vote:

the presiding officer: the yeas are 50, the nays are 49. the motion is agreed to. pursuant to senate resolution 27 and the motion to discharge having been agreed to, the nomination will be placed on the executive calendar. under the previous order, the senate will resume legislative session. there will now, up to three hours of debate under the control of the senator from utah, mr. lee, or his designee. and the majority. .

the presiding officer: the senator from kentucky is recognized. mr. paul: we're rapidly approaching a milestone in our country, and it's not a good one. we're rapidly approaching $30

trillion in debt. we're accumulating debt like we've never have at any time in our history. we're actually accumulating debt at the rate of over $2 million per minute. some say deficits don't matter. some on the left say they have this new monetary theory. we can just print it all up. you'll all have free stuff. nothing could go wrong. we'll give you money. $1,500 checks a mo month, why dt we give you -- -- to give people free money, free this, free that. but i think people are smarter than that. i think people ultimately know you don't get anything in life without hard work. you don't get anything in life really for free. isn't there some kind of ramification to so much borrowed money? when someone comes to you and says -- or call you on the phone

and say here's a thousand dollars, all you have to do is sign up for this, most people immediately recoil and think that might be a scam. somebody is going to be ripping me off to say that. it's sort of the bait and switch of the politics we face now. people say we're going to give you free college, free cars, free cell phones, free this, free that. everything in life will be free. you won't have to work anymore. the problem is there are ramifications. money doesn't grow on trees. money has got to come from somewhere. either we borrow it. we become more indebted to foreign countries. we tax people for it. we're ultimately the way we fix a lot of our deficit problems we simply print the money. so when the federal reserve prints the money, as we increase the money supply, the money that we have becomes worth less and less. it loses its purchasing power. this is the insidious tax of inflation. and the interesting thing about it is, inflation is a regressive tax. it doesn't affect everyone the

same. in fact, the tax of inflation actually affects the working class, the people of lower incomes, and those on fixed incomes and pension, retirees, it affects them much worns because they don't -- worse, because they don't have the ability for their income to go up. so right now we're facing 5% inflation. because of the massive borrowing that really both parties instituted in the last year. they decided that the result of the pandemic would be to close everything down, destroy the economy, and then give everyone free money. and to a large extent both parties actually did this last year. now this yeared decision had been made -- year the decision had been made by republicans to say this is so much. we have to stop and get people back to work and have the economy recovery. it's primarily been democrats this year. as -- at least some members of both parties. as inflation occur, you find

that those who suffer are those who cannot raise their income, those who have fixed income or low income. one of things you see here is that if we have 5% inflation, what does that mean? you say, well, i don't know. if means i lose my purchasing power by 5% next year. what if it happens year in, year out for a decade and you've lost 50% of your purchasing power? it means that you really have to have a 50% increase in your wages. so will wages keep up with inflation? the dirty little secret is that in some ways wages will rise but a decade or so later you're not really better off. they think they're getting free stuff, but it's not really free. the allure of something for nothing. this is the allure of socialism. this is a false allure. it's something that you can -- you're going to be able to get something and you're not going to have to pay for it. so we've accumulated $30

trillion in debt. interest payments have been fairly low over the past decade or so. interest payments are about, you know, 1%, 2%, 2.5%. now interest rates are rising. even at the low interest rates, our interest rate that we pay each year has grown to about $300 billion a year. so $300 billion a year and people say, well, there's a debt ceiling. if the debt ceiling doesn't come up, we'll default and wall street will income -- will become hysterical and there will be a collapse of the stock market. well, there doesn't need to be. nobody is for spreading chaos among the marketplace. we all want the marketplace to be calm. how can we calm the marketplace? what we would say to the marketplace is, we'll pay a bills. we're not going to default on our currency. and the wait you can pay for your bills is pay for it with income. we bring in $3.8 trillion a year in tax revenue. the interest payment is $300

billion. it's less than we bring in in one month. so the annual payment on interest is less than what we bring in in tax revenue. why would we never pay the interest on our debt? because we're overdrawn and all the rest of the spending is crowded out by the interest. we've got plenty of money to pay for the interest. we just don't have enough left to pay for the cocaine studies with japanese quail? they study to see if japanese quail on cocaine are more sexually pro miss could you with us? because there's studies like that literalled throughout -- literated throughout the budget. we just increased the national science foundation by two-thirds. mostly democrats but once again many of the big-government republicans voted for this, too. so we've exploded the national science foundation. was there any warning that the

national science foundation was one of the most wasteful parts a of our government? well, yeah, since 1972. there was a senator at the time named william proxmire, he was a conservative, a maffick democrat from the -- a maverick democrat from the midwest. he started the golden fleece award. the first award he gave was for a study for the national science foundation for $50,000 h the study was to see what makes people happy. really? and people were aghast thawier spending $50,000 on it. he complained. he gave them a bobby prize f he gave them a golden fleece award. the same organization did a $1 .5 million study that if you take a selfie of your self while smiling and look at it later on, does it make you happy?

that cost $1.5 million. why do people like each other? why do people fall in love? these aren't studies for taxpayer dollars. what about $70 million spent a hotel in kabul that the contractor ran off with the money and it was never built? what about a $48 million gas station -- no, strike that -- natural gas gas station in a remote area of afghanistan? well, very few in anybody in the united states has a car that runs on natural gas. why was -- what was the u.s. government building a natural gas gas station in afghanistan? because we've gone woke on the green climate. we are for the green climate. we got to combat climate change and reduce the carbon footprint of afghanistan. really? i thought the military was supposed to kill the enemies, defend the country. but we're reducing the began

footprint in -- the carbon footprint in afghanistan. somebody put up a video, a tragic but hilarious in its tragicness. it said this is when we lost the afghan war. it had a picture of a urinal. an artist back in 1917 that thought it would be hilarious to put a urineal in. they were having these afghan men and women in robes and veils and everything studying dadist art and asked them what they thought of this. you could see a couple of women just sort of shaking their head with utter incomprehension. but when we're spending money, sending ph.d.'s over to afghanistan to teach dadaist art about how a male urinal is

somehow art, i think that's why they think we're the culture in decay, not them. but the thing is we are spending money right and left. the right spends it on adventure. the right spends it on compromise. right comes together with left and they all agree that, well, we might as well spend it on both. the military budget went up. we already spend more than all of the countries, more than ten countries combined is our military budget. $750-some-odd billion. it was just raised more in the midst of ending a war. where's the peace dividend? what happened? we ended a war. i thought we'd have a little more montana left over. today i tried to take $6 billion that was supposed to go to the afghan reconstruction fund, to the old afghan government. there is no afghan government. they've been overrun by the taliban. i want to have -- and i would love for americans watching this, call me today at my office

and tell me why the taliban should get money. but i ask that we take that money away, put it back in the treasury, spend some of it on the iron dome for israel, and it was objected to by the democrats because, by golly, they'll spend money, but they don't want to offset it with any spending cuts. well, really? we should have zero dollars being sent to any government in afghanistan. i asked secretary blinken about this and his response was, well, i can't guarantee it, and if they -- you know, if they are meeting expectations and they're acting and behaving properly, they might get this money. really? i don't see a scenario or a world where u.s. taxpayer dollars would be going to the taliban. it makes no sense at all. but we have spending that is literally out of control. the only time i have ever heard a democrat -- most of the time they're honest. they don't care about the debt. but the only time they've said anything about the debt is, you know what happens is because you

cut taxes. it's verifiablely false. you can go back to it the reagan tax cuts. you know what happened? the government got more revenue. when you tax people less, when you let them keep more of that he own money, guess what? their incentives to produce go up and the economy grows by leaps and bounds many society when reagan cut taxes dramatically, the economy responded and grew tremendously. when we cut taxes in 2017, same thing. revenue didn't go down. revenue went up. so how did the deficit get worse? was it because we cut taxes in 2017? no, it is because we piled on the money. we were spending money like there's no tomorrow. so before we get to the extraordinary times we live in now where everything is about covid and we're just going to spend money like there is no tomorrow, before we got to that, we were borrowing $1 trillion a year. so the major segments of government -- medicare, medicaid, social security, food

stamps, other welfare, and military, that probably comprises three-forums or more of government. if you look at that on an annual basis, before you get to the extraordinary binge of the last few years, we were already a trillion dollars short every year. a trillion dollars short. so last year we added a couple trillion more and our deficit for the year, for one year, was $3 trillion. we've never, ever borrowed that much. there are going to be ramifications. you're already seeing some of the ramifications. you're seeing the prices in the grocery store go up, the prices at the pump go up, you're seeing sometimes wages go up, but you're also seeing prices risings faster than wages, which happens in an inflationary cycle. some people have trouble compre hending how these numbers -- what's a billion, what's a trillion?

reagan said, if you want to know what a billion is, take thousand dollar bills in your hand. if you have them about an inch high, you have about a million dollars. but if you want to know how much or how tall a stock is it would be 60 miles high. that's what kind of money we're talking about. that was to get to a trillion. so we have a trillion institutional debt that's added every year. but now we're talking about a time where they're talking about adding in one bill, $3.5 trillion. the bill they have before us has a billion dollars in spending for every page. every page of the bill has an extra billion in spending. it is extraordinary. we've never, ever seen anything like this. what happens when a company -- when a country destroys its currency? we have examples in history. in germany in 1923, the money was starting to lose its value in about september. and a loaf of bred might have

cost 100 marks. it used to be one mark. this happened in a two-month period of time. period say, oh, when it comes. when the currency unravels, it will be gradual. in germany it happened in a two-month period. in venezuela, the currency is completely worthless, same as germany. it's almost better to burn your currency for fuel or warmth than it is to spend it. this is what happens when you have runaway spending and out-of-control deficits. venezuela is one of the richest countries in south america. and they have more oil underground than saudi arabia. but frankly, socialism doesn't work. socialism is this borrow and spend. it is this alarming tendency to want to offer everybody everything and say it is going to be free. many of these things backfire. for the last year we've been saying, well, gosh, we feel

sorry for workers so we're going to pay them while they're unemployed. but guess what? if you pay them more than the market wage, more of them will choose unemployment and more of them will choose unemployment. more of them will stay unemployed for a longer period of time. we found this out in the 2008 recession. we extended unemployment -- it is normally 26 weeks, paid for by a tax, and it largely works within the confines of a state-run program. we extended it to 99 weeks, almost twoers i do not. you know what the -- almost two years. you know what the studies found? this is part of the syndrome we have around here, the big heart, small brains syndrome. i think many people want to help people but they don't understand what they're doing is actually hurting the same people they're trying to help. if you extend unemployment to 99 weeks and all of a sudden the guy at 99 weeks, or a woman, say i got to get a job. and they go to the employer and say i've been out on unemployment. who do you think the employer

hires? every time it is the person out of work for ten weeks. the person out of workfor 99 weeks, there might be something wrong here. you've actually kept them out of the workplace so long that they become unemployable. after they become unemployable, what do they become? the permanently unemployable, the nonworking part. you wonder who this is? 62% of the country is? the -- is in thework force s -- is in the workforce. many of them are people who just stayed out of work too long or took the wrong incentives or became addicted to drugs or alcohol because they weren't working. so there are things we can do in our country but if we're not careful, it's going to slip away from us. i don't want our country to be venezuela. i don't want our country to destroy its currency. but what we're offering is a more difficult sell because the

other side is going to give you free college and free day care and free cars and free cell phones. what we are offering is opportunity. what we're offering is the freedom to try to strive. we're offering equality before the law, not equality of outcome after you have done your work, after you're tried to participate. equality before the law. and one of the interesting things that i think isn't often grasped by people is if you want equal outcomes, you want everybody to be the same and equalize everybody, you have to treat them unequally. in our country it took awhile but we've gotten to the point where people truly believe in the concept of equality before the law. but if you also want to believe in equal outcome in the end you can't believe in both. if you want this so-called equity at the end, you want everybody to be equal at the end, you've got to treat them

unequally because some people are either born with more talent, born with more money, born with more sense, luckier, work harder. there's a lot of reasons. if you put 100 people in a room and give them all $5, within an hour somebody's gotten more. somebody had some cigarettes, somebody really wanted to smoke and they've got $1. the money is spread around the room. they have done experiments, money doesn't stay in one place but it's by and large in a free society based on work. once the government becomes in charge of things it becomes less of a meritocracy and becomes more of a society based on who you know. so there are rich people -- don't get me wrong. when you look at socialism there are rich people -- maduro, chavez, castro -- incredibly rich people that own islands, have billions of dollars. their relatives are all rich. instead of a society mostly based on merit, we talk about the greatness of america, one of the most important things

about capitalism and freedom and what happened in america is for the first time it wasn't based on who you were, it wasn't based on royal lineage. for the most part europe was longtime landowners and royalty and a very small percentage of the public did very well. before 1820, before the industrial revolution, virtually everybody in the world, 96%, 98% of the world lived in extreme poverty, a bare subsistence level, barely enough to eat. there was no obesity because there was barely enough food. you scraped by. that was 98% of the world. fast forward to today after we've adopted what adam smith talked about as far as trade, division of labor and capitalism, you know what we have now? when you look at poverty, less than $2 a day in the world, it's less than 10% of the world. you won't find this on television. there's not going to be any good news on television or in the newspaper. the poorest people in our

country are equivalent to the middle class in most countries. we are a huge success but we are a country misguided and led astray by media that aren't honest. so, for example, if you watched cnn, you would think that nobody's getting vaccinated and it's a complete disaster and we're stuck in this rut because no one is vaccinated. it's completely untrue. over 90% of people over 65 who are the most vulnerable are vaccinated. sure there's a lot of younger people who aren't vaccinated and there are some older people, but 90% is a pretty good success. over age 50, it's like 75%, 80% of people. people are informed. they know this is a disease that can affect any age, but affects primarily the older ages. for example, the one truth you won't be told is an 85-year-old has a 10,000 times greater chance of dying than the ten-year-old. do you think we should treat them the same? if you were your doctor do you think a 10-year-old should get

the same health care and same prescriptions as an 85-year-old? it makes no sense at all. i see 5-year olds on the mall -- my wife and i were walking down to the lincoln memorial the day and i see 5-year olds in groups led by teachers wearing masks outside. there is no science to that. we've got dr. fauci spreading mistruths across the cuntd saying we've got -- across the country saying we've got to forcibly vaccinate the kids. england is rejecting what we're doing. in england, because of the age skew, because of what they're seeing that the people most at risk are of an older age, they're saying instead of forcibly vaccinating children, why don't we try to make the vaccine doses available for the elderly? why don't we target our care to those who are at highest risk. we have a problem in our country. we have a people who have so politicized science that there are people struggling and dying every day because they've never heard about monoclonal

antibodies. we have people dying every day because the government, at the behest of dr. fauci and a few other people said you can't get monoclonal antibodies if you're in the hospital. i talk to people every day who have not heard of monoclonal antibodies who get covid again after being fully vaccinated and sometimes not vaccinated because they're not getting the treatment because dr. fauci says if you're in the hospital you don't get it. so we have medicine coming from on high from a central authority like the politburo and doctors are afraid to describe. this never happened in our country before. doctors were able to make their own decisions based on studies, based on real-life examples but using their own discretion. now doctors are afraid to prescribe monoclonal antibodies and many of them are disallowed from prescribing it in the inpatient. you're in the emergency room, sick, coughing, you might be dying from covid. you get to the emergency room, you don't know what to say, you

can barely talk. your spouse has to be able to tell the doctor please stop, in an emergency room give them the monoclonal antibodies before they're admitted because once they're admitted we won't treat them. the same way with symptoms. you have to have symptoms within the first ten days. if you're on day 11, you won't get monoclonal antibodies. it's completely arbitrary, it's capricious and it has to do with government-mandated guidelines. let's take some of the other truths or mistruths that are out there. i've said over and over again cloth masks don't work, because they don't. peer-reviewed studies showed time and time again cloth masks don't work. when dr. fauci tells you all masks work, when he comes in draped with three masks on himself, comes in with clever insignias of sports teams, he's spreading a mistruth that causes lives to be lost. why? let's say you have a 75-year-old woman and she gets covid and her husband is taking care of her.

do you think the advice to go into the room to feed her, bathe her, help her get in and out of her clothes while she's sick wearing a cloth mask is a good idea or a bad idea? it's malpractice. yet, for some reason the left-wing media has lauded this man as the second coming, and what he's telling you is absolutely verify pably dangerous to -- verifiably dangerous to your health. the only mask that works of any real value is the n-95 maskt. the surgical masks have some value but not very much. most of the air is going around the mask. but you have to submit. the man is telling you to do it, you've got to do what you've got to do. when you tell people something safe, they tend to react to that and have behavior, and in their behavior they're in favor of something that may well actually be risky behavior for them. the vaccinations, because we ignore natural immunity, we directed the vaccine to the wrong people and still are.

so, for example, because of dr. fauci's lead, india is accepting his lead as well. in india there is not enough vaccine. they have a billion people, can't vaccinate enough people fast enough. if you have a billion people and 200 million doses of vaccine, who do you think you should give it to? the 10-year-old the same as the 85-year-old? no, that's ridiculous. what what about two 65-year olds and one has had covid and one hasn't. the studies say if you already had it you have natural immunity to covid, as good or better than the vaccine. do you think it makes good public health policy to say everyone 65 should get it instead of saying have you had it? why don't we check you for antibodies. maybe you should wait until we vaccinate every 65-year-old who doesn't have immunity. these are real discussions. if you have these, unless it's on the senate floor, actually that's not true. you can say it's on the senate floor and youtube will take it

down. i've given speeches on the floor that youtube takes down. this is a world in which people need to realize and get back to the ideas of classical liberalism, where we debated things. classical liberalism was about skepticism, you having your opinion and me having my opinion. the difference between the elitest or collectist point of view and individualist rights point of view, i believe you have every right of your opinion. if you're a collectivist and you believe from the top down all opinions come from dr. fauci and he doesn't want you to fly, you don't get to fly. irts different from individual liberty. if an airline has a policy i don't like, maybe i choose not to fly. but the idea we're going to restrict behavior based on what they decide to do, what's next? people eat too many cheeseburgers, we're not going to give them a heart stint because they haven't listened to the doctors on what they should be eating.

there is no end to this, but in the end ifer with not careful we're going to to spend this country into oblivion. covid is a big cost of what we have to spend right now, but i can tell you there are ramifications, they are coming quick, they are coming in the form of higher prices. but there is no reason in the world for us to default. we have plenty of money. we should simply pay for the interest based on what comes in every month. and with that, i'd like to reserve my time and turn it ove. a senator: would the senator yield for a question? mr. paul: sure. a senator: senator paul, when you and i were both elected to the senate back in 2010, the national debt was an issue then. it was becoming large enough that people were concerned about it. mr. lee: as it mounted, sometimes we had conversations about how long it might continue, how long it might continue to spiral upward. are you surprised to see that

here we are 11 years later, 11 years after you and i arrived here and where it's gone since then? mr. paul: i guess surprised is not the word i would use. i would say disappointed. the tea party movement we had 100,000 people on the l mall. people were concerned about the debt and constitutional government. i remember you and i meeting and talking about how we needed to reverse terrible precedents that allowed government to grow large and that the courts needed to reform governments as well as government be reformed from its elected officials. yeah, we had a great debate that summer, and the summer of 2011, we said we wouldn't raise the debt ceiling without reform. mr. lee: do you remember, if the gentleman will yield for a question again, i believe it was during that summer that a number of people started focusing on emerging economic research, including research proposed by professors rogoff and reinhart at stanford university, suggesting that

whenever the debt to g.d.p. ratio exceeds a certain level, exceeds roughly 100%, one to one, certain l things start to happen and economic growth becomes more elusive. as i recall, we were nowhere close yet to the one to one ratio. now that we've blown past that, what do you think that ought to tell us about the fact that even as we've blown past that point, we're now being asked to raise the debt ceiling by larger and larger amounts, or sometimes for a time period, without any reform. mr. paul: i remember when a couple of years after that, we actually became that our economy was equal to our debt. so the gross domestic product, how much everything is worth that's produced in the whole country was about $17 billion or $18 billion at the time as the debt sort of crossed that.

we're now, depending on how you measure it, some say at 140% of our g.d.p. and the interesting thing is that's about where greece was when greece began to declare its bankruptcy and was unable to pay its bills. it is a large. it is foolish and unwise for us to say there are no consequences. i think there will be consequences. the number one that we're seeing now is inflation. mr. lee: we've seen, with our status as the united states having the world's reserve currency, the u.s. dollar has given us some flexibility in that area, flexibilities that other countries like greece haven't had. do you think there's some risk of becoming overly confident in that world reserve currency status? could we be jeopardizing the very thing that we fought so hard to achieve and that so few nations ever achieve? mr. paul: yeah, and i think you're right. having the world's currency

allows us -- many countries trade in dollars. you'll go into marketplaces around the world and what they're exchanging is dollars. as we bought more goods than we with exported, some describe that as being able to export our inflation. people have also said the dollar isn't perfect, it's a fiat currency, being inflated but everybody else is so bad we're the cleanest shirt in a closet full of dirty shirts. there are immutable rules of economics that eventually catch up to a countries, and i think we approached this. i don't think anybody can predict exactly when we get there, but i think we are approaching a time, and it may not be a gradual unraveling. if you look at the history of our marketplace we've had these black swan events, the marketplace in seven or eight days of our history, most of the markets have happened calamitously. even in 2011 there was a debate, they said it was

because we risked the debt ceiling. many thought the marketplace went down at that time because we actually continued to borrow without reforming the process. mr. lee: in an economy where currency in circulation isn't backed up by any tangible object and where the government has effectively the ability to just print more money, even if that currency happens to be the world's reserve currency, at some point after you keep printing money, doesn't that cause problems? mr. paul: it's based on faith. and so when does the faith end? faith is not something particularly -- it's hard to determine faith in the dollar, and one way you can determine it is will people buy our bonds. and so one of the indications that people lose faith in a currency is that when to borrow money, you see your bond prices rise, you see interest prices rise. and i think that's coming. you know, we're already seeing inflation at a 5% rate.

typically you will see the interest rates rise as well. there is going to be a time, there are going to be repercussions. i fully believe you cannot continue to borrow at this rate without ultimately suffering perhaps an economic calamity. and i want to stop that for our country. mr. lee: mr. president. the presiding officer: the senator from utah is recognized. mr. lee: mr. president, we have a debt ceiling for a reason. it's not completely arbitrary. it's not just made up. it's not just something that someone came up with for their own amusement. no. when the sheer new mexico -- numeric volume, the quantity of our national debt ceases to cause panic, when the principle of jeopardizing our children's future loses effect, when the sacrifice it would cost taxpayers to pay the debt becomes laughedly large, when

all else fails, congress has the cap and says here, here, here wt this. we have to think about this debt problem. there is a reason why we have that. there are sound reasons rooted in logic, rooted in mathematics, rooted in the inevitability of our own future if we don't control the way that the federal government spends money. now, nearly half of the members of this entire body, almost the entirety of the senate republican conference, wrote a letter almost two months ago saying that we would not raise the debt limit. we committed that we were finally going to make a change for the sake of families back home, and generations still unborn. we were going to make a change to rein in reckless spending. now we're faced with more

spending and more debt than our country has ever seen before. our debt-to-g.d.p. ratio has now reached a staggering level of 125%. the national debt is rushing toward $30 trillion. and far too quickly, this body is signaling a willingness, i might dare say an eagerness to sign on the dotted line without thinking through the consequences. or at least without thinking through the consequences of everyone outside this building. without thinking through the consequences of those who are wealthy and well connected and will probably fare just fine, regardless of the federal government's reckless practice of effectively just printing more money. let me tell you why that is such a problem, why i think it's so dangerous. first of all, as i mentioned a

moment ago in my exchange with the senator from kentucky, once we pass this one-to-one debt-to-g.d.p. ratio, economists have scoured the landscape and looked at economies all over the world throughout human history, throughout periods of time in which any records have been kept at all. they have concluded that this 100% debt-to-g.d.p. ratio is tragic, it's dangerous, it's perilous. once you cross that rubicon, you're in some very, very tough positions. economic growth starts to sputter. it staggers, becomes more and more difficult to get out of a death spiral. you see, in the past, even as our national debt has been on the rise, we have been okay, and so far it has increased more or less to a degree commensurate

with the size of our economy. economic growth has been such that it remained more or less constant, less constant lately, but it's remained somewhat proportional to the size of our economy. economic growth has propelled that. that's the problem. that's the goose that lays the golden egg. we know what happens when you get rid of that goose or when you meaningfully impair its ability to lay those golden eggs. once we reach that point, we pass the 100% debt-to-gpt ratio, we know our economic growth will stall and it will be far more difficult to pay off what we have got. we also know that it matters on a very personal level, for reasons i will get into more in just a moment, for poor and

middle-class american families everywhere, throughout utah and across america. people who are living paycheck to paycheck or otherwise on a fixed income or a fixed budget, like most american families, they find that when the government just prints more money, as it tends to do when we start to borrow and then spend trillions of dollars at a time more than the federal government is bringing in. it brings about inflation. it's as though there are a basket of goods that the economy is capable of faithfully, consistently producing from one year to another. yes, the basket of goods might grow or shrink a little bit from year to year, but it's going to tend to fluctuate mostly at the margins. the big picture is going to look fairly consistent. so what happens if government just prints more money and puts that into circulation.

the purchasing power of each dollar is diminished. now, this tends to work out fine. in fact, it can work out really well for wealthy and well-connected individuals. the rich usually figure out a way to get even richer off of this dynamic. they can hedge against it. they can figure out a way to benefit in one way or another from the chaos and sometimes even from the government spending. where does that leave everyone else? well, for most people -- and by most people, i mean 99% of americans -- it's not going to make them wealthier. it's going to make them poorer because most people are still living with more or less the same income, more or less the same resources. we have still got more or less the same basket of goods in the economy, but when you have got more dollars in the american economy because we're effectively printing more, each dollar matters less. it buys less, everything from

gas to groceries, from housing to health care. poor and middle-class american families suffer while the wealthy and well connected might benefit and a small handful of politicians receive a pat on the back, thanking them, congratulating them as they congratulate themselves and each other for what they characterize as a job well done. sure, they will always be able to point to someone who benefits from the programs that they are sponsoring, that they are creating. some of those people won't be wealthy and well-connected interests. some of them will be deserving families. some of them poor and middle-class american families. but most families are just made poorer as government expands its footprint. let's look at what happened last year alone. during the last few years before the pandemic, we were bringing in about $3 trillion a year in tax revenue. we were spending about $4 trillion. it's a massive, embarrassing,

disgraceful, indefensible deficit. an annual deficit of about a trillion dollars a year. inexcusable, especially at the height, at the peak of an economic cycle. then the pandemic hit. last year, we still brought in about $3 trillion in tax revenue, just as we had expected, just woos we had during the previous few years, only this time we didn't spend $4 trillion. we spent $6.6 trillion. we brought in $3 trillion. we spent $6.6 trillion. we spent more than double what we brought in. we spent more money that was borrowed than more money that was paid into the treasury. what did that do? well, it dramatically increased the money supply abruptly in a way that hurts poor and middle-class american families. it's the predictable, foreseeable result.

look, if you're playing monopoly and all of a sudden you decide to just double the amount of money that everyone gets in the game, it doesn't make everybody better off. it just increases the prices that are paid. what happens when that's real money, when those are real people, when it's not just plastic game pieces at stake, it's hungry mouths that need to be fed and sheltered and cared for? that's where it hurts, and that, mr. president, is what's so tragic. when the government colludes with itself, with a small handful of people on the outside, encouraging it to do so, some whispering in the ears of politicians telling them that they will be doing so many great things at the expenditures, that the expansion of government is worth the investment. they are not doing it with their own money. no, they are doing it with the money of america's poor and

middle class. it's a really sort of reverse robin hood sort of thing. we're stealing from the poor to give to the rich and the well connected and to give good headline to a small handful of politicians. shame on us. shame on us all. shame on this institution as we have done that. look, i -- i came to the united states senate 11 years ago committed to reducing the size, the scope, the reach, the cost, the overall footprint of the federal government, its impact on the lives of everyday citizens. i did so based on the understanding, based on the indisputable fact that whenever government expands its reach, it does so at the expense of individual liberty and individual prosperity. it doesn't mean that government doesn't have a place, it doesn't mean that we don't need

government. cite to the -- quite to the contrary, we do. it just means there is always a balancing that needs to be taken into account. you don't, you can't expand government without hurting average, everyday people who were subject to those things. and unfortunately, 11 years later, that same government is larger, more expensive, and more burdensome than ever before. in a farcically, futile system, americans work for months out of every year just to pay their taxes. and after all that is done, they are insultingly demeaned and told it's not enough. in fact, it hasn't been enough for a long time, even though some of you who are now taxpayers and now voters have now worked months, at least

weeks, maybe months out of every year just to pay your federal taxes. even though a lot of this debt may have been accumulated before some of you were old enough to vote or some of you were even born, no matter. you've got to pay it. this is making that worse. we're making it worse for present living americans, those who are of voting age, tax-paying age, and those who are not. it is also adding to the burdens that will be faced by those who haven't even yet been born, whose parents have yet to meet. the regulatory state is growing ever more costly in terms of its economic impact. we have been setting the cost of the federal regulatory system for about 35 years. i first started thinking about it while i was in law school.

i remember a guest speaker came to speak at our law school. and he explained that the federal regulatory system adds what he characterized as sort of a back door invisible de facto tax on poor and middle-class americans. he explained that it's a backdoor invisible tax and it's regressive and it affects everyone and disproportionately the poor and middle class. because of the fact that nowhere is any consumer able to identify the precise cost to them. in fact, most of them don't even know that it exists because unlike their tax bill, there is no return at the end of the year. unlike their sales tax that typically will show up on someone's receipt or property tax or anything else. there is no written indication

of it that tells any one taxpayer or citizen what it's costing them every year. but it's there. anyway, back in -- i think it was 1996 or 1997, he explained that the federal regulatory system was imposing this backdoor invisible, highly regressive tax on americans to the tune of $300 billion or $400 billion a year. i remember thinking this is staggering, that's a lot of money, a lot of money that could otherwise go toward other priorities, whether in the government, you know, shoring up social security or medicare or some other program, providing soldiers, sailors, airmen and marines with what they need, or in the -- in the lives of families providing for the housing, the education or the nourishment or other needs of our children.

it just goes into the cost of complying with federal regulations. oh, yeah, americans do pay for that, he explained, they just pay for it in a way that they can't quite see because there's no single bill that tallies the expense for it, but they pay for it nonetheless. they pay for it with higher prices on goods and services, fg they buy -- fg they buy and they pay for it with diminished wages, unemployment, and underemployment. so here we are 25 years later, no one knows for sure what the federal regulatory system costs, but most estimates i've seen of late put the number at $2 trillion a year -- $2 trillion, that's the backdoor invisible tax that americans pay

through higher costs on goods and services and wages and unemployment due to what it costs to comply with federal regulations. most people don't even think much about federal regulations and with good reason. people have other better things to do. those who do think about them are perhaps inclined to think or perhaps maybe they've been taught to think or not taught otherwise, these costs are borne by billionaires, that they are borne by big blue chip corporations or that a type of industrial tycoon that you would associate with a monopoly game piece perhaps. but they are, in fact, borne by poor and middle-class americans everywhere. that's money that they can't get back after money they have to pay after weeks and months every

year to pay their federal taxes and then being told, by the way, the $2 trillion that you, the people, were required to pay through this backdoor, highly regressive regulatory tax, and on top of of the $3 trillion that you paid on your taxes, it's still not enough because we're now nearly $29 trillion in debt. it's, it's insulting, it's discouraging. i mentioned inflation a minute ago and i want to the get back to that for a moment. it is the natural, foreseeable consequence of a government that -- that really knows no limits on what it's there to do and knows essentially no limits on what it can spends.

these days if the federal government can dream it, if politicians can desire it, they can fund it. there's never been an institution on planet earth who had access to more capital than the federal government does. there's never been a government in the existence of planet earth that's had the ability to produce the amount of wealth that this nation has and the ability of its people to produce that wealth and the ability of the government to spend that amount of money. because of that, this government also has tremendous bargaining power and it has correspondingly tremendous borrowing power that goes along with that. in other words, because the american economy has been strong and because the u.s. dollar has been the world's reserve currency of choice, it has given us this ability it might make it

seem like money, while not growing on trees technically can sort of be printed into existence, just taken out of thin air and that we won't feel the consequence for it. now, you can get away with that a little bit longer when you have the world's reserve currency and an economy as large as ours and credit that's been relatively good compared to that of other sovereign nations but it does have its limits. we are seeing those limits now and in ways we haven't seen in other ways. i was scared about it ten, 11 years ago when i first got here, but it is so much worse now, it is so much worse because we have behaved in a way that has made it worse. the piper eventually has to be paid and the consequences eventually make themselves known

and it is starting to harm american families by reducing their real earnings and undercutting their purchasing power. in new research that -- that we just released this week, the joint economic committee republicans -- and i'm the ranking republican on that committee -- found that these rising prices are brought about as a result of a mix of two types of inflation, transitory inflation and more lasting inflation brought about by runaway government spending. we found that government stimulus measures have ignited more lasting, more systemic inflation. these inflationary pressures are building on transitory inflation and they are pushing prices higher. that's why i'm really concerned

that over a year after the recession officially ended, congress continues undaunted, unhindered and seemingly more eager than ever in its desire to pursue new massive government spending measures, and including a $3.5 trillion budget resolution, the single largest spending package in history. if congress continues to pursue spending packages that boost consumer demand while at the same time depressing employment and investment, which is exactly what we're doing, then government-induced inflation will increase even further with even more drastic, painful consequences for us all, but especially for america's poor and middle class. the wealthy and well connected

will do just fine, the wealthy among us will probably get rich as a result. the politicians among us who vote for these things will probably be patted on the back, congratulated by a compliant, cuteful news media and most importantly congratulated by each other while poor, middle-class americans will be left silently carrying the bill bearing the pain of what we've been doing to them. congress should consider the inflationary risk of this pattern of unfettered spending. my colleagues should be aware that the costs go beyond the sticker price of new spending. the american people would be better served by policies geared toward returning americans to work and removing barriers to business investment in american workers. but we're not doing that.

we're going in the opposite direction of where we should and as a result americans are paying the price, especially poor and middle-class americans. it's certainly affecting people in my home state of utah. 85% of utahans who were polled recently said they were concerned about inflation and they have reason to be. we've got data from all over the country. look, nationwide, overall prices are up 5.3% over last year, just in one year alone 5.3% overall nationwide. some areas of the economy it's particular acute. you see it in meat prices, which are up 8% overall from last year, beef is an astounding 12% more expensive than last year, milk, 10% more expensive, gasoline costs, 50% more than it did a year ago. in the salt lake city area, home prices are up 26% above where

they were last year. so everything from gas to groceries, from housing to health care are all going up in like fashion. and global supply chains, quite frankly, can't keep up. warnings are already being raised about holiday shortages and huge price increases as there just aren't enough goods in the entire economy to meet demand because, again, you just add more money to it. it doesn't make it more affordable. it makes it less affordable. flooding more spending and, therefore more money chasing fewer goods, will only cause prices to rise even more. that hurts the poorest americans the most.

the federal government prioritizes those who are already wealthy and well connected with its spending and its politicians right here in this chamber congratulate themselves and each other and are congratulated by a compliant mainstream news media that for whatever reason always wants to praise the expansion of the federal government even when it hurts america's poor and middle class, which it does. americans are paying the price, poor and middle-class americans, are paying the price, those least able to do anything about it and, yes, we are causing that. so as we prioritize helping the wealthy and well connected with this kind of spending, those americans who don't have paid lobbists are left in the dust holding the bags armed the most.

we aren't cold or calloused for rejecting more spending, no, no. we're considering those who end up paying the price for this monopoly money ploy to spend without end. the every day americans, the hardworking americans shouldn't be harmed like this and, yet, they are going to be. they are already feeling that. it's indefensible. so we're nearing a point of nearly $29 trillion in our national debt. it's the highest debt in our nation's history and the debt-to-g.d.p. ratio is now over 25%. as i mentioned a few minutes ago, debt debt to g.d.p. ratio e economic growth around the world throughout history, growth tends to stall out once we pass that

100%. just a few years ago we were in the 80% range and now we're at about 125%. politicians have promised to deal with the national debt for decades. they promised it over and over and over again and now the argument has shifted. some on ot other -- on the other side of the aisle have said that debt doesn't matter or it might be good. they are saying if we don't add to it, if we don't augment it, if we don't feed this beast, we are somehow going to cause economic catastrophe. now, look, it may be good for their socialist makeover of america. it is disastrous for the people back home, especially those who they claim will be benefiting from it. the debt has reached absolutely unimaginable levels. it's almost $230,000 per

taxpayer, nearing $87,000 per citizen. meanwhile, businesses across the country are struggling to keep their doors open. among labor shortages, skyrocketing prices, heavy regulation, vaccine and other mandates and people losing their jobs because the president of the united states using the authority he doesn't have through an order he is unwilling to even share with us are having to choose in some cases between getting a vaccine that in some cases might be hazardous to their health based to unique circumstances and the judgment of their own doctor and yet they have to choose between getting the vaccine and losing their job. many businesses are barely inching along. so, no, mr. president, they don't need more government spending. in fact, talking to countless business owners in utah, more spending is the last thing they

need, but it's certainly the last thing that poor middle-class americans need when what happens when we do that is they all get poorer even as we're congratulatedded and we congratulate each other for expanding government yet again. i had recent conversations with a number of business owners who because of a heavy hand, heavy spending practices of government have been unable to keep themselves even in business. i spoke to one of many restaurant owners recently who explained his inability even after increasing repeatedly the offering price, offering huge, huge signing bonuses and 15 and 16, then 18, 19, $20 an hour on top of the hiring bonus just to hire people to work at his

restaurant in a college town with a lot of young people who are usually willing to work in restaurants. they couldn't do it because of government interference. government was competing with them. government was paying people more to not work than they could be paid to work. this is only compounding the problem. none of this would be possible, mr. president, if we worked -- if we were effectively operating this government with a printing press, a printing press that makes the american people poorer. i signed that letter two months ago along with 46 republican senator, almost the entire senate republican conference. i signed that not just because the letter looked neat, not because it would get praise. i knew it would get the opposite of that in the press. but because of the people we represent, especially the poor and middle class we represent who will be made poorer and less secure every single time we do this. i can't vote to raise this debt

ceiling, not right now, especially given the plans at play to increase spending immediately by another $3.5 trillion which according to some is only as low as $3.5 trillion because of creative accounting. that the real number might be more like $5 trillion. regardless, we can't do that. we can't afford that. it's not that the government can't physically do it. we know it's ability to do that. but when it exercises its ability to do that, poor and middle-class americans suffer. i can't do this to them. neither should any of us. thank you, mr. president. ms. lummis: mr. president? the presiding officer: the senator from wyoming. ms. lummis: mr. president, i rise to address the elephant in the room that almost no one is

talking about. everyone is talking about the debt limit, but almost no one is talking about the debt. i'm a rancher, and i often think about policy in ranching terms. this is all hat, no cattle politics. we're starting down a track of a $29 trillion national debt. let me say that again. a $29 trillion national debt. when i first came to congress, it was just under $10 trillion which seemed at the time an insurmountable debt.

now we're getting closer to 30. certainly if the spending that is being entertained by the majority party and the biden administration passes, we'll be well over $30 trillion. in the immortal but edited wors of jimmy mcmillan, the ranch is too dang high guy, the debt is too dang high. another sobering statistic -- it was raised by the last speaker -- in february the congressional budget office said that the national debt would surpass the economy's size this year, meaning the deb debt-to-g.d.p. o has long been an indicator of the country's physical health and countries have historically

tended to decline once their debt surpassed their gross domestic product. this year that country is us. it's the united states of america. remember countries historically declined once their debt surpasses their gross domestic product. that's what's happening here. it's a very sobering thought. but not a thought that is part of the debate for raising the debt ceiling. the debt ceiling increase that is being discussed now is so more spending can occur without

addressing our debt-to-g.d.p. ratio. we cannot go on like this. it is irresponsible at the deepest levels. now, i understand and appreciate the concerns that have led to this short-term debt limit deal. but the fact of the matter is unless we actually address the spending problems that are driving our national debt and soon we are already saldzing future -- saddling future generations of people in my state of wyoming and all the american people with a debt that they will never be able to repay and soon interest payments on that debt will crowd out other spending. the only reason it hasn't happened already is because

interest rates have been relatively low. but we have to pay interest on our debt before we pay other things, including the things that are in the majority party and the biden administration's $3.5 trillion plan. i believe this is unforgivable. now, i'm new to the senate so i was not here the last time we had to address the debt ceiling issue. but the last time it came up, it was republicans who were the majority party and were on the dance floor by themselves. since republicans were in power in the senate, democrats left the republicans to dance by themselves and raise the debt limit alone.

so anyone talking about this issue today needs to recognize that history. it's normal for the party in power where now the democrats control the house, the senate, and the white house. it's normal for them to raise the debt ceiling. the problem is that both when republicans have been in the majority and have raised the debt ceiling and now democrats are in the majority and are going to raise the debt ceiling, neither party seems to talk about the debt. they only talk about raising the debt ceiling. it's really kind of shocking that the main focus of this debate whenever it occurs is never on how we got here.

it's never on why we spend too much. it's never on the debt itself. it's always on just raising the ceiling or suspending the ceiling so we can spend more, so we can run up more debt, so we can have higher interest payments that can crowd out other spending, that can create the vicious cycle that creates deficit after deficit after deficit. our colleagues on the left can throw back at any republican here that spending has gone on like drunken sailors, even among republicans. they're not wrong and also i mean no disrespect to the navy in referencing sailors.

happy birthday to the navy celebrating its 24th birthday yesterday. there is a lot of blame to go around here. what i would like to see us do is get together, both parties, all colleagues who are interested in this subject. come up with a way to address our debt, to balance our budget, whether it's freezing spending or addressing our trust funds or recognizing how we can fix our entitlement programs or how we can make the social security fund solvent which we know how to do and do not have the political courage to do. we have to contain these massive interest payments. we must start addressing this

issue. earlier this year i proposed a sustainable budget act to create bipartisan solutions to our long-term spending. the sustainable budget act should be on the table. my colleagues, senators romney and manchin, also introduced the trust act to shore up the long-term fiscal solvency of our trust funds. that's another bill that should be on the table at the same time that we're debating raising the debt ceiling. both of these ideas are worthy proposals that we should be discussing now on a bipartisan basis. because this problem isn't one that only affects one party. when the time comes to pay the

bill, our debt holders don't care action won't care -- care, won't care if you're a republican or a democrat. they only care about getting paid. and we're swiftly approaching a time when we will be unable to do so. you know, one of the reasons that i became so interested in digital currencies, in non-fiat currencies is because they're not issued by a government. bitcoin is not issued by a government. so it's not beholding to the debts that are run up by governments, including the greatest government that's ever existed on the face of the

earth, the united states of america. the united states of america is now at the point where our debt exceeds our g.d.p. ratio. it is the point at which nations decline. if we're going to let the dollar decline, having the lessons of history in front of us and failing to act, we're truly irresponsible. in the event that that contingency occurs, i want to make sure that nonfiat currencies, currencies not issued by governments, currencies not beholden to political elections can grow, can allow people to save, can be there in the event that we feel

at what we know we have to do. there's no proof yet in the 21st century that we're going to make this right. time and again in the u.s. house and the senate, time and again presidents of both parties have run up the debt. irresponsibly with no plan to address it. so tank god for bitcoin and other nonfiat currencies that transcends the irresponsibility of governments, including our own. that is an indictment of our responsibility, democrats and republicans, presidents and congress, our responsibility to

address this looming, predictable massive issue. thank you, mr. president. i reserve the balance of our time. mr. cruz: mr. president? the presiding officer: the senator from texas. mr. cruz: mr. president, i rise to speak for the generations of americans who this body is irresponsibly drowning in debt. now, to be clear, debt is a bipartisan problem. debt is a problem both parties bear substantial responsibility for.

to understand just how true that is, we need look back just 21 years. in the year 2000 when this century began, our national debt stood at roughly $5 trillion. mr. president, i want you to pause and think about that. the year 2000 wasn't that long ago. $5 trillion was the total amount we owed. in 2001, george w. bush became president. during the eight years of bush's presidency, the debt doubled from $5 trillion to $10 trillion. my party bears a significant degree of responsibility for that growth. then in 2008, barack obama was elected president, and over the next eight years, the debt doubled again from $10 trillion

to $20 trillion. i want you to pause and reflect on that. the $5 trillion debt that we started the 21st century with had been accumulated by 42 presidents over two centuries. and then two presidents over 16 years, one a republican and one a democrat, took our debt and increased it by 300%, quadrupled the nation's debt in 16 years. as we stand here today in 2021, some nine months into the joe biden presidency, the debt is roughly $29 trillion. my home state, the great state of texas, has roughly 29 million

residents. that means the national debt is $1 million for every man, woman, and child in the state of texas. that is reckless and irresponsible. now, my democratic colleagues point out that republicans spent too much during the trump presidency. i agree. much of that spending i voted against, and i would note, last year was an extraordinary year with a pandemic unlike anything any of us have ever seen in our lives. i wish republicans had been better at exercising fiscal responsibility when we had control of the white house and both houses of congress. the unfortunate reality in this body, though, is that when you

have a multitrillion-dollar spending bill, you can usually count on the votes of every single democrat and about half the republicans. and so on spending bill after spending bill, we see 75 to 80 senators coming together, usually all the democrats and half the republicans, and there are about 20 of us who try to say, why are we bankrupting our kids and grandkids? why are we digging the hole deeper and deeper and deeper? but that is, at least right now, a minority view in this body. but the fact that my party bears significant responsibility for the debt we have today is not to draw an equivalency between what's happened in the past and what is happening right now. because, mr. president, what senate democrats, what house democrats, and what president biden are doing now has no

precedent in our nation's history. it is an order of magnitude different. senate democrats, house democrats, and president biden, if the spending proposals they have put forth pass, within a 12-month period they will have spent $9.5 trillion. one of the problems people have at home is understanding big numbers -- a million, a billion, a trillion. they've all got an illion in them. let's put it in context. $9.35 trillion is more than -- $9.5 trillion is more than twice what the united states spent to win world war ii. the entire course of the war, it cost us less than half of that to save the free world and

defeat the nazis. and washington democrats are trying to spend that in 12 months. it is wildly irresponsible. it is reckless. they are trying to accompany that with trillions of dollars of new taxes. if the democrats get their way, every tax you can think of is going up -- individual income tax is going up, corporate taxes are going up, small business taxes are going up, capital gains taxes are going up, the death tax is going up, farmers are paying more in taxes, ranchers are paying more in taxes, small businesses are paying more in taxes, working families are paying more in taxes. joe biden campaigned promising no one who makes more than --

less than $400,000 will see their taxes going up. i recognize, joe biden and i are of a different party. maybe you're inclined not to credit me with my assessment of the truth or falsity of president biden's promise. if you don't take my word for it, take the joint committee on taxation's word for it that analyzed the democrats' tax program and found for roughly 80% of americans' taxes either stayed the same or go up. that it's cutting taxes for a very small portion of americans. it's raising taxes on people with incomes as low as $40,000 a year. by the way, it's also worth noting, part of the democratic talking points is that the deficit is driven by the 2017 tax cut. those are good partisan talking

points. those will get a round of applause in any democratic gathering, although i say that with all candor, mr. president, i haven't been to many democratic gatherings. but i feel confident that is accurate, that democrats like, yes! too many tax cuts! before you're inclined just to believe that politirhetoric, however, you might at least pause to look at the facts, to look at the numbers. and the facts and numbers show that after we passed the 2017 tax cuts, cutting taxes on working families across this country, that we saw record prosperity, we saw the lowest unemployment in 50 years, we saw the lowest african american unemployment ever recorded, we saw the lowest hispanic unemployment ever recorded, and we saw federal tax revenues go up. so the next time you hear a

democrat say the debt comes from the tax cut, it just ain't so. the next year, the treasury got more money in taxes than it had the year before. so the democratic narrative about tax cuts driving the debt is, to borrow a term from the current president, malarkey. the debt that we are facing is a result of this wild -- as a result of this wild spending spree is going up and up and up. and one of the consequences of that spending and that debt is we are seeing an inflation bomb going off in this country. now, for younger americans, inflation may not sound very real. inflation is not something we've

lived with in recent times. we've been in this sort of weird holiday from economic history with inflation being very, very low. well, mr. president, you and i are both old enough to remember the 1970's. we're both old enough to remember double-digit inflation, 21% interest rates. inflation is a cruel tax and it's a tax on everybody. but it's particularly cruel on the most vulnerable. you know who gets hammered with inflation? senior citizens. seniors who spent their whole lives saving may suddenly see the values of their savings going down and down and down because washington politicians are devaluing their money. seniors who are on a fixed income get the same amount of money each month but suddenly the cost of everything goes up. right now today all across this

country -- in texas, in virginia and every other state -- prices are going up. the cost of gasoline has skyrocketed as a result of joe biden and the democrats' policies. the cost of food is going up. the cost of rent is going up. the cost of lumber is going up. the cost of homes is going up. according to the chief economists at moody's athletics, for households earning the median annual income, about $70,000 a year, the current inflation rate has forced them to spend another $175 a month in food and fuel and housing. that works out to $2,100 a year. so each month, if your family is

at the median income level in the united states, the democrat inflation tax is about $175 a month. and that's before their massive tax rates kick in. and that's before this body passes the bernie sanders socialist budget. it's worth noting just how radical these democrats are. president biden is in the white house, that's true. but in the senate, senate democrats have the slimmest majority possible. this is a 50-50 body. it is only by virtue of the vice president's tie-breaking vote that they have any majority at all. and yet democrats have interpreted this incredibly close election as a mandate to radically transform this country. joe biden didn't campaign on that.

joe biden campaigned as a nice, happy, centrist moderate. no more mean tweets. nothing to scare you at home. we're just going to return to the halcyon days ofyesteryear. when you and i arrived in the senate, we arrived here at the exact same time. nine years ago there was exactly one socialist in this body that admitted he was that -- admitted that he was a socialist. that was bernie sanders. most of the democrats would say, no, no, that's not me. i'm not a socialist like him. that was a fringe view. even in the 2020 election, joe biden said, no, no, no, i'm not a socialist. well today bernie sanderses is

the chairman of the budget committee. we are in the midst of debating passing the bernie sanders socialist budget, $5.5 trillion. that's radical. that is extreme many. -- that is extreme. and i think our democratic colleagues are too scared of the left flank in their own party to dare stand up to it. now, in addition to the reckless spending, to the reckless taxes they're trying to ram through, to the massive debt they're trying to ram through, we also have a radical agenda across the country, including on our southern border, where we're facing a crisis on our southern border. almost 2 million people are effected -- are expected to cross illegally thisser i do not. the highest rate in 20 years and congressional democrats refuse to do anything about it. joe biden and kamala harris have

handed the agenda over to the open-border radicals and we're seeing a public health crisis, a national security crisis, a humanitarian crisis as a result. and as bad as the economic and domestic policy has been, the foreign policy has been even worse. including the greatest national security disaster and foreign policy disaster in a generation the utterly incompetent and calamitous surrender in afghanistan. all of that extreme agenda is being pushed by joe biden and chuck schumer and nancy pelosi. which brings us to our present crisis. the debt ceiling crisis. our national debt is roughly

$29 million, and yet democrats want to add trillions more to that. how many trillions? we don't know. they are battling within their conference just how many trillions more to saddle this country, but it's going to be a lot. but you know the curious thing? this crisis is 100% manufactured by democrats. why is that? because for the entirety of this congress, democrats have had complete 100% power to raise the debt ceiling any time they want. how is that? well, ordinarily in this body, the way legislation moves, it needs 60 votes to move. it's called the legislative filibuster. but there is an exception to that. it's a big exception. it's called budget reconciliation. it comes from the budget act of 1974. under budget reconciliation, you only need 50 votes, not 60

votes. it's the biggest exception that exists to the filibuster rule. democrats unfortunately have 50 votes in this body. they have a majority in the house. and they have the white house. that means democrats using budget reconciliation -- and it is clear, by the way, that you can raise the debt ceiling using budget reconciliation. democrats could have raised the debt ceiling in january. they didn't. they could have raised the debt ceiling in february. they didn't. they could have raised it in march or april or may or june, july, august, september. they didn't. we're in october. democrats could have raised the debt ceiling today. they didn't. they could have done it with only democratic votes, and there was not a single thing republicans could have done to stop it. they know that. they don't dispute that. so why are we facing a crisis?

if for ten months democrats could have done this any time they wanted, why didn't they? well, because they are at least -- there are at least some democrats who realize drowning the nation in debt and spending and taxes is not popular back home. the voters don't like it. and so instead, majority leader schumer has not once, not twice, three times tried to move a legislative vehicle to raise the debt ceiling that requires 60 votes. he didn't have to do it. he could have done it using reconciliation, using only democratic votes. he had total power to do that. but he didn't want to do that. he wanted to use it to move it forward in a way that required at least ten republicans to join with him. why? there is one and only one reason for this. mr. president, i would challenge any senate democrats to ask

majority leader schumer if there is any other reason he proffered for not doing what he could have done at any time day or night. the only reason is to obscure accountability. the only reason is to blame some of that debt on republicans so that senate democrats could claim hey, both parties did it. what the democrats are doing right now is unprecedented. it is radical. and they know it and they are scared of it. so what are we seeing instead? we're seeing chuck schumer tell the american people we're on the verge of a default. we're seeing joe biden threaten that the united states will default on our debt. we're seeing the treasury secretary threaten that the united states will default on our debt. joe biden's threats to default

on the debt are wildly reckless and irresponsible. let me be clear so no one is confused. the united states should never, ever, ever default on our debt. period. all 100 senators in this chamber agree with that. there is not a single senator in either party who believes the united states should default on our debt. why does joe biden go on national television and threaten to default on the debt when he could have raised the debt ceiling any time he wanted? because he's playing a game of political brinkmanship, threatening a calamitous result op the american economy because he wants to browbeat republicans into serving as a smoke screen to help hide the responsibility democrats pay for their massive

spending and debt. and i've got to say for the last several months, i was proud of my party. republicans were united. we were standing together, we were standing as one, and every single republican, all 50 republicans were telling anyone that would be listen we will not participate in raising the debt ceiling. if the democrats are going to raise a trillion in spending, they need to raise the debt ceiling and own the debt that their reckless spending is producing. our party was completely united, the republican leader and i, and he and i have had significant disagreements over the years, but on this question, we were in exactly the same place. we were saying exactly the same thing. our conference has a wide range of views from conservatives to moderates to libertarians. all 50 of us were on the same

page. the democrats have the power to raise the debt ceiling on their own. they are engaged in wildly reckless spending, and if they are going to do that, they need to be the ones to vote for this debt. we were united for two months. indeed, 46 of us signed a letter to chuck schumer, i think two months ago, making clear what our position was. i helped write that letter. it was not a fringe position of a couple of members of the conference. we got 46 out of 50 republican senators to sign it. so schumer knew, pelosi knew, biden knew. but they chose to engage in reckless brinkmanship. now, i believe the end result of this game of chicken was clear. that democratic leader schumer

was on a path to surrender, was on a path to doing what he should have done a week ago or two weeks ago or three weeks ago or a month ago or two months ago, which is moving a reconciliation bill and raising the debt ceiling. and i can tell you there were democratic senators, multiple democratic senators coming to me, coming to the other members of my party saying okay, how much time would it take to move a reconciliation bill? can we get it done in time for the october 18 date that the treasury secretary has laid out? and to a person, republicans answered yes, there is plenty of time under the rules of reconciliation to move forward. there is no barrier. you have all the time you need. i believe democratic leader schumer was on the verge of surrendering, and then unfortunately yesterday

republicans blinked. i think that was a mistake. i think that was the wrong decision. now, i will tell you the reason republican leadership made that decision to blink was because senate democrats threatened to nuclear the filibuster, to eliminate the filibuster. i don't know if that threat was real. i don't know if they would have carried through on it or not. but i understand why republican leadership blinked. ending the filibuster would enable democrats to pass an even more radical agenda than the one they're doing right now. it would enable democrats to pass things that would profoundly alter this nation, perhaps irreparably. so i understand why republican leadership blinked, but i wish they hadn't.

i wish they hadn't because i believe we were on the verge of victory. the american people agreed with us. the democrat position on its face was objectively unreasonable. here's the democratic position. we have complete power to raise the debt ceiling any time we want, but the only way we'll do it is if republicans do it with us. otherwise, we'll default on the debt. even the capitol hill press corps. mr. president, in your quieter moments, you will admit it leans very far left. even the capitol hill press corps knew that was ridiculous. and so unfortunately yesterday we were on the verge of victory, but we turned that victory into defeat. now, let's be clear what the

order of magnitude of this defeat is. we are soon going to vote on moving to take up the debt ceiling, and the political games played by democratic leader schumer may have prevailed in the short term by cajoling ten or more republicans to vote with the democrats to allow a vote on the debt ceiling. i hope that doesn't happen. i hope we defeat that vote. i'm certainly going to vote no, and i'm urging my colleagues to vote no. but if 60 or more senators vote to take up the vote, then we will see a clear divide on the debt ceiling, all 50 republicans will vote no. on the debt ceiling, all 50 democrats will vote yes. we will see a clear divide. i wish it had happened without

the political games, without the political theater that democratic leadership played. one of the reasons i think it was a mistake for republican leadership to give in to the demands to the hostage taking, to the political terrorism of the other side is that it significantly hurts the credibility of the republican conference. the democratic leader is no doubt telling every democrat senator, you see, they won't hold their ground. they'll give in. all we have to do is stand strong. and they won't stand and fight against us. now, i hope that proves nothing more than hot air. i hope that proves a bad estimation of what republican senators will do. i can tell you this conference

remains absolutely united that the bernie sanders socialist budget of $5.5 trillion with trillions in taxes is wildly and recklessly irresponsible and would do massive damage to this country. i hope and believe we'll stay united on that. but we could have stayed united on the debt ceiling as well. we could have stayed united in making clear that the democrats had every ability to do this on their own. but sometimes in a poker game, a bluff wins the pot. in this case, to mix my metaphors, which would make my high school english teacher very angry, in the game of chicken, chuck schumer won this game of chicken. as two instruction drove towards

each other on a country road, one or the other was going to turn or you were going to have a lot of dead chickens. i wish republicans hadn't blinked. we shouldn't have done that. but the strategic mistake by our leadership should not distract from the fundamental divide in this body. i don't know why it is that democratic senators look at this last election, an unbelievably close election, and conclude there is no need for bipartisanship in the senate. that their mandate is rammed through a radical and socialist agenda. and let me be clear, by the way. the first major bill democrats took up was the $1.9 trillion spending bill, a so-called covid-19 relief bill. i say so-called covid relief because only 9% of the bill was health care spending on covid.

it was a liberal wish list paying off special interests that support the democrats. you know, mr. president, you and i were both at joe biden's inauguration. we sat on the steps of the capitol. we heard president biden give what i thought was a pretty good speech. a speech about unity, a speech about coming together, a speech about healing. sadly that speech didn't even last the time it took for the words to be transmitted over the airwaves to the people listening at home. it would have been easy for president biden and democrats to pass a bipartisan covid relief bill, easy. there were republicans egg toar do so -- republicans eager to do so. and, mr. president, to show that that's not just empty posturing,

that that's not just partisan language, last year when we had a republican majority in the senate, we passed bipartisan covid relief bills not once, not twice, not three times, not four times -- five times. five times. when republicans had the majority, we didn't ram through covid relief bills that were hard, partisan bills but instead we worked together with the other side. when joe biden promised healing and unity, the first big bill he had he made a choice. do i want to honor what i said or do i want to give in to the angry socialist left. and he rammed through a bill, a $1.9 trillion spending bill that the house of representatives got zero republican votes, and in the senate got zero republican votes. i've got to tell you senate

democrats didn't want a republican vote. there wasn't even a minute of discussion, of negotiation. there wasn't an attempt to make it bipartisan. it was we have the power by the narrowest, narrowest margin, and we're going to abuse that power. and sadly it hasn't changed. it has continued. this bernie sanders socialist budget, $5.5 trillion, is reckless and partisan, and it will get zero republican votes in the house. it will get zero republican votes in the senate. because the democrats believe they have a short window to fundamentally transform this nation and to destroy the free market system that has produced the greatest prosperity this nation has ever seen. this is tragic.

and, mr. president, i for one will continue doing everything humanly possible to lead the fight, to stop this radical agenda that threatens the lives, the safety, the security, the liberties, the constitutional rights, and the financial future of 29 million texans. bankrupting our kids and grandkids is serious business. and the political games from the democrats are meant to distract from them. let me note finally there is legislation i have supported all nine years i've served in this body. it's legislation introduced by the senator from pennsylvania, senator toomey. it's called the full faith and credit act. although i actually prefer a different name for t. the name i

prefer is the default prevention act. its legislation that says in the event the credit limit is not raised, the united states will never ever ever default on the debt, that even without the credit limit being raised, there are tax revenues coming in every month. so the default prevention act makes clear we'll prioritize those tax revenues to interest on the debt, to paying our active duty military, and to social security and medicare. government by crisis would end or at least be substantially mitigated if we pass the default prevention act. earlier today i was on a radio program, sean hannity's radio program where he played an interesting clip of democrats

all talking about debt ceiling denial or default denial. and i will commend the other party. one of the things the democrats do really well is message discipline. when they come up with talking points, it is remarkable. every democrat in these united states of america, from joe biden down to the county dog catcher, they repeat the exact same words. so sean hannity played a whole series of just clips of democrats using the identical talking points. debt ceiling denial, default denial. you know who is in denial is the democrats. they're in denial that the debt ceiling exists. they're in denial of the $29 trillion that's bankrupting our kids and grandkids. and they like these crises. why do i know they like these crises? because they don't want to pass the default prevention act.

if the democratic senators who give speeches about how bad a default would be, if they actually believed that, we could come together today, and we could ensure the citizens of texas, citizens of virginia, the citizens of utah that there will never ever be a default of our debt. but if we did that, it would mean that senator schumer and nancy pelosi and president biden couldn't engage in the kind of theatrics, the kind of reckless brinksmanship that we've seen over the last several weeks. that would jeopardize their radical agenda. i hope and pray that this body, the senate, serves as the last bulwark to stop the radical, socialist agenda that washington democrats are trying to ram

through. i yield the floor. a senator: mr. president? the presiding officer: the senator from south carolina. a senator: thank you. i missed most of what senator cruz said but i think i had a general idea of what he was going to say. what is this all about, why we're here? the bottom line is we have a debt ceiling increase that's coming due under our law. mr. graham: the debt ceiling has been dealt with numerous times since i've been here. what is this all about? my democratic colleagues, we've worked together to pass a $1.2 trillion bill for roads, bridges, ports, and electrical vehicles. i was one of 19 republicans, made sense to me. the reason we got a debt ceiling problem beyond the normal course of business is that my democratic colleagues through

reconciliation are going to keep on spending from $3.5 trillion to $5 trillion. it has zero to do in my view with infrastructure as we know it. it's more about expanding the sieses and scope of government -- size and scope of government. they have every right to pursue this and we as republicans have a right to make it hard. so senator mcconnell has been saying for two months now that if you're going to spend the money through reconciliation, you need to raise the debt limit through reconciliation. and there's been a change of heart here at the last minute. but we'll be doing this again in december. so here's my point. i think you should do that. i think the reconciliation process is available to you. i think you should be required to use it. and i don't intend to help you spend any more of this money. now, what does reconciliation mean? it means that you can do it by yourself through a process that allows 50 votes, not 60.

as budget ranking member, i'm willing to waive the three days. i'm willing to try to make it -- the process less painful. but the point is that you need to own this. and that was our position until recently. we'll be doing this again in december. and this idea that the rules of the senate may change because of this issue or any other issue, i want to get something off my chest. when president trump was president, we had the house and the senate, and there was enormous pressure on republicans to change the rules, to get everything we wanted. had a lot of democratic colleagues standing up for the institutional filibuster, legislative filibuster. we sent a letter with over 60 something names on it basically saying to the leaders of the

senate let's don't make the senate the house. all of a sudden you're now in charge at 50-50, and there's a constant stream of threats coming from the president, this time to change the rules of the senate to raise the debt limit because you don't want to use reconciliation. if you have no more respect for the senate than that, go ahead and change the rules. i'm not going to live the rest of my political life under threat. i'm asking no more of you tan i ask of -- than i ask of myself. so if the reason the republican party has changed its position is because we think somehow what we were doing would put the senate in peril, well then the senate was in peril a lot more than we thought it was. it never entered my mind to go to democratic colleagues and say if you don't do a few things that i need to have to get

people off my ass at home, then i may have to do carve-outs of this and that. i didn't do it because i don't think it's the right thing to do. i'm not going to tolerate it now. now, i will work with you when it makes sense but what you're doing makes no sense to me, and you need to pay a political price for it under the rules. i'm not doing anything illegal. the republican party wasn't doing anything backdoor. we said there's a way forward on the debt ceiling. it's reconciliation. and that's the process you should use because of what you're doing in terms of spending all this money. and we're just not going to be part of making it easy for you to spend all this money. and here we are. ten republicans are going to be voting here pretty soon. i will not be one of them. and to my republican colleagues, i understand where you're coming from. i don't fault you for your vote. i was one of 19 republicans that

voted for an infrastructure package. a lot of you didn't agree. some of you were vocal about it. i can take criticism from within my party and without. i try to be respectful. i'll be respectful tonight. but here's our problem as republicans. we said for two months we're going to do one thing. at the end we've done another. what does it really matter? i don't know. i think it matters to the people who listen to us and have some faith in us. so to my democratic colleagues, if we get through the night, we'll be doing this again. i promise you come december i will be doing everything i can to give you a reasonable reconciliation process to make it as painless as possible in terms of process, but this is what you should be doing because this is what you're doing to the country. and to my republican colleagues, we'll have another bite at this apple. and we need to decide who we are and what we believe.

and if we're not going to pursue this strategy anymore, let's just tell the people of the country upfront it was a bad idea. we shouldn't have done it. i think it wasn't a bad idea. but let's not mislead people here. let's not say one thing and do another. so i'm hoping that we can find a way to do some things together before now and 2022. there's some things on section 230. the colleague, the presiding officer is one of the best people in the world to do things with if you're looking for bipartisanship on immigration. we got -- we've got a broken border. we have docket risks. maybe we can do a small deal on immigration. but the point for me is this was a self-inflicked wound and we need -- self-inflicted wound and we need not do this again. i would yield the floor. a senator: mr. president? the presiding officer: the senator from utah. mr. lee: mr. president, we had a

number of senators come to the floor over the last couple of hours talking about some of the problems that we face as a country. they're real. they're serious, and they're being made more severe still and more severe than they need to be by virtue of the step that the senate is, i fear, about to take. we extend the debt limit without any plan as to how you're not going to be back in the same position in just a few more months and you're raising it, as we've been doing it lately, just suspending the debt limit, you're creating sort of a debt limit mardi gras, an error which any amount of additional borrowing is permitted during that period. it becomes especially dangerous during times like this one where we're spending not just to the tune of billions, not just to the tune of hundreds of

billions, not just to the tune of a trillion more than we take in, but to the tune of many trillions more than we take in each and every year. that' -- that's what's hurting poor and middle-class families. this reverse robin hood that's so perverse. the reverse hobben hood effect where we're effectively borrowing against, stealing from the poor and giving it to the rich and the well-connected. giving the praise to the politicians who clamor for attention as a result of other people's spending, other people's money that other people will have to work for to earn back, to pay back. some of those people aren't old enough to vote yet. some haven't been born. some of them will be born years from now to