you realize what they are passing is all of the money together in one bill. no one will read the bill. no one knows what's in it. and there is no reform in the bill. that i can say with absolute certitude. no one will read it. no reform. nothing gets better. the debt will grow. when the democrats are in power, republicans appear to be the conservative party. but when republicans are in power, it seems there is no conservative party. you see, opposition seems to bring people together, and they know what they're not for. but then they get in power and they decide, we're just going to spend that money too. we're going to send that money to our friends this time. the hypocrisy hangs in the air and chokes anyone with a sense

of decency or intellectual honesty. the right cries out our military is hollowed out even though military spending more than doubled since 2001. the left is no better. democrats don't oppose military money as long as they can get some for themselves, for their pet causes. the dirty little secret is that by and large both parties don't care about the debt. the spending bill is 700 pages, and there will be no amendments. the debate, although it's somewhat inside baseball that we're having here, is over me having a 15-minute debate. and they say woe is me. if you get one, everybody will want an amendment. well, that would be called debate. that would be called an open process. that would be called concern for your country, enough to take a few minutes. and they're like but it's thursday and we like to be on vacation on fridays. and so they clamor. we've been sitting around all

day. it's not like we've had 1 #00 amendments today, we're all worn out and can't do one more. we're going to have zero amendments. zero, goose egg, no amendments. it's a binary choice. they love that word, it's a binary choice. take it or leave it. you tpho he what, i'm going to leave it. i didn't come up here for this. i didn't leave my family throughout the week and travel up here to be a part of something that is so much inertia and so much status quo that they're not leading the country. they're just following along, and it's a big ball rolling down a hill grabbing up your dollars as the boulder rolls down the hill it gets bigger and bigger it's going to crush us. but nobody has the guts to stand up and say no. over the past 40 years only four times have we actually done 12 individual department of government appropriations bills. you've heard of like the appropriation committee? this is where the spending is. you have the department of defense, the department of

commerce, health and human services. we're supposed to pass each individual bill, and what would happen when we pass the bills, they would go through committee and each committee would look and see, well, this spending seems to be working. we're getting a great result, and we want some more next year. and this spending appears to be, have been put in a closet and lit on fire, and so next year we're not giving that person who put the $10 million in the closet and lit it on fire, we're not going to give them any money. guess what? that doesn't happen. so people keep putting your money in a closet and lighting it on fire. you've heard about fema, this emergency organization. you've heard about people without food. so there was like 300 million meals they needed, i believe, for puerto rico. 350 million meals. you know who got the contract? a person that had no employees. raise your hand -- you're not allowed to actually. but let's say raise your hand in a figurative way if you think it's a good idea to give a

contract for 350 million meals to someone who has no employees, who is not already in this business. they just know how to fill out the forms in the federal government to trick us into giving them the contract. they were woefully short and there are still people waiting in line for meals. it's not even compassion or no compassion. it's idiocy versus more idiocy. we gave the money so he doesn't do this. 350 million meals. over the past 40 years, four times have we actually done the right thing. passed 12 individual appropriations bill, bundled them together, have a budget and try to do the right thing. there is no guarantee that everybody will be wise in their spending but it's got to be better. it can't be worse. what do we do instead? it's called a continuing resolution. we glum all the bills together in one bill like we've done tonight. republicans and democrats clasping hands. and nobody's going to look at it. nobody's going to reform the spending. as a consequence, wasteful

spending is riddled throughout your government. only four times in 40 years have we done the appropriation process the way we're supposed to. recently they did a pentagon study. it's the beginning of an audited and they audited a part of the pentagon. this partial audit shows that $800 million was misplaced or lost. just $800 million. i don't think they actually put it in a closet and burned it, but they can't find it. awhile back they looked at some of the military expenditures and they had $29 billion worth of stuff they couldn't find. overall, the audit found that over $100 billion in waste was found at the pentagon. $100 billion. their budget is like $700 billion. you know, we're talking about a significant, over a 10%, you know, problem with figuring out waste. it doesn't get better because we don't vote on these things individually and don't parse out the difference.

i'll give you another example. the department of defense last year, we found this out, spent $45 million on a natural gas gas station in afghanistan. $45 million. it was projected to cost $500,000. 86-some-odd of cost overruns. $45 million. you're scratching your head and saying natural gas gas station. what is that? we don't have one in my town. we don't have one in my town either. they didn't have any in afghanistan. they decided they needed to reduce the carbon footprint of afghanistan. all right. they want to reduce the carbon footprint of afghanistan. i thought the military's job was to kill the enemy. the military's job now is to reduce their carbon footprint? so they bought a $45 million gas station that serves up natural gas, and guess what they discovered? they kept waiting. there is a guy sitting next to the pump. you can imagine him sitting on a stool and waiting for customers. no one ever came.

then someone said oh my goodness, they don't have cars that run on natural gas. that would probably be the same if you came to my town in kentucky. almost nobody has a car in america. they live in a primitive state in afghanistan and you're expecting them to have natural gas cars. they said gosh, we already built this $45 million gas station, maybe we should buy them cars. so they put a some cars with your money, then the people still wouldn't come in. they said, we don't have any money. they said, okay, we've got your gas stations, we got your cars, and we gave them credit cards. take that card to the natural gas station because we're reducing the carbon footprint. when did that become the job of the military. why does that go on year after year after year, the he was? -- the waste. for years we have been trying to get the pentagon to be audited.

you know their response? we're too big to be audited. how's that for your government. that is just not your business. is it any wonder, really, it surprises, is it any wonder that our debt is a $20 trillion debt? so 50 years ago william proxmi wrench was -- proxmire gave out the golden fleece award. this was 50 years ago. the reason i wanted to point this out because as you listen, you will find some of the stuff we're doing today is just as bad as 50 years ago. some of it is the same agencies. so you say, 50 years? they are still not learning anything from finding this waste. some testify is the budget process, the process that we pass these enormous bills that no one reads, no one scrutinizes

and do not reform the spending. william proxmire would do the golden fleece award. and i remembered this from the 1970's. this is some of the best. the national science foundation spent $84,000 trying to find out why people fall in love. now that sounds like a worthwhile science front with a specific answer. i think the conclusion was they are not exactly sure. the national science foundation, which you will see is a recurring theme, also spent $500,000 to try to determine why rats, monkeys, and humans bite and why they clench their jaw. you could say all of that is really important. maybe we'll discover something from that or you could say, if we're running a deficit, maybe some of this is not worthwhile to borrow the money for.

this is a good one, the federal aviation administration spent $55,000 studying the body measurements of what they called in those days airline stewardesses, it was for the purpose of purchasing their safety equipment, but somebody got $55,000 to measure the bodies of airline stewardesses. this is still from william proxmire. millions of dollars were spent to find out if drunk fish were more aggressive than sober fish. i will let you ponder that one. this is your government. this surmoney. is this the debt you're handing on to your kids and grandkids. this is 50 years ago. we'll get to some of the things we've been doing more recently. we do a waste report where we point some of these things out

and every week we have a new one. if you want to look at our waste report, we have it on facebook and the website. you remember when neil armstrong landed on the moon? he said one small step for man -- some said one small step for a man. there has been heated discussion. was it one step for man or a man. the prep sition a, did he or did he not use the prep sition a? so their government took $700,000 which was supposed to go to autism research, and they decided to study neil armstrong's statement. somebody at some university decided to play the tape over and over. $700,000 later, they couldn't

decide. we still don't know, did he say a man or man? this is the same kind of stuff you have seen with william proxmire 50 years ago, but this was last year. i think i will probably get some hate mail from them. so this is $850,000 and we call this one the game of waste. this was spent -- you know, you think when we're spending money in afghanistan, surely it's to kill the enemy. sometimes it's building bridges. sometimes it building roads. stuff that we don't do in our country anymore. this one was $850,000 for the development of a televised contradict league. you see -- cricket league. we want them to able to watch the national sport on tv. we spent $850,000 to get it

televised. the only thing we didn't reckon, it was like the natural gas cars, they p didn't have tv -- dhent have tv's -- they didn't have tv's. we spent $850,000 to get a cricket league televised in afghanistan. this is a good one. everybody likes to take a selfy, right? if you don't do them, your kids or grandkids will do it. this is a study to tell if taking selfies will make you happy, if you look at yourself, does it make you happy. inquiring minds want to know. if you want to study that, good for you. go get somebody to imi you -- to give you money to study that. i would like you to go around knocking on doors find out if a

selfie makes you happy. they'll say, but, sir, it is science and you are just a lay person and don't understand how important selfies can be and you're not qualified to talk about selfies because you don't know about happiness. we have experts who can tell the world we can be happy if we all had selfies. they tell us that somehow we're not smart enough to have common sense. but this goes on decade after decade. the school lunch program. you might say, well, you know, we need to help those who can't buy a school lunch. we have a school lunch program. we discover $158 million, federal money, was given to a los angeles school district and it turns out they were which

iing -- they were buying other things than lunches. no one was doing the individual appropriation bills. they were passing continuing resolutions, and when nobody reads it they buy sprinklers, new televisions for the faculty to watch. $158 million not spent on school lunches but spent on other items. everybody's heard about climate change and there's undertones and overtones about climate change. if case you haven't heard about climate change, the people who want you to hear about climate change want you to make sure you spend money. they spent $450,000 on a video game. this is also the national science foundation. so a generation will be able to play a video game on climate

change. it is complete with great graphics and we have a great game your kids can play on climate change. it's one thing after another. all right. you may have been on this one if you're in washington. this one we call street car named waste. there's a street car over here a few blocks on h street and they spent $1.6 million on it. i think they spent more on it before that. it goes a mile from nowhere to nowhere. and you get on and nobody's on it. it costs a fortune. you could walk from one end to the another in the time it takes to go on this tramway. and so -- but, you know, $1.6 million. when you see this government spending, would you give money to this? and i asked this question often when i'm home. i ask people, if you had $100 to

give to help people, would you give to the salvation army or the federal government to spend on a street car that no one rides? so i talked about whether or not we should be spending the money somewhere else or here. this is $250,000 that was spent on bringing 24 kids from pakistan to space camp and dolly wood. you can say, we will have good relations with pakistan. i'm not against interaction. if this were some kind of privately funded group that wanted to have some money to have interaction between us and pakistan, i would be for it. first the price tag is scary. $250,000 for 24 kids, but then i also think, i represent a lot of people in kentucky who don't have the money to drive down to

huntsville and go to space camp with their kids. should we not start thinking that we need to take care of ours at home before we ship our money overseas? do we need to think about can we afford to keep borrowing money for projects like this? this is the department of defense, and think i think we referred to earlier. this was the $29 million worth of heavy equipment that they lost in afghanistan. you see, they lost that, but we also made the decision as we were downgrading the war in afghanistan after the last surge we did in afghanistan, that we didn't want the other side to have our stuff, so we blew up billions of dollars of tax, you name it -- t anks, you name it. when they counted it up, they couldn't find $29 million worth. if you think about it and

thinking how could we have more money for both our national defense and have more money for infrastructure, you hear people talk about infrastructure. republicans and democrats want to build roads, but guess what, there's no money. we're $1 trillion short this year because we passed this clash pans, spend whatever you can, both sides spend it like there's no tomorrow. but you say, how could we change our government? where would in be money we could actually save? some of it is in our foreign policy. we don't have enough for our military to be involved in seven wars. we might have enough to be involved in three, two, or one or maybe we shouldn't be involved in any. we said after 9/11 we would go after those who attacked us, they are all dead. we should declare victory. right now we're over there nation building.

why do we have trouble with nation building? i'll give you a story from a navy seal i met a couple of years ago. he had been in 19 years. he was a tough guy, like they all are, and he said, you know what, we can go anywhere, kill any of our enemies, we can do whatever you ask us to do. but the mistake is when the politicians tell us to plant the flag and create a country, we're not very good at it. most in the military don't want to create countries. they assume kill the enemy and come back to their family. but we kill the enemy and then we stay and stay and stay. there have been some schools built four or five times and the tax bill blows it -- the taliban blows it up. don't they have some responsibility after we give them $1 trillion to do something for themselves. will people do something for themselves if you keep doing it for them? really there has to come a time

when we come home. spend $50 trillion a year in afghanistan. it is money that could be spent on infrastructure if you wanted to do that or maybe not having a trillion dollar deficit next year. we're in a bunch of different places. when the soldiers were killed in niger, a country in africa, many people didn't know where the country was much less that we had 800 troops there. you say that's not much but the problem is it becomes 800,000 or 80,000. because we get in the middle of a civil war and some of our guys get kill and say, gosh, we have to do more, not less. they want to punish the enemy. i don't know who the good people or bad people are in niger, so i think it is unclear who the good guys and bad guys are. we have been involved in