Madam President, open the champagne, pop the cork, the Senate Democrat leader and the Republican leader are on their way to Kyiv. They have got $60 billion they are bringing. I don't know if it will be cash in pallets, but they are taking…
Madam President, open the champagne, pop the cork, the Senate Democrat leader and the Republican leader are on their way to Kyiv. They have got $60 billion they are bringing. I don't know if it will be cash in pallets, but they are taking your money to Kyiv.
Now, they didn't have much time, really no time and no money to do anything about our border. We are being invaded. A literal invasion is coming across our border--800,000 people came illegally last month--and all they had time to do in the Senate was get the money, get the cash pallets, load the planes, get the champagne ready, and fly to Kyiv.
On Friday, they will take the $60 billion to Kyiv, crack the champagne; and meanwhile, each day, between 5 to 10,000 people come across the border illegally.
Now they put up a sham bill, and they said: You should have taken the sham bill. You should have taken the ruse. We gave you a border bill. But the border bill would allow 5,000 people a day to come across, and then they would declare an emergency.
Guess what? The emergency is already here.
Madam President, 700,000 people in 2 months is an emergency. Nearly 800,000 people in 2 months is an emergency. But they gave lie to the ruse when they tweeted out their great bullet points on how great this deal was going to be. They tweeted out: The border never closes.
So they were putting forward this great border bill that the President would use to stop illegal immigration, but they tweeted out that of all the main points that this would do, the border never closes. And this is actually true, because what would happen is they would close the illegal crossings, but leave the legal crossings open.
It is like, why wouldn't we have the illegal crossing always closed? Why wouldn't we, after having 750,000 people come in illegally, close down the illegal crossings immediately? And what also gives lie to their assertions is that we have the same laws we had under President Trump and President Trump controlled the border.
So how could President Trump do it with the same set of laws, and now they are saying if you only gave us power, we would do something? But what gives lie to this assertion is that they are in court every day trying to dismantle the barriers that Texas puts up.
Texas and 30-some-odd Republican Governors have said: Enough is enough. They have put cargo containers and razor wire on the border to say: No more illegal crossings. So the Biden administration, who says just give us more power and we will do something about the border, went all the way to the Supreme Court to get the power, and they have it temporarily--they may not keep it--but they have fought tooth and nail to remove the cargo containers, remove the razor wire, and remove the border barriers.
So which is it? They want more power to shut down illegal immigration, or they want to remove the border obstacles to illegal immigration? They can't have it both ways.
Well, some would argue that this appears to be that you don't want immigrants in your country. Nothing could be further from the truth. We admit a million immigrants to our country every year, and I am for that. In fact, I am cosponsor of a half dozen bills to increase lawful immigration. I think it would be difficult for America to do a lot of things, including building houses, apartments, and commercial construction, without new people coming to the country.
I think some of the best Americans just got here. Many of them are my friends. Bowling Green, KY, is known for people from all over the world. We have a hundred languages being spoken in our schools. This has nothing to do with not wanting immigrants.
It has to do with not wanting 750,000 people to come across who we don't know who they are. Most of them are males of a military age. And we are doing nothing. So we come to an inflection point. That is where we are, an inflection point, and we had a chance.
Madam President, 41 of us--41 Republicans--could have stood and said, no, we want something better. There is an emergency on the border; we will not settle for anything until we get a border security bill.
Instead, it folded. Why? Because Republican leadership is flying with the
Democratic leadership to Kyiv because they have prioritized Ukraine over the southern border. There is no other way to put it.
We have a disaster at our southern border, and the ranking Republicans and the ranking Democrats, there is no difference, they are on the same team. They will be on the same plane to Kyiv--Republicans and Democrats, same plane, pallets of cash, your money, to Ukraine.
Even if you could make the argument--and I think there is an argument that there is a noble cause, that these people are fighting for their independence, and they are fighting against aggression. All of that is true--but there is no money to give them. We are out. We are flat out of cash. Not only are we flat out of cash, we are $34 trillion in the hole. We are borrowing money like it is going out of style.
We have never ever borrowed money at this alarming rate. It is hard to even fathom the billions of dollars that goes out the door. It has been said before, but people have asked: How do you imagine--how do you put into perspective a billion dollars? What is a billion dollars?
If you put a million dollars in the palm of your hand in thousand- dollar bills, it would be 4 inches high. But a billion dollars is difficult--more difficult to visualize. To put a billion into perspective, a billion seconds ago, Reagan was starting his second term. A billion minutes ago, the Pantheon was being completed in Rome. A billion hours ago, we were in the Stone Age, over a hundred thousand years ago. But a billion dollars ago, just a couple of minutes.
In the time that I will speak, the government will spend billions upon billions of dollars, virtually a billion every 2 minutes, $30-some billion in the space of an hour. It is out of control.
If you look at the debt that is being incurred, people say: What does it matter? You could be like Dick Cheney and some of these Republicans: Eh, deficits don't matter. We don't care about the deficits.
Well, you should, and you see the results of the deficit every time you fill up your car, every time you go to the grocery store, every time you buy something, you are seeing the results of the debt.
The way we pay for the debt is we print out money. The Federal Reserve buys the debt, but the Federal Reserve has no money, so they print up the money, and they dilute the value of the existing currency. What does that mean? Inflation. Prices go up. But so does the cost of the government. People have cost-of-living increases, and I don't begrudge that, but it is 9 percent in the last year or so, so the costs of Social Security are going through the roof. The costs of Medicare are going through the roof. But do you hear a peep? Not one peep about the problem paying our own bills. We are basically like renters paying for our apartment.
In what kind of world do you borrow money to send charity? If you see a homeless person and you want to help them but you have no money, would you go to the first corner and go into the bank and say: I want to help homeless people. Will you give me a thousand dollars so I can help homeless people? No one does that.
If you are paying the rent for your apartment, do you go to the bank and borrow the rent for your apartment? No, there are times at which you borrow against things of value. You can borrow against a home that you have a downpayment on. You can borrow for capital improvements like schools or roads, but you don't borrow for your daily expenses.
That is what is going on here. Realize that two-thirds of the spending is entitlements: Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, and food stamps is two-thirds of all spending. That is all we have enough money for. Tax revenue pays for that; everything else is borrowed.
You will hear people talk about a budget. They say, Congress votes on a budget. Well, the budget we vote on is equal to about $1.5 trillion, that is the debt. Every bit of the budget we vote on is borrowed. Last month we borrowed $210 billion, so we are on course to borrow over $2 trillion at that rate.
People are alarmed by this. The head of the Federal Reserve, Powell, said the other day that the problem was ``urgent,'' and these are the kind of people that pick their words carefully. The debt is urgent. The need to restrain spending is urgent.
And so how does leadership respond? The Republican leaders and the Democratic leaders have gotten together to send $100 billion to another country while they can't pay the bills for our country.
We are borrowing money to pay our rent as citizens in our own country, and we are sending $100 billion to another country. Under what world is that a good idea? It is a terrible idea. The Federal Reserve Chairman has said the problem is urgent. Jamie Dimon, the head of JP Morgan Chase, has said the problem is urgent.
Nassim Taleb, the author of ``The Black Swan,'' has said it is urgent. You have all of these people, some who predicted the crisis in 2008, saying it is an imminent crisis. The debt crisis hangs over us. There is a danger of destroying the dollar and destroying our country, and leadership is concerned about making their plane to Kyiv.
The Republican leader and the Democratic leader will be on a plane to Kyiv--I am assuming with champagne and pallets of cash. Have you ever seen the pictures when they unload the pallets of American cash? When they did it in Iraq? How much oversight do you think there is on pallets of cash? How much is stolen? We will never know because they have refused to have an inspector general.
I have forced at least two votes on this. I have been advocating for over a year. I am not for sending your money to Ukraine, but if you are going to send it, can we at least count how much is being stolen?
Ukraine has been on the top 10 list for one of the most corrupt countries in the world, and nobody is watching the money.
Now journalists in Ukraine have actually caught a few people. We haven't caught anybody. If you ask our people from our Defense Department, they will say: Oh, nothing to see here.
You realize our Defense Department has never been audited. We have been trying to audit the Pentagon in our country for two decades. Do you know what the Pentagon tells Congress? We are too big to be audited.
You know what my response is? You are too big then. You should be smaller if you can't even audit the money we are spending. They routinely lose billions of dollars. They routinely have billions of dollars paid where they have no idea where the dollars went.
And so in the midst of this, in the midst of a $1.5 trillion deficit this year, at least, the leadership has come together. People say they want compromise, well, you are getting it today, but it is the wrong kind of compromise. It is compromise to loot the Treasury. It is compromise to spend money we don't have. We have not one penny saved. There is no savings; there is no rainy day fund, they are shoveling out borrowed cash.
Essentially, they have to borrow this from China. They either borrow it from China or they print it up, but there is no money. There is no money sitting around; it has all been spent. There isn't enough money to take care of the stuff they have already promised. So everyone on the other aisle and half the people on this side that are wanting to send more cash over there have also promised they are going to take care of you, so all the entitlement programs are out there.
Well, the entitlement programs consume all of our tax revenue. There is no money beyond that. So the military and the nonmilitary discretion that is about a third of the overall spending, there is no money for it. It is all borrowed. So we are going to add to that.
Now, I have often asked the question: Couldn't we maybe set priorities, and if you really believe that Ukraine is part of our national security--which is ludicrous--but if you believe that, maybe the money should come out of the defense budget.
If this is truly defending Ukraine is defending our country--which is ludicrous--but if it were, we are at $880 billion in our military budget. This is more than the next 10 countries in NATO combined.
If you really want to send your money to Ukraine, take it out of the military budget. Take it out of something. This is a perpetual problem, but I think the American public needs to know as Republican leadership and Democratic leadership jet off to Kyiv,
cracking the champagne, and delivering pallets of cash, they need to know that there was opposition to this.
People say, why do you come to the floor? Why do you make the poor Senators be here over the Super Bowl weekend? Why do you make them cancel their vacations?
Do you think I do it just to be mean or out of spite?
I do it because I care about our country. I care about the bankrupting of America. I care about the looting of our treasury.
(Ms. BUTLER assumed the Chair.)
There can be an honest debate over national security or what is in our vital security, but there never is a debate. If you look closely at what people say, they will simply declare it is in our national security to send money to Ukraine. There isn't really a debate.
I actually think it is the opposite. I think sending money to Ukraine actually makes our national security more endangered. I think it threatens our vital national security to send more money to Ukraine. Why? Because I think it threatens the fiscal solvency of our country. I think it, along with so much of the rest of the spending, is dragging America down and threatening a day of destruction.
There have been civilizations that have destroyed their currency, and, typically, this happened on the heels of war. After World War I, Germany destroyed their currency. After World War II, England was in arrears to such an extent that they no longer were the dominant currency after World War I and II, and the United States became the dominant currency.
I think that we should think twice before sending our money overseas. I think we should think twice about the problems we have here at home.
But I think the American people ought to look at those here in this body who are willing to prioritize another country over our country. I think they need to look at that and decide: Is this what you want? Is this what the American people really want? Did you elect these people to ignore the southern border and to send money to look at Ukraine's border--to prioritize Ukraine's border over the U.S. border? Is that what you elected these people to do? And, if you did, do you not care about the bankrupting of America? Do you not care about the destruction of the dollar?
It is happening every day, and it is happening sort of gradually--5, 10 percent a year of lost purchasing power. But there are people who are left behind, the people whose salaries aren't adjusting with inflation, people who are being squeezed by this inflation.
And people say: Whose fault was the inflation, Republicans or Democrats?
And I say: Both. Really, there is only one party when you get down to it. They all want to spend money.
The leadership in the Republican party is really not a great deal-- this is a secret you are not supposed to expose in Washington, but there is not a lot of difference between the Democrat leadership and the Republican leadership. They kind of want to spend money sometimes for different things. Sometimes Republicans want to spend more on the military enterprise, and Democrats maybe more on welfare. But they get together.
You say there is not enough compromise in Washington? There is way too much compromise. Why? They compromise to spend money we don't have. So in order to raise military spending, they have got to promise that they will raise the welfare spending as well.
There is one particular argument that has been made by Republican leadership as well as Democratic leadership, as well as the White House. I find this argument particularly reprehensible, particularly disgusting and disturbing. They make the argument that it is really not so bad to send money to Ukraine because it increases the profits of the arms merchants, and most of the arms merchants selling the arms into this war are Americans. They say: Oh, it is a win-win. We send the money overseas to Ukraine, but Ukraine then buys our arms, and the arms merchants are enriched.
I don't know. I know there are no American soldiers yet in this war. But have some sympathy for the young men and women involved in this war--that the argument that we should perpetuate the war, that the war isn't a bad thing, and that war is not a hell on earth, is because we make some profit off of it. I find that disgusting. I find it really disturbing that there are people out there making the argument on both sides of the aisle: No big deal. It is helping our defense industrial base.
That is another word for the military-industrial complex, because even Eisenhower warned 70-some years ago--he warned that there was a danger that the military-industrial complex would get so big that it wouldn't be policy led by Congress, that the corporations would become so big--trillion-dollar corporations grabbing up money--that they would direct policy; that it would no longer be you voting or no longer be us voting, but it would be the corporate interests that make the profits that would be driving this. And I think we have become eerily close to that.
This is sort of the quiet part they used to not say out loud. They used to keep it kind of on the q.t.: We are just going to not talk about the profits going to the arms merchants.
But now they are bragging about it: The defense industrial base--we are going to enhance the defense industrial base.
Really? The meat grinder of war is now justified by expanding the profits of arms merchants?
Some estimates are that 500,000 people have died in that war. So if we keep it going for another year or 2, maybe a million will be dead in the war. That will be good for arms profits. So is that what our advocacy is? Not to shorten the war, but it is not so big a deal to let the war go on and on.
The head general in Ukraine has said that the war has come to a stalemate.
And I am the first to acknowledge: Look, the whole war was started by Russia. Russia is the aggressor. There is nothing good to be said about Putin doing this. He is the aggressor. He is in the wrong.
But that doesn't really change the situation on the ground. It is at a standstill, and 500,000 people have died. It is at a standstill. In some towns in Ukraine, you can't find young people anymore. They are either dead or have gone off to Europe to avoid the war.
So Zelenskyy, the President of Ukraine, fired his major general because the major general admitted to the truth, which is that this is at a stalemate.
Many people in this body, to justify foreign aid, will say: We are spreading and projecting American power and American values. We are trying to teach and show to the world the nobility of democracy. Yeah, if you watch one of the networks, that is all you hear: democracy, democracy, democracy.
Well, guess what. Ukraine is not a democracy. They don't have elections. So they stopped having elections several years ago, and there is no plan to have elections. Zelenskyy had one, and I am not saying he didn't win. In all likelihood, it was a legitimate election. But it is sort of one and done. He is not going to have more elections.
And so we are bending over backward--not we--the Republican leadership and all of the Democrats are bending over backward to send money to a country that doesn't have elections.
This is a country that has banned media criticism. There is no media criticism. And you would think that the defenders of the First Amendment would be irate at the fact that there is no objective media criticism in Ukraine.
But the reason why the other side is not standing up and why they are not crazy at arms about this is they actually want that now in our country. They actually are for censorship. They believe in the Homeland Security of the United States censoring and telling people they can't tell you.
So if I were to say--which I have said a million times--that it is a mistake to vaccinate your kids for COVID because they already have immunity and that there are some risks to that vaccine, the other side will say I don't have the right to say that. They say it would be OK for government, in league with corporations, to censor my speech.
If I were to tell you masks don't work--and they don't. All of the studies--78 randomized control studies--say masks don't work. You can wear one. I am not going to forbid you from wearing one. I will just tell you the truth. They will say I shouldn't be allowed to say that. I can still say it on the Senate floor, but if I say it on some of the
Big Tech platforms, we have the FBI and Homeland Security under the Biden administration sitting down and meeting with Big Tech on a weekly basis to encourage them to take down my speech.
So when Ukraine limits speech, you don't hear much of a criticism. It is just: Send them money--because they are no longer opposed to censorship. They are no longer for the First Amendment.
They are for the First Amendment, unless you are spreading misinformation. But what is misinformation? It is their definition and their idea that they don't like what you are saying.
I would be perfectly willing to acknowledge that there are arguments on the other side of what I am saying: whether masks work, whether you should vaccinate your children. I think the arguments are stronger on our side, and I will debate anybody on these subjects. I think they should be debated, and then you should make your own choice. In a free country, you make the choice: Wear a mask; don't wear a mask. Vaccinate your kids; don't vaccinate your kids.
But to ban the speech is a very dangerous precedent. This is the kind of speech that they are in favor of banning in our country. So they are not too troubled when speech is banned in Ukraine.
There has also been banning of religious authorities in Ukraine as well. So we don't have elections in Ukraine. We have banned speech. And there has also been a banning of religion as well.
And yet the fervor--the fervor of people to send the money, to load the plane--the plane is likely loaded. Now, I may be exaggerating that there are going to be pallets of cash. There is probably going to be a computer entry. But it is much more visual to imagine the pallets of cash.
But there will be a plane that will leave this weekend, and it will have the Republican leader on it and the Democrat leader, and they will be celebrating $60 billion of your money going to Ukraine--$60 billion--$60 billion we don't have.
And, also, at the same time, they had no time to discuss the invasion coming in from the southern border. We didn't have 1 minute.
We haven't had an amendment. We have several amendments that would actually put border security back into the bill, and some on the other side--I love this--they have said: Well, because you opposed the bill, you don't deserve to have amendments.
I love the definition and the idea of what their concept of democracy is. If you agree with me, you get to have speech. But if you don't agree with me, you--my goodness--you are a deplorable, and you don't deserve to have your speech or to have amendments. That is what they have said, basically.
So, right now, there have been no amendments on border security. There is an emergency at the southern border. I am all for more legal and lawful immigration. I have several bills that would do exactly that. I have bills that would expand employment-based immigration. It used to be that, when you came to our country, particularly when we had the big waves of people coming in toward the end of the 19th century, you had to have a sponsor and you had to work. I don't have a problem with that. Even for some of the people who have already come here and didn't follow the rules, I would probably be in favor of allowing work permits.
But the thing is, I am not in favor of 780,000 people coming, en masse, across the border. People are coming from China. People are coming from Venezuela and Colombia and Paraguay. They are coming from all over the place.
There was a Pew study a few years ago that did samplings of people: Who would come to America if you could? It was estimated that 750 million people would. Do you think we can take 750 million people all at once? Do you think we can double our population? No, there has to be some planning. There has to be some periodic sort of obstacles. There has to be a lawful way to come into this country.
So I have been for expanding the lawful paths. I have been for expanding employment-based immigration. Most people I know who are first generation are great workers. Like I say, some of the best Americans just got here. But we can't have a wide-open border. We can't allow the invasion to continue.
What has transpired here over the last few days and will continue to transpire is basically ignoring the people. There is an elite class in this country that think that Americans aren't smart enough to figure these things out. They think that Americans aren't smart enough to really figure out whether they want to vaccinate their kids, whether they want to wear a mask, or whether or not 6 feet of distance works.
Did you hear the one recently, when they interviewed Fauci? They asked him where the 6 feet of distance came from? He is like: I don't know. I think we just made that one up.
Really?
I went to my son's university for graduation. They had white circles drawn on the ground outside. You had to stand in another white circle, 6 feet from people outside.
There is zero science behind that--zero. They don't even know where their supposed science came from. I said: I thought you came up with the science.
No, I thought you did. I thought it worked.
It doesn't work, and you don't catch a disease outside.
All of those things--we went through graduations with people with masks on and the chairs 6 feet apart.
My favorite is this, though. These people are so obsessed and think masks work that you will see them on the floor now--and not all of them. I am just guessing. But I know at least some of them on the floor, when they are wearing a mask, it is because they have COVID.
And it is like, they used to teach the common sense. When I went to medical school and when I was growing up, you stayed home when you were sick. If you had an infectious disease, you stayed home. Now they tell you to just keep going and confronting people while wearing a mask that doesn't work.
Why don't the masks work? Because the pores in the mask are 600 times bigger than the virus, and the virus is aerosolized--not just on droplets of water, aerosolized, moving freely throughout the air.
Probably, the most imbecilic thing we did--which rivals maybe the Middle Ages--is plexiglass. These morons told you that plexiglass would stop the virus. Only a moron would say that. There is no truth to that. There is no science to that. It is ridiculous. It should be a ``Saturday Night Live'' skit. Plexiglass that is this high? The virus can't go over it? The virus can't go around it?
A group of engineers at MIT looked at this and looked at patterns of flow, and I can't say that I know that this is right or not, but they conjectured, actually, that the plexiglass actually made it worse because the laminar flow of air was actually disrupted by these things, and your filtration systems, which actually probably do serve some value, were interrupted by the plexiglass. But that is what we lived through. But these are the people--the people who inflicted these things on you believe you are not smart enough to make your own decisions.
When you tell people at home what is going on up here--and I go home every weekend, go to the grocery store, go to church--when I tell people at home that they just sent $60 billion overseas, they are aghast. They say: How can that happen? They say they know of no one--if I am in Eastern Kentucky, I could be talking to a fireman, a policeman, a city councilman. They come up to me spontaneously and say: We have problems here in our country.
We can't pay for the basic functioning of our country. Only two- thirds of the spending in Washington is paid for, and an entire third of it is borrowed. Yet they want to send money to a foreign country to deal with their problems? Shouldn't we try to take care of our own country first? Shouldn't we try to do something to actually quit the destruction of our own currency?
How do they get away with it? It is incredibly unpopular. If you were to take this position in my State and ask everybody in Kentucky ``How many of you think we should send $100 billion overseas and do zero for the southern border--not a penny, not one policy change, nothing for the southern border,'' how many people believe that? In my State, it is close to zero. Very few people believe that.
So how does it happen up here? It happens because there is not enough sunlight. There is not enough transparency. So that is part of what a filibuster is. This is a talking filibuster today, and the reason we talk is to try to broadcast this message, to get the message home so they can send us better people.
Madam President, can you tell me how much time I have remaining in the hour of speaking?
All right.
So one of the proposals I have had--I think it is a modest proposal and you would think it would be a no-brainer and should have been adopted unanimously, and that is to have an inspector general oversee the money.
We have been doing this in Afghanistan for 20 years, but we still spent nearly $2 trillion in Afghanistan over 20 years. But at least there was someone trying to watch because in times of war, a lot of things happen.
You talk about the fog of war? Sometimes there are atrocities, sometimes there is killing of civilians--almost always--but there is also a lot of stealing. They have a name for it. It used to have a bad connotation--``war profiteer.'' But it happens.
In Afghanistan, there was a hotel being built, and it was being built across the street from our Embassy. It was framed out. It was halfway-- it was at least started. You could tell it was going to be a hotel.
As it was being built, somebody said: Wow, looks like they will look right down into the courtyard of our Embassy.
Somebody said: Wow, wouldn't that be a safety risk?
The other one said: Yes, I think you are right.
So the construction slowed down when they evaluated the possible safety risk of building a tall hotel looking down on our Embassy.
Meanwhile, the guy who had the money fled to Jordan with $60 million. It was going to cost $80 million, and they put about $20 million into it. It was left there as an eyesore. My understanding is that it was eventually torn down.
How did we know about this? Because we had an inspector general. The inspector general is called SIGAR, Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction.
So I had a proposal over a year ago. I said: Why don't we take the inspector general who has been doing this in Afghanistan, already has a budget--because I just happen to be conservative with everything--and I said: We don't even need a new budget. The guy already has a budget. He has $10 or $15 million in his budget. Why don't we switch him over from Afghanistan to Ukraine?
I told absolutely everyone I know about it, and when I go home, I mention it. People mention it to me. I have not heard of one person who is opposed to it. I have not heard of one person who would be opposed to having an inspector general.
So we voted on it. The other side almost universally voted it down, and some on my side voted against it. Why? Because the inspector general has a history of finding waste. They don't like it. I picked him because he apparently is good at his job. He has a whole series of maybe 50 to 100 economists, accountants, people who are used to looking at war spending, and he finds the people wasting it. He writes a book on it every year.
One of the waste projects he found was a natural gas gas station.
This is the kind of ludicrous stuff that people at home don't know about, and this is the stuff the other side sticks in everything. Everything has to be green. We are going to make the military green.
So they decided they wanted to have s natural gas gas station in Afghanistan. You have to realize this is a country where a lot of the food is still cooked on open fires, and people ride burros, not natural gas cars. But they built it. They spent $45 million building a natural gas gas station 30, 40 miles out from any military site--couldn't be protected. But then they discovered another problem, and I guess maybe they hadn't thought this through. They wanted to go green. They wanted to get rid of the internal combustion. They wanted to go to natural gas and away from gasoline. They were going to solve climate change in Afghanistan, a country of open fires.
So they built this natural gas gas station for 45 million bucks, but lo and behold, do you know what they discovered? Nobody had a car that ran on natural gas. So, never to be deterred, the wastefuls of American spending said: Let's buy them cars that go on natural gas. We have a gas station. We have to get them cars that run on natural gas so we can cure global warming in Afghanistan.
So they bought them I think 24 cars that ran on natural gas, but they didn't think this one through, either. The people now had a gas station that delivered natural gas to their cars. We gave them a couple of cars that ran on natural gas. But they didn't have any money. So they said: Let's give them a credit card. So they got them credit cards to buy natural gas. We have a gas station with natural gas, natural gas cars, but now here is your credit card.
But they didn't think that all the way through, either. It turns out that people were still killing each other in that part of the world, and it was too dangerous for our soldiers to protect. So when one of my staff members asked to see the natural gas gas station, he was told by our soldiers: Too dangerous to see it.
So, as you can imagine, this natural gas gas station now looks like-- if you can imagine an inner-city gas station with the copper pipes torn out, you know, anything that is of value torn out of the ground, that is your natural gas station in Afghanistan. That is your 45 million bucks. And that is war even with an inspector general who found out about it. Can you imagine what war is like with no inspector general?
Now, the other side would say: Oh, well, the Department of Defense has an inspector general.
Well, yes, they do. This is the Department of Defense that is missing a couple of trillion dollars' worth of equipment. This is the Department of Defense that says they are too big to be audited. So I would say that you have to be a little bit wary of just saying: Well, the Department of Defense will watch this money.
I mentioned earlier about a billion dollars. You know, what is a billion? So a million dollars in the palm of your hand is thousand- dollar bills--if you had thousand-dollar bills, 4 inches high would be a million dollars.
A billion dollars is more difficult to visualize, but to put a billion into perspective, a billion seconds ago, Reagan was starting his second term. A billion minutes ago, the Pantheon was being completed in Rome. A billion hours ago was the stone age, over 100,000 years ago. But a billion dollars ago, at the rate we are spending money, was just a little more than 2 minutes ago.
Now, that is a billion. See, you wonder how bad things are around here? We used to think a billion was a lot of money, but now we have trillion--$34 trillion.
I remember when George W. Bush was President, it was $5 trillion, and it went to $10 trillion. I was, like, gosh, this is terrible. This is a Republican administration. Then when Obama was President, it went from 10 to 20. Then when Trump was, it went up 7\1/2\, 8, in 4 years--even at a more alarming rate. Each President has been worse. They have all been bad. Congress deserves some of the blame, too. It doesn't happen without Congress.
But the money is going crazy. We are up to about $1.5 trillion. I looked this up this morning. I wanted to know, if you stacked one- dollar bills and you wanted to know how big $1.5 trillion is. Well, if you take 2 years' worth of debt--that is $3 trillion--and you want it in one-dollar bills? The one-dollar bills would stack all the way to the Moon, over 230,000 miles away.
We are starting to talk about a bit of money here. But it is not just the overall debt. When they pay for the debt, the Federal Reserve dilutes the currency, and the currency becomes worth less and less. But also what happens is that our interest rates increase over time.
So under George W. Bush, we went from $5 to $10 trillion, we doubled the debt from $5 to $10 trillion. In that period of time, the interest rate was cut in half, so the interest rate really wasn't a lot worse. But we finally, I believe, have lost the ability for the Federal Reserve to suppress interest rates.
Interest rates have risen, and interest payments have doubled.
We are on course within the next year or so to have interest rates become the largest item, pushing out and crowding out other spending in the budget. Mark my words--this $100 billion will add to that problem, and I think it is absolutely an utter mistake and an insult to every American that we ignore the invasion on our southern border in order to send money overseas.
I reserve the balance of my time.
I ask the Parliamentarian how much time remains.
Thank you.
Mr. President, what we have here is a ``Ukraine First'' bill. This bill was never really about securing our border but about securing another country's border. What we have here is a failure of the elites of Washington on both sides of the aisle--the leadership of the Democratic Party, the leadership of the Republican Party--what we have here is a failure of these elites to understand that the American people want to put America first.
Sixty-one percent of Americans live from paycheck to paycheck, and they want to put Ukraine first. I want you to talk to your constituents at home, the ones who live paycheck to paycheck, and tell them why you are shipping $60 billion to Ukraine. This will be $170 billion. We have never before in the history of the United States flooded so much money into another country.
Sixty-one percent of our country lives paycheck to paycheck. Eight out of 10 families who make $50,000 or less won't have enough money to pay their bills in 2 weeks if their check doesn't come. If they have one interruption in their family, one thing that sets them back, one unexpected expense, they won't have enough money to pay their bills, and you want to put Ukraine first.
This is why the Democratic Party is losing the working man. This is why the Republicans have become the party of the working class. This is why many, if not most, members of the unions are now looking at Republicans--because we support the working man and we support the working women of America, and we recognize that they do not want to send their hard-earned money and taxes halfway across the world.
What does their money go for? Do we know what they are doing with their money in Ukraine? Well, we do know that the money went to fund six fashion brands to go to the Paris fashion show. We do know that it is funding small businesses to sell ladies' handbags. We do know that it is paying for the salaries of 57,000 first responders. What about the first responders in our country? What about the people who get in an ambulance and have a $35,000 bill in our country? What about tackling the problems of America first? Instead, this bill is a ``Ukraine First'' bill. It is a ``Ukraine First'' policy.
According to the ``Ukraine First'' party, which includes elites of both parties, war is good; war is useful; war profits make us stronger. It sounds a bit Orwellian. They say that war profits will build the defense industrial base. This is the part they used to say quietly. They used to whisper this. They used to never say it out loud, that war profits fund the defense industrial base. And by golly, we are going to be stronger the more war profits there are. According to the ``Ukraine First'' party, war is not so bad. More profits make us stronger.
Lost in this reprehensible argument is any sense of grief over the 500,000 dead, for the mothers and fathers weeping graveside. Little sense of grief, little sense of understanding that supporting and lauding grief is supporting and lauding the death of war. Missing from the ``war profits are good'' argument is any sense of compassion for the thousands of lives that will yet be lost by the prolongation of this war.
If military contracts for 100,000 rifles are good, what about 1 million rifles? If military contracts for 1,000 tanks are good, what about 1 million tanks? If military contracts for 500 bombs are good, what about military contracts for 5,000 bombs?
Missing from the argument that war profit is good, that the more armaments we sell, the better, is compassion for the deaths that we are talking about, the prolongation of war.
You know, war doesn't end typically in victory. Almost all wars end in negotiated settlement. The longer there are unlimited war profits, the longer there are unlimited weapons being sent to Ukraine, the longer the war goes on, the more people who die.
This is a grinder. It is a meat grinder over there. There are whole towns without young men.
Do I think Russia is in the wrong? Of course they are. Are they the aggressor? Of course they are. Do I have sympathy for Ukraine? Absolutely. But we also are now funneling money to a country that has no elections. They have canceled their Presidential elections. They have suppressed speech. They have banned certain opposition parties. They have banned certain opposition press. They have banned officials of opposition religion.
Now, this should bother people because it is said that American might and foreign aid is to express our power and our values. Are our values no elections? Are our values suppressing speech?
What has become confusing even in our country is the Democratic Party has become the party of censorship. They are the party that agrees that the Biden administration is OK to meet
with the FBI, to meet with Homeland Security, and to meet in the offices of Twitter, meet in the offices of Facebook. They suppressed for over a year anybody who is willing to say that it looks like the virus came from a lab in Wuhan. That was suppressed for over a year not just by private business but by the government, by the Biden administration meeting the FBI, Homeland Security, meeting with the tech companies. So it doesn't surprise me that they don't care too much; just get the honey out the door even though, in Ukraine, they are living under a regime where speech has been suppressed.
What the ``American Firsters,'' what the ``Ukraine Firsters'' are really arguing for is an ``America Last'' policy. They are really arguing for a longer, bigger, more deadly war because it expands the profits of the defense industrial base. How despicable. How absolutely disgusting. They are saying the quiet part out loud. They are OK with war. The longer the war, the more profits, the stronger the American defense base.
It is a circular argument: We are not sending the money to Ukraine; it is coming right back. It is coming back in the form of profits to the American arms merchants. It is OK. We are really not going to lose $170 billion because it is coming back in profits. We will make more bombs.
What ever happened to the progressive left? Wasn't it great when there were people on the left who actually were progressive on things such as war? How absolutely disgusting to argue that war profits are a benefit, a benefit that somehow overshadows the awful specter of war's death and carnage.
The amount of money going to Ukraine in this bill is more than we spend on the entire Marine Corps. Think about it. We are going to send to Ukraine more money than we spend on our own Marine Corps. This is a bill about ``Ukraine First.'' This is a bill that makes us weaker.
There is no money to give to Ukraine. It is not like we have a pot of money. There is no surplus. There is no rainy day fund. This money will be printed up or borrowed from China to send to Ukraine. It makes us weaker.
Once the border bill failed and they decided that this wasn't really about the border, that this was about Ukraine's border, the ``America Firsters'' plowed on but with a more intellectually honest proposal: Nothing for America, everything for Ukraine. That is what this bill is: nothing for America; nothing to stop the invasion of nearly a million people across our southern border. They offered a border bill that would have said: Well, if we have an emergency. The emergency has already happened. Nearly a million people came in the last 2 months. That is the emergency. This is a bill that is ``Ukraine First'' and America last and ought to be defeated.
I notice my colleague from Alabama is here. I reserve the remainder of time.
Can you tell me how much time I have left?
Thank you.
Madam President, often the titles of bills before the legislature don't really represent what the bill stands for. The title of this bill should say ``Ukraine First, America Last'' because that is what this is really about.
Now, bills in the legislature, bills that come before the Senate, don't have pictures or covers on them like a book would have or a magazine. But if this bill had an image or a cover on the front of the bill, the image would be the migrant in New York who assaulted a police officer, was freed from jail on no bail, and gave the middle finger of both hands to America.
That is what this bill is. It is the middle finger to America. This bill is the middle finger to every working man and woman in America, every struggling American family. This bill gives them the middle finger and says: We don't care about you. We care more about Ukraine than we care about our southern border.
We don't seem to care or these ``Ukraine Firsters'' don't seem to care about the crime that is happening. They don't seem to care about the assault on a police officer in New York. They are intent on more coming in. Just that one image of that man, that migrant, that illegal immigrant who came across the border and decided to assault, with a whole group of other thugs, to assault a police officer in New York-- just that image alone ought to be enough for us to say: Enough is enough.
Enough is enough. We really have to control our border. Guess what. From now on, the only people who can come into America are legal immigrants. But this bill--this bill--ignores the southern border. Almost a million people came over the border in the last 3 months, almost a million people. And the ``Ukraine Firsters'' are saying: We don't care about the southern border; we care about Ukraine first.
And so the picture, the image that every American should have when they see all of these billions of dollars--$60 billion being shoveled out the door, being loaded on the plane--as you see the smiling politicians gleefully dropping off the pallets of cash over there, every American should remember the image of the young man giving America the bird after he assaulted a police officer.
That is the image of this bill. That is the image of the ``Ukraine Firsters,'' and nobody should forget about it.
When we look at the problems that we face, we need to be fully aware that there is no pot of money. There are no surplus funds. There is no money to give to Ukraine. We don't have enough money to pay our bills. We do not have enough money to pay for what we budget every year. In fact, the entire budget that Congress votes on is borrowed.
Let me make that very clear: The entire budget--not a little bit of it, not half of it, the entire budget--is borrowed. This would be like someone saying: Well, yeah, I don't have any money for rent, and I don't have a job. I am going to borrow the money for my rent.
That is essentially where we are.
Two-thirds of spending up here is entitlements. All of the tax revenue from every source that comes into the Federal Government is only enough to pay for Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, and food stamps. Everything else is borrowed. And we don't vote on the entitlements. The entitlements are on autopilot.
What do we vote on? We vote on what is military discretionary and nonmilitary discretionary--$1.5 trillion.
So people talk about: What is a trillion dollars? Well, we are running a $1.5 trillion deficit in 1 year. So in 2 years, $3 trillion is accumulated. How much is a trillion? How much is $3 trillion? If you take a trillion in $1 bills and you stack them up, $3 trillion would reach to the Moon. So 240,000 miles high would be the stack of $1 bills. That is what we borrow in a 2-year period.
But it is accelerating. Just in the last week, the Federal Reserve Chairman said the debt problem is ``urgent.'' Jamie Dimon, head of one of the big banks, JPMorgan Chase, says: The problem is urgent. Some of the economists and authors that wrote about the collapse in 2008 that predicted it coming have said that the debt is an urgent problem.
So how does the Senate respond to some of the keenest minds in the country saying that we have a debt crisis? They respond by sending $100 billion of your money overseas.
And it is not money we have got on hand. It is not cash on hand. We don't have any money. We are flat broke.
People say: It is for our national defense. We have these ``Cold Warriors'' who still believe in the domino theory, and they say we are going to be somehow overrun by communists if we don't do this.
But we have no money. There is no money to be sent over there. It all has to be borrowed.
The title of this bill should be ``Ukraine First, America Last,'' if they were being honest.
Sixty-one percent of Americans work paycheck to paycheck. Eight out of 10 Americans who make $50,000 don't have enough money on hand to pay their bills. If something goes wrong for them, do you think they are excited about having their tax dollars shipped off to Ukraine?
Ukraine first, America last--that is what this bill is about. It is about giving the middle finger to America. It is about giving the middle finger to every working-class man and woman in America. It is an insult. It should be rejected. It should be soundly rejected, and we should get back to the business of this country, which is protecting our borders.
We have got a real problem. Democrats didn't even seem to think there was a border problem until a few hundred of them were shipped to New York, and, all of a sudden, they think there is a problem now. So they put them up in a fancy hotel, and they spend millions of dollars coddling them.
But, mark my words, the American people are smarter than the elitists up here. The title of this bill is and ought to be if they were honest: ``Ukraine First and America Last.'' That is what the authors should have called this bill.
I reserve the balance of my time.
How much time do I have remaining?
I yield the floor.
This filibuster now enters its fifth day. For many people across America, they may not understand the Byzantine rules of the Senate, but they allow for sufficient debate on important questions. Often the rules of the Senate are abbreviated, and bills are passed in a quick fashion--sometimes too quickly, sometimes without sufficient discussion, sometimes without sufficient review.
But this bill will take a while to pass. We have been here through the weekend; we were here on Super Bowl Sunday--none of it because of a desire to punish or a desire to inflict pain on those from the other party or another persuasion, but with the desire that
there be a full and sufficient airing of the pros and cons of this legislation.
This is not the naming of a post office. This is a profound question about where our priorities are as a nation. Are our priorities as a nation the borders of Ukraine or the borders of the United States?
We had a chance, in the beginning, to perhaps discuss both, but immediately that chance was lost when the proposal to control the border was inadequate. It would have actually been less than the current law. It would have actually allowed 1.8 million illegal immigrants to continue to flow into the country.
The battle to attach border security to this bill was lost, frankly, when the Democrat cosponsor tweeted out to the public how proud he was that the bill would never close the border; that even under an emergency, as the bill defined it, even with 5,000 people coming across illegally, that the ports of entry would always be open.
And the American people reacted, and they called us, as they have called us by the thousands today, to say: Continue the debate. Don't give up. The debate is worth it.
Our phone lines have been jammed all day. People have been texting and messaging saying: Don't give up the fight. The fight is worth it.
The fight is worth it on many levels. Most profoundly, the fight is worth it because we have no money. More than the debate over the border, more than the debate over whether we should fund Ukraine, the fight is over whether or not we are going to stave off calamity by controlling our expenditures; and when we have priorities, when we set those priorities, where we spend the money, where it is most needed.
I will never forget being in a committee hearing and a member of the opposite party looked at me and said, ``We shouldn't have to make choices,'' because I said: Shouldn't we set priorities? Shouldn't we spend money on what is most important and leave those things not as important for another day when we have more money?
Because, you see, this is the way government operates at every level other than in Washington. If you go to your city council, at any city anywhere in the country, or you go to your county magistrates, or you go to your State government, they are all constrained by spending that which comes in.
We are the only government in America--unfortunately the biggest and most expensive--but we are the only government in America that is not constrained by their budget.
In fact, we don't even have a budget most years. We don't operate under a budget currently. They can't even take the time to pass a budget.
But even if there were a budget, it is not constrained by the amount of money that comes in. We just spend.
There are never any priorities set saying: Well, this is more important than this. So we will have to wait until next year to spend the money on this.
So it is always just spend it on everything.
But as we come to this crisis in our country with $34 trillion of debt, we are adding between $2 and $300 billion in debt every month. Our interest payment has doubled. We are basically borrowing to pay the rent. This is a disaster unfolding before us.
There are some who describe a ``black swan'' event. Nassim Taleb wrote a book called ``The Black Swan.'' It is an unexpected big event that just sort of consumes, like the 2008 crisis we had. Some predicted it, but it was still a ``black swan'' that arose out of nowhere and was enormous.
But many people are calling this more of a ``white swan.'' It is a big event. It is an important event, but it is unfolding in slow motion. It is unfolding with all kinds of warning signs.
Federal Reserve Chairman Powell recently said, in the last week or 2, that the debt is urgent, that somebody must do something about it. But when you tell that to many Members of this body--that it is urgent that we deal with the debt--the response to the debt wouldn't be sending $100 billion to another country. The responsibility of dealing with the debt, the urgency of the debt, would be to do something about controlling the expenditures. And yet the response of this body, upon hearing from the Federal Reserve Chairman; upon hearing from the chairman of JPMorgan Chase, Jamie Dimon, that he was concerned about the accumulation of debt; upon hearing from economist after economist that this is unfolding, that the interests rates are rising, that interest rates are going to squeeze out other spending, and that there may come a day in which we destroy the dollar, the response is to send $100 billion to Ukraine?
So while superficially and initially the debate here has been about whether Ukraine comes first or America comes first--so many bills here are inappropriately titled. Many of them say they are going to do all of these great things, but in the end, there is a more accurate title for so many bills, and the more accurate title for this bill would be ``Ukraine First, America Last'' because they are prioritizing the border of Ukraine over the border of the United States.
This isn't someone alleging a problem. This isn't us making it up and saying there is a border crisis. This is us seeing it in person-- 785,000 people coming across illegally.
People say: What is it? Do you have a problem with immigrants?
I say: No. I am for lawful immigration. We bring in about 1 million people a year--that is pretty many. I am actually a sponsor, with some on the other side of the aisle, to bring in more people lawfully. I am pro-immigration. I am proud of saying that some of the best Americans just got here.
I live in Bowling Green, KY. We have over 100 languages spoken in our schools. We have a large population of people from Bosnia. I remember treating my first patients from Bosnia and trying to learn a little bit of the language. Their language is Serbo-Croatian, so I speak exactly about 10 words of Serbo-Croatian. But I found the language sort of very logical and easy to pronounce, and I enjoy knowing a few words to try to communicate.
Many of the people from Bosnia in my town own restaurants. One owns a trucking company. They have been very successful in our community, and we welcome them. Our church has invited many of them to begin with.
So there is something great about America and accepting immigrants, but accepting immigrants lawfully who take the time and pledge to work and have a sponsor and come in in an orderly fashion is not the same as the people marching up through Central America. Some of them are coming from China. Some of them are coming from the Middle East. Some are on the Terror Watchlist. Many of them probably want a better way of life but apply to get in. We can't let everybody in all at once.
There was a Pew or Gallup poll a few years ago, and it asked people: Would you want to come to America if you could? If they let you come in, would you come? And they estimated the percentages by country, and they added it up, and it was about 750 million people would come. That might be too many, particularly if they all came in a 2- or 3-year period.
We are talking about millions of people coming across the border at a time, undocumented, unprocessed. I think it is a mistake. And I think we have made a huge mistake in this body today. And I know I won't convince any minds in Washington--nobody in the Senate is going to be of this mind--but I do truly believe the Senate is out of step.
I talk to people at home. I go to the grocery store. I go to my church. I see people at home. I don't meet anybody who is saying: Please prioritize Ukraine. Please make sure Ukraine gets their money before you do anything about our southern border.
I meet nobody saying that. I meet everybody who says the opposite, and these are people from all different parties--Republican, Democrat, Independent, Libertarian, you name it. The people I meet say: We can't just leave the door wide open. We have this enormous welfare state. There has to be a wall either around the country or around the welfare state. We have to do something.
But they certainly don't beg me and plead with me to send the money to Ukraine. They would never support a ``Ukraine First, America Last'' bill, and that is what this is.
Now, many in the blue States have sort of refused to see this for so long. They just have completely ignored the problem because it has mostly been Texas's problem--California, too, but
Texas in particular. The tens of thousands of people coming across the border overwhelm the hospital system, overwhelm the city system, overwhelm--you name it, it is being overwhelmed by so many people. So it is intriguing that the only way we have gotten anybody on the other side--particularly in these cities in the Northeast--to at least be aware of the problem is to let them have some of the immigrants.
You know the people who have ``love'' on a yard sign in their yard? They love everybody? They love everybody until they have all these immigrants in their city and say: Oh my goodness; we can't pay for it. They are putting them up in hotels and giving them free credit cards. They are just giving--you know, they go: We have 100; we will give them $10 million. What happens when you have 1,000 or 5,000?
But even worse, what happens when they begin to commit crimes? Because, see, lawful immigration selects out for the people who want to work and are willing to obey the law. If you are a scofflaw, if you are a potential criminal, or if you got let out of a prison in Venezuela, guess what--that is part of what is coming across unlawfully.
So when some of these people made their way to New York, New Yorkers are starting to wake up and say: My goodness, maybe we can't afford this. Maybe there ought to be some, you know, criminal justice applied to people breaking the law.
But everybody saw the pictures. Everybody saw the pictures of a gang of migrants attacking two police officers, kicking them and beating them, kicking them to the ground--awful images. But then everybody in America saw the images of a migrant let out without parole a day later, after kicking a policeman in the face, kicking and bludgeoning a policeman, let out of jail with no bail. What does he do? He flips the finger to America, both hands, holds them high and proud, walks on by, and New York let him go. Nobody put him back in jail. Nobody rearrested him. He gave the finger to America.
Well, guess what. This bill gives the finger to American taxpayers. This bill gives the finger to all of America. This bill is ``Ukraine First, America Last.''
Even more than the border issue, which I think is about setting priorities, whether or not the priority should be America's border versus the Ukrainian border--I think that is a big issue, and for me, it is an easy one. This ought to be an ``America First'' legislature. We ought to be taking care of American problems before we think about trying to solve the world's problems.
Now, this doesn't mean I have no sympathy for Ukraine. I hope Ukraine kicks Russia's butt. I hope Ukraine wins. I hope Ukraine can stave them off. And the battle has been somewhat fought to a standstill. But I know that my first oath of office and my first responsibility is to my country, to America.
If we are to send $100 billion overseas, this will be a total of $170 billion. Never ever in the history of the United States have we ever sent so much money to one country--$170 billion. This is about 1\1/2\, almost 1.75 times the entire economy of Ukraine. Never before have we done that.
But the thing is, it is not like we have the money sitting around. It is not like we have a rainy-day fund or a surplus fund or, hey, here is a bunch of money we are not doing anything with. Our money is all gone.
See, we have responsibilities. And the really I think disturbing thing this legislature has done--not just this one but over decades--is they vote for everything for everyone. Everybody's got a need, we will give it to you. We are not going to set priorities and spend what comes in; we are going to give everybody everything they want. Everybody who ever comes to Washington with their hands out, we are going to give you what you need regardless of whether we have the money to pay for it.
So this legislature, this Senate, this Congress, has made all of these promises to people. They started these things. They started Social Security in the thirties. They started Medicare in the sixties. They added on to all of these problems--Medicaid, food stamps. They have all of these problems.
But in being everything to everyone, in saying that you can have free stuff and it won't cost you anything, it has been a big lie. This big lie to America is that you can have your cake and eat it too. You can have stuff for free. We are going to give you free government stuff, and you won't have to pay for it. You don't have to pay taxes.
We still have taxes in this country, but the taxes in this country pay for only about two-thirds of the spending. So we spend about $6 trillion a year, and we bring in $4 trillion. In no world will that work. There are repercussions to that. Eventually, if you spend $2 trillion more than your revenue, you will go into this massive debt and potentially a debt spiral.
People say: The debt is meaningless. We owe it to ourselves. It doesn't mean anything.
Tell that to the person who goes to the grocery store. Anybody bought a steak lately at the grocery store? I saw a steak in Kroger less than a month ago--$20 a steak. I didn't buy it.
So the thing is that there are all kinds of problems people are facing. There are people with ordinary incomes that are not going up with inflation who are being hit by the price of food, being hit by the price of gas.
Think about what has really happened when the money gets printed by government and it goes into these programs. The last people to get it are the working class. The people who get an advantage to inflation in the early stages are the rich people. These are the people who have stocks and mutual funds and retirement funds. Those people have been kicking butt for the last several years. The stock market is doing this, and they are all getting wealthy. It is the ordinary citizen in our country, it is those on fixed income or working class who just get creamed by inflation.
But inflation isn't a mystery. They come to us, and they say: Oh, well, inflation--it could be transitory. It is probably over, and maybe it has something to do with greed.
I say: Really? Inflation is caused by greed? Did people just become greedy? They haven't been greedy since the beginning of time? It is greed that causes inflation?
No. It is debt that causes inflation. Inflation comes when the Federal Reserve buys the debt. So when we run a deficit each year, we spend $6 trillion and we bring in $4 trillion, the $2 trillion in debt has to--somebody has to finance that. So we print up Treasury bills, pieces of paper--that is basically what they are--and we sell them. Some are bought by foreigners. Some are bought by private funds in the United States. But then at least about one-third and sometimes more are bought by the Federal Reserve.
You say: Well, that is fine. They are a big bank. They are the country's bank, the central bank.
Well, but they don't have money; they own debt. And it has always been boggling to me. They call this the asset sheet, but it is really just a sheet full of debt.
But they buy Treasury bills by printing up money, by creating money, and so when they do that, it dilutes the value of the currency.
So people who say the debt is just a number and doesn't affect people--no. The debt causes inflation. The Federal Reserve causes inflation when they buy the debt, and it causes the prices to rise.
But inflation disproportionately hurts the poor and the working class. Rich people can get by. You know, if the steaks cost more, the food costs more, their gas costs more, rich people get by. They have extra income. But if most of your income is going toward your rent and your food, you get creamed by inflation.
Inflation is part of a bait-and-switch problem. So many of the people got elected here because they promised something for nothing. Government will be Santa Claus and will give you a free education. We will give you free electric cars. We will give you free electric car stations. We will give free money even to other countries. We will let people come in for free and take stuff for free. Everything is going to be free, but it is a bait-and-switch. It isn't really free. Nothing is really free. You can either pay for it through taxes--and we tax the heck out of everybody. Some would tax them even more. But, really, a third of it is left over, and it is not taxed. It ends up being this deficit that rolls forward, and then it is financed by the Federal Reserve and causes prices to rise.
So think about this when you think about the bait-and-switch that is American politics: Politicians offer people something for free. They say to the working class and to the poor: We will give you free stuff.
Many people accept that, and they say: I want free stuff. I am struggling. I need some extra help.
But then they don't realize that the free stuff comes with a price. The free stuff comes with a price, and it is an inflation tax. And the inflation tax hurts the very people you tried to help.
So it is a catch-22. They are behind the eight ball. They are poor, and they want some help from government. But that causes the prices to rise, which traps them in the same place that they started with--maybe worse.
So when we get a bill like this, it brings things into stark perspective for everyone, because what we are finding is, this isn't just a priority about whether we borrow the money or spend the money, this is about whether we spend it across the ocean or whether we spend it in our country.
It is also a very visible problem that we have 785,000 people who came in, in the last 2 months. So we are looking at a couple of million people that have come in. We are close to a million already in 2 months. So we are looking at a problem that is not something that can easily be pushed away.
So this problem arose, and there was a decision to try to match up-- the Democrats really, really want to send your money to Ukraine. I can't tell you how much they really want to send your money to Ukraine. They want to send your money to Ukraine. They are hot and heavy--so hot and heavy to send your money to Ukraine that almost nothing would stop them. It was sort of the perfect situation for sort of putting up some leverage and saying: OK. We know you want to loot the Treasury. We know you have these economic theories that debt doesn't matter. We know you think you can just send all this money, but what about this? We won't let you do it unless you secure the border.
So that is how the debate sort of began. And a lot of people say: Why don't Republicans stand up more?
See, in the Senate--the unusual and really creative thing that our Founding Fathers did was, in the Senate they didn't make it a majority rule; it is a supermajority rule. So if you ever have 41 votes in the Senate, you can block anything the majority wants to do.
So we have 49 Republicans. That means we have the power of 41. If we had interested leadership that wanted to use the strength of our 41, who wanted to use the strength of the minority to say: We will only let them shovel the money and flush it down the toilet and throw it away and give it to other countries--we will only let that happen if you secure the border. We have the leverage.
What ended up happening is we ended up getting what I would call fake reform. It was reform negotiated--and the mistake was doing it, I think, behind closed doors and with only one individual. Not that it is really all that individual's fault, but the individual really needed to come back to the caucus and say: Do you guys think--you men and women, you think you might support this border bill we are putting together? Instead, it was just sort of an all-done deal: Here it is. And almost of all of us said it is not accurate. Almost all of us said it is actually worse than the existing law.
So we were stuck in a conundrum, and then our leadership advocated it. They basically just punted. Our leadership said: We are not going to use the power of the minority, because we want and salivate to send the money to Ukraine also. This is the problem now.
In our country, some people say there needs to be more compromise.
Here is the compromise. You got it. You got 10 or 15 Republicans who side with the Democrats. They believe in Ukraine first and America last. They believe that we should borrow $100 billion, whether it comes from China or whether the Federal Reserve prints it up. We are going to take $100 billion we sent over there on top of the $113 billion we have already sent.
And some might say: Well, you know, it is for a good cause.
Well, shouldn't we examine what they spend it on?
Shouldn't we have like a special inspector general, someone who is trained to look for waste? Shouldn't we have that person appointed to look at the waste?
I have advocated for it for over a year. I forced them to vote on it. The Democrats all voted no, and all the Big Government Republicans who love this money, they voted against it, too. They don't want scrutiny in how the money is being spent. I even helped them to pick who would be the inspector general--somebody who has been doing it for 10 years.
The inspector general that is in charge of Afghanistan is called the SIGAR, Special Inspector General for Afghan Reconstruction. He has done a great job. He has a team of over 100 people that work for him-- accountants and economists and people who look at this war spending and they know how to look at war spending and they know how to do war contracts and they know how to look for malfeasance. And he has found billions of dollars' worth of it.
Now, we spent a couple trillion in Afghanistan. That is not the inspector general's fault; that is Congress's fault. But he has done his best to try to police this. He has written entire books on the waste. As a consequence, the people who love sending your money overseas, they hate him. They hate the idea. They hate the idea so much they voted it down with a vast majority. They don't want an inspector general. But if you ask them: You don't want to oversee the money? They would say: Oh, no. The Pentagon or the State Department or somebody who already has an inspector general, they will do it. And I said, Oh? You mean the Pentagon that can't be audited? The Pentagon that refuses to be audited? The Pentagon that says they are too big to be audited? You trust them to now oversee the money going to Ukraine, when Ukraine has a history of being in the bottom 10 percent as far as corruption-- meaning they have had more corruption than the other 90 percent of countries?
I think that is kind of crazy.
Even if you were for the money, you would think the power of 41--41 supposedly conservative Republicans--could simply look them in the eye and say: We are giving you the money, but we want this, this, and this. We have the power to do it.
They have completely abdicated the power. They threw in the towel, and they said: We aren't going to do anything on the border, but we are not even going to ask for an inspector general on this. We are just fine. Just shovel it out the door.
So where is some of the money going? Inevitably, some of it is buying weapons. And to listen to the supporters of this bill, they are proud of the weapons and the profit that will go to the people who sell weapons.
This, to me, just boggles the mind.
They actually have a new name. They now call it the defense industrial base. Since the time of Eisenhower, it was known as the military-industrial complex, but they have renamed it the defense industrial base, and we are going to rebuild ours with war profits from Ukraine. So we are really not giving it to Ukraine. We are giving it to Ukraine, but they are giving it right back to American arms manufacturers.
See, it is this sort of mercantile, sort of--oh, yeah, looks like it is good for business. It is good for money. And it is like: Are these people not realizing we are talking about a war? A war that some estimate some 500,000 people have died. And they are thinking: Well, gosh, if instead of 100,000 rifles, we send them a million, that will be more profit and our companies will be bigger and more profitable and they will be able to make more weapons for us then--not acknowledging that a million rifles might kill more people than 100,000.
Or let's say we have 1,000 tanks. What if we give them 10,000 tanks? That will be more profit for the arms merchants. Wouldn't that be good? That would be great. We are reinvigorating the defense industrial base.
Really? You are going to make the argument that war is good? Or maybe war ain't so bad? Or maybe just a little war here and there? If we can get more profit for these guys, the big companies, the large multinational arms manufacturers--if they just get a little more profit--a little more profit will be good because that will reinforce the defense industrial base.
This is saying the quiet part out loud. This is saying something they
should be embarrassed by. This is saying something so reprehensible and so disgusting. But it has happened to the leadership on our side, the leadership on the other side. It has happened also with the Biden administration. In committee, they come to us and they brag about how: This isn't really money to Ukraine; this is money to America. We are giving it to Ukraine, but it is sort of a conduit. It is sort of a laundering scheme to get the money back to America, to our arms manufacturers.
So, under this logic, the longer the war goes on, the more weapons we sell, the better it is for our defense industrial base. So a 1-year war--let's say--we are closer to, I think, 2 years--a two-year war that has lost 500,000 people--which would be better for the defense industrial base, a 2-year war that loses 500,000 people or a 3-year war that loses 750,000 people? Well, it is a lot better for the defense industrial base to have a 3-year war.
And we ask ourselves: What would be the ultimate result of the war?
And I am going to say my sympathies are with Ukraine. Russia is the aggressor and Russia should be repelled and if I were Ukrainian, I would fight for Ukraine against the Russian aggressors. But the thing is, as they fight and as this war goes on, how many wars end in unconditional surrender? Virtually zero. World War II ended that way, but it was one of the few wars that ended that way. It ended in utter defeat through the drop of the atomic bombs on Japan, and there was complete and unconditional surrender, and I believe the same with Germany as well.
That is a rare war that ends that way. Most wars are fought to somewhat of a standstill and there is a negotiated settlement.
So, recently, the Commander in Chief in Ukraine reported to the public that he felt like the war was at a standstill.
Typically, when that is said, it doesn't mean he is willing to--I am sure he is a very brave soldier and is well-liked by the troops. But when that is said, that is an indication that, perhaps, negotiations can start. That doesn't make him a coward or weak; it actually makes him strong, because he knows that another year of war will grind--will be this meat grinder that will grind and torture and maim another group--another group of thousands of young men of Ukraine.
And if he felt it would be an imminent victory and that Ukraine could win and Russia would be defeated, then I am sure he would want to fight on. And he probably still wants to fight on, but I think what the indication is, is that there has to be some openness to negotiation.
I don't think Russia is strong enough to take Ukraine. Likewise, I don't think Ukraine is strong enough to push Russia out. They fought to a standstill. And the thing is, is that if our promise is unlimited weapons and unlimited money to Ukraine, I think it makes it less likely that people will look for an exit ramp, will look for a possibility of a peaceful outcome for this.
There will be no complete victory in Ukraine. There is an infinite amount of money that can be sent--$170 billion is getting close to infinite. We never sent that much money to any country ever. If we go another year and they burn through about $10 billion a month--and they already think they are a couple months behind on that--within 4 to 6 months, they will be asking for more money again.
But shouldn't we, at least, ask where it is being spent?
Sure, some of it is being spent on arms, tanks, guns, this, that; but some of it is going to pay their government's salaries. Some of it is going to pay for welfare, disability, healthcare, first responders. I think we pay the salaries of 57,000 first responders. Do we have enough money to pay for the entire government of another government, plus all of their weapons? In addition to their government, we had been paying their pensions.
That embarrassed some of the people until they said, finally: Well, we will pay for everything else. We will pay for all your government, but, by golly, we draw the line at pensions.
So they excluded pensions on this after paying for the pensions for over a year. But billions upon billions are going to pay for their government. Look, most of us over here want a smaller U.S. Government. Now they want to ask us to pay for a bloated Ukraine government?
But it is worse than just paying for their government and all their programs. We are giving small business subsidies to Ukraine.
If you watched ``60 Minutes'' not too long ago, what you saw was a lady's bag--you know, a lady's handbag business getting subsidies from us.
Look, I am not even for subsidizing U.S. businesses. I am for profit and loss. You sell something good that somebody wants to buy, you become successful in business. I don't think we should subsidize American businesses. But now they are not asking me just to subsidize American businesses; they want me to subsidize Ukrainian businesses.
I think that is obscene. I think that is absurd. I think when I go home and I ask people: Can you believe they are sending money to a handbag factory, to a handbag shop in Ukraine? People are aghast. They are livid. They are like: Who are these people? We will vote them out.
And that really is what should go on. It is part of what this debate is about. People at home need to know who these people are. Every Democrat, save one, and about 15 Republicans. People need to pay attention. They need to look how their Senator votes on this or how their Congressman votes if he gets to the House of Representatives, because this is about people who are prioritizing Ukraine first and America last.
Some of the money that is going over there, in addition to going to small businesses, actually went to send six contestants to Paris Fashion Week for the famous fashion show of Paris.
So in the midst of this war, we are sending money to send some fashion brands--or whatever that is--from Ukraine to the Paris fashion show. In the middle of this war, their President had time to take some fancy pictures with Vogue. I don't know, but I think that kind of looks bad. I think that sort of just--you know, that one doesn't pass the smell test when we are in the middle of a war. Sure, he is wearing his great T-shirt and everything, but he is in Vogue, all right? He is at war.
About a month ago, he was in Argentina for the victory party for the new Prime Minister--no doubt, asking for money. But the thing is, I am a big fan of the new Prime Minister of Argentina, too, but I didn't go down there on the taxpayers' dime, and I won't take the taxpayers' dime to go down there. But the thing is, he is in the middle of a war. What the heck is he doing in Argentina? He is everywhere, all around the world, asking for our money.
My oath of office is to my country. It doesn't mean I don't have sympathy for Ukraine. It doesn't mean I don't want them to win. It is just that my oath of office is to my country.
This would be a different debate if we had a big pile of money and we ran a surplus, but I can't in good conscience send money to Ukraine that we don't have. That $100 billion that is going out in this bill, in addition to the previous $110 billion, is all borrowed. It makes America weaker; it makes us less strong.
You will often hear the debate, and you will hear people say: It is in our vital national interest to give money to Ukraine.
Well, that is merely an opinion. There is a debate on both sides of it, and I will give you the debate on the other side of this.
They say: We must support Ukraine or the dominoes will fall.
Well, that was a theory from the Cold War, which didn't turn out to be true even during the Cold War. The interesting thing is, it is useful to understand how the Soviet Union lost, and to my mind, it is very clear how the Soviet Union was defeated: The engine of capitalism defeated the engine of socialism, the engine of communism. There is no comparison. Capitalism, which is freedom--the freedom to exchange goods, the freedom to trade goods across boundaries--is so incredibly powerful that it has driven our success, but the Soviet Union couldn't keep up in the arms race because socialism just frankly doesn't work. It doesn't work for developing a strong military--they were always much weaker than we actually thought they were--but it also doesn't work for charity or anything else.
One of the great things about our country is its incredible wealth, all the
way down to our middle class, which exceeds the middle class of any country on the planet, but also because that great wealth has allowed such an amazing amount of charity.
Even our national parks--as you look around and see most of our national parks, a huge percentage of the land in our national parks was actually donated by capitalists. A lot of the land is being set aside in the Western States, and very wealthy people are buying the land so it won't be developed, and it will remain pristine. But that is capitalism. That is a result of capitalism. Socialism doesn't work.
The stories of socialism abound. There was a story in Poland of how price controls worked and how they always inevitably led to shortages.
A guy goes in to buy eggs, and he says: Are you the store that doesn't have eggs?
The guy says: No. We are the store that doesn't have toilet paper. The store across the way is the store that doesn't have eggs.
That is the story of socialism. It is scarcity; that is the story of price controls.
There has been a debate for a long time in our country about whether or not you can have a free market, a capitalist society, and have a large military industrial state. This was some of the division after the war between the Libertarians and the Conservatives, a little bit between Buckley and Murray Rothbard among the Libertarians. Rothbard and the other Libertarians were worried that if you had a big military state, the amount of money that went into it would cause us to lose our freedoms; that you couldn't have both; that really you need not have this massive military state. That argument still goes on.
I am one of the ones here who say that balancing our budget, spending what comes in, is so important that we should look at spending across the board. That spending would include military spending, and it would include entitlement spending. But it is part of the problem, and I will be very ecumenical in my criticism in that the debt is the fault of both parties. The Democrats are just completely oblivious. They don't care at all. The Republicans kind of pretend to care, and many of the Big Government Republicans who will support this bill are fine with sending money to Ukraine, but they also want virtually unlimited increases in military spending as well.
Really, it is the reverse of the current compromise that is actually needed to defend our country. The reverse of the compromise would be to say that everything needs a little bit of a haircut. You know, we are not going to balance the budget by cutting Sesame Street, so I don't go out there, saying: Let's just cut public television, and we will balance the budget. No. What I say is: Let's cut a little bit of everything.
The thing is, people are afraid of that. People say--you know, even people running for office now say, like: You will raise the age of Social Security or you will cut entitlements.
Well, you have to look at everything. If you take entitlements off the table and you say ``I am not going to do anything about the entitlements,'' it is two-thirds of the spending. You can cut the entire budget we vote on, which is a third of spending, and you don't balance the budget or you barely get there. And we are not going to cut the whole thing. So what we have to do is trim a little bit across the board.
It is amazing how unreasonable that is up here. I am an outlier. I am one of the few people--there are probably two or three people in the Senate who would cut everything across the board a little bit. It may be more than that. It might be 10 or 15. But the thing is that I think people would be open to it.
Look, Medicare--Medicare is a $1 trillion budget. Could we cut anything out of it and still keep the Medicare benefit? I am not looking to tell poor people that they can't have healthcare or people who can barely afford it. No. I am saying: What could we do with $1 trillion to spend it better? Absolutely, we could spend it better and save some money. Could you not save 1 percent? Could you not save 5 percent?
When we look at this--I will give you an example. I will give you an example of something that just tugs at the heart strings: Alzheimer's disease. I have had family members with it. It is sad to watch it progress among people. We give generously--the government does. They give your money. It is not their money. But the government gives generously to Alzheimer's research. We are a big, rich nation. We ought to be able to study Alzheimer's disease. We ought to be able to do something, sure. So I am not against it. But let's say they got $100 million for research last year. Is nobody up here brave enough to say: Look, we are out of money. We will give you $95 million next year.
This isn't like eliminating Alzheimer's research; it is saying: You get 95 percent. I would say that to everybody. Everybody gets 95 percent of what you got last year.
When I say that at home, not one person looks askance. Not one person criticizes. They say: You are right. Why couldn't we do that? That is so reasonable. You are not being draconian. You are not being radical. We will just spend 95 percent of what we spent last year.
To a person--businessmen and -women come up to me and say: Yes, we have had bad years before where we have had to cut 30 percent of spending. So they are like: Five percent would be no big deal.
It never happens in government. In fact, as times get worse, as the economy goes in the tank, government spending goes through the roof.
But these are the things we have to talk about. These are the things we have to think about.
Madam President, can you tell me how much time I have remaining?
Good. Lots of time. I am just getting started.
Madam President, as we look at these things and try to make these decisions, it really is about having a government that sets priorities, and I can't emphasize enough how different it is from your local government to Washington.
Every mayor in the United States--I may not agree with their policies, but virtually every mayor--particularly smalltown America is this way--spends what comes in. Now, some of the bigger cities actually have a borrowing capacity and have gotten in trouble with loans, but most cities in America spend what comes in.
So when you go to the city council meetings, what do cities do? They do stuff you kind of want. They pave the roads, fix the roads, fix the stoplights, make sure the ditches are dug, and make sure the sewage works. We all kind of have agreed to have a certain amount of government, particularly at the local level. So, when you go to a city council meeting, there will be a budget. I know that is extraordinary. We don't do that up here. We spend $6 trillion, and we don't have a budget. We don't pass a budget. We haven't had a budget for the last 3 or 4 years. No budget. Six trillion dollars and no budget. That is insane. Everybody up here who is for that should be fired.
I produce a budget every year on my own, one Senator, not on the Appropriations Committees. I don't often win. Actually, I have never won my budget, but my budget is fairly dramatic according to Washington's standards. Mine is called the Penny Plan budget--cutting 1 percent across the board. That used to be the Penny Plan budget. That used to work in balancing the budget over 5 years, but we spent so much money on COVID. We locked you up and gave you all checks. We put masks on you, four or five masks, earmuffs, goggles, and sent you checks and told you not to work. Crazy. We spent so much money, now to balance your budget, it would actually be a 5-percent cut over 5 years to balance your budget, but it would make us stronger, and we could do it.
How would we do it? One of the things I proposed is, why don't we give government workers bonuses for finding waste? Wow, that would be something--an incentive for a government worker to save money. So you are in charge of a $12 million budget at the Department of Energy or Education. You are in charge, and you have your mission statement: Here is what you are supposed to do. If you think you could save $1 million just by not buying the wrong stuff and not buying too much of stuff, we should give you a raise.
I have been trying to pass that for 12 years. I can't get Democrats to agree to it. Do you know what their sticking
point is? Well, if that person has a $12 million budget and they save $1 million, we should spend it somewhere else. Literally, I am trying to give people an incentive to save money. I would think that the money, since we are $1.5 trillion in the hole every year, could go back to the Treasury, and their argument is, absolutely not. They must spend it somewhere else. Insane.
I remember a story of one Republican chairman telling me--when we took over a few years ago, they took over a chairmanship, and they went into one of the rooms, which was a big closet. They went in there, and there were like, I don't know, 5,000 printer cartridges, and they were like: Huh? I wonder what this is. Maybe they are saving money or they got a good deal on printer cartridges--which might have been true except for the fact that they didn't fit any computers or printers anymore. You know how it is with printers--everything changes. Some person had ordered something nobody in business would have ever done, and they had 5,000 printer cartridges they had to just throw away. This is how government works. You don't have the incentives.
Friedman put it this way. He said that nobody spends somebody else's money as wisely as their own. That is a pretty profound statement. I think that it is the most profound statement that you can apply to why government doesn't work very well.
It also goes in parallel with another statement, that government is a necessary evil. They go hand in hand because government is a necessary evil because you have to give up your liberty. We don't live in a perfectly free society. In a perfectly free society, nobody would tell you what to do at all. You would have no government, and you would keep all of your money. So we don't live there. We give up a certain amount of freedom to have safety and roads and things.
But those of us who understand and make this debate over liberty understand that we do have that liberty, and we are making a sacrifice to live in society. So we think our liberty is precious, so we don't want to give up too much. So we see government as a necessary evil, but we don't want too much of it because, if we gave up 100 percent of our income to have government, we would have no freedom--no freedom to enjoy the fruits of our labor. If we were to give up 50 percent, we would still think that is too much. So, somewhere, the pendulum is.
You know, those of us who believe in liberty are wanting more liberty and less government. We also want it because government is not very good at anything.
So, you know, I think it was Friedman who also said that only the government, if you put them in charge of the Sahara Desert, could have a shortage of sand because of just sheer incompetence. It is really not that people are stupid who work in government, although sometimes it is a debatable question; it is that they don't get the same incentives.
In business, people are rewarded for success, and some people worry about this. Some on the left hate business, and they hate it because they see it as a dog-eat-dog world, but it is a dog-eat-dog world where the only people who succeed in business succeed by pleasing someone else.
It is the interesting thing about transactions in capitalism. People think that transactions in capitalism are equal. They are kind of equal and not equal. So, if I want these glasses--and they are very expensive; they cost me, I think, $1.99--if I want these glasses, I will have to want the glasses more than my $1.99. So the person selling them--he wants my money or she wants my money more than the glasses, and I want the glasses more. So, even though it is an equal trade, it is an unequal trade because we are both motivated to trade, and there has to be some kind of disparity that we see. But the people who make these glasses only succeed if they sell them at a good cost and sell them cheaply.
These are actually from a foreign country. I won't mention which country because everybody hates all the other countries now and wants to shut down trade. But I think I feel richer that I can get them for $1.99. So I get them at like 20 at a time, and I leave them everywhere, and they break half the time, but for a $1.99, it is not bad.
But capitalism works to distribute goods. Can you imagine what would happen--think of your life tomorrow if Amazon and Walmart were bought by the government or what if they started telling Amazon and Walmart they couldn't buy other companies? Oh, they are already doing that. They are trying to prevent the merger of companies.
These are the philosophies that we are talking about that have led us to the situation where we are, because these are the philosophies of people who don't believe in spending what comes in. They believe in an infinite amount of spending, but they also don't prize liberty enough to keep people out of our economic affairs.
Walmart is an amazing store because you can go in, you buy this pen, it is scanned, and someone in Benton, within milliseconds, is finding out you bought that pen there, and they are sending another one. The pen is going out the door.
But that is capitalism. If it were the government, let's say the Post Office, not quite so efficient. Nothing in government works very well. It doesn't mean we won't have any government; it means we should have as little and as small a government as we could possibly have because nobody spends somebody else's money as wisely as their own.
Another way to think about this is to think about the councilman, and the city council has been commissioned, and they have something good. They want to build a theater or build something in the town. It is $10 million, and they say: Well, it is a good cause; let's do it. And they vote for it.
But if you ask that city councilman for $1,000 to invest in a business, which decision does the person spend more time with? Which decision does the person feel deep in his gut or her gut to give $1,000? When it is their money.
Government can't operate with people's money. So I don't know that we can change government. We could try adding some incentives to government, but what we could really try to do is make government small, since we know government is inefficient, and try to keep government out of other enterprises.
I do worry that, on both sides of the aisle, the fear of foreigners and the fear of foreign countries--the anger toward foreign countries-- is going to be to our detriment. When the average shopper goes to Walmart because of imported goods, they are $1,000 richer because their money goes further. A lot of the stuff is imported.
On some level we get it; like, in my State, we have Toyota. I drive a Toyota Camry up here. Several of my staff drive a Toyota Prius. We are proud of Toyota. They are owned by a foreign country--by Japan--but 20,000 Kentuckians work for them. Those Kentuckians understand we don't have any anger with the Japanese, and we shouldn't have anger with the Japanese.
But, recently, the administration is--everybody is clapping. There are many others who are clapping. They are banning Nippon Steel from buying U.S. Steel. What if it makes U.S. Steel stronger to be joined with Nippon Steel? We like Toyota. Why can't we like Nippon Steel?
Nippon Steel buys a lot of metallurgical coal in my State already, and already employs people. They are already good for America. If we forbid them from buying in another country, what if that country goes bankrupt, and now Chinese steel is more important or bigger or more powerful?
We broke up U.S. Steel in the 1920s. We never should have. They would be so big and so strong now had we not broken them up that they would be more likely to compete.
People are now saying: Big Tech--we hate Big Tech. Let's break Big Tech.
What is that going to do? It is going to make their Chinese competitors better and stronger.
We need to just stay the heck out of it. If people voluntarily want to watch TikTok, if people want to buy a radio from China or Japan or Vietnam, let them. If you like getting the prices, good. Buy it. But the more and more we have the anger and the isolationism that comes with breaking up trade, the more likely we come to war.
With regard to this bill, I think this bill really is Ukraine First and America last. I think the American people agree with me.
We have spent 5 days filibustering this, and I know we will lose sometime tonight. We can each speak for an hour. I think we will get to 2 or 3 in the morning. So we can hold them off. We can draw attention to this, but this is about winning America. It isn't about winning this vote. It is about showing America that we care about your sovereignty, we care about your tax dollars, and we think that the priority should be here, the priority should be our border; that we should be concerned enough to stay up, to protest, to filibuster, to protect Americans from a bill like this, to say that America is important, that our voters are important.
One of the supporters of this bill said today--and I won't mention them by name. But they said that people at home can't understand a bill like this, that the elite foreign policy minds of Washington somehow can understand this more than the people. I couldn't disagree more.
I think every one of my acquaintances and friends and people I run into in Kentucky have as much ability, if not more ability, than the people in this room to make a decision on this. And I have yet to meet one who came up to me and said: I want Ukraine first.
They say: I want to defend America's border. I want to defend America, and I want to defend a country that leaves us alone, that leaves us free, that allows volunteerism to create the great and vast wealth that our country has become.
Madam President, how many glorious minutes do I have left?
All right.
A lot of votes up here--win or lose--don't change things. I do predict that this vote is transforming things.
People have asked whether or not there is dissension on the Republican side. I think there is a great deal of dissension because what has happened on this bill is that a minority of Republicans have decided to side with all the Democrats, or virtually all of the Democrats, despite the fact that the majority of the caucus is against this bill. I think that has led to the length of this filibuster and the support for this filibuster.
We are 5 days in, and we will probably make it 5\1/2\ days on this filibuster. The last 24 hours or so have been a talking filibuster. My colleague from Utah, Senator Lee, spoke for 4 hours on Saturday. We do this because we care about our country. We care about the looting of the treasure. We care about the destruction of the dollar. We care about setting priorities and saying we don't have enough money; we don't have enough to be everything to everyone.
What we need to do is obey our oath of office. Our oath of office is to America. It doesn't mean we can't have sympathy for other countries. Come back to me when you have a surplus. When you are running a surplus, when you are running this country on a profit, when you are running this country and paying for the things you promised to our people, then come to me and ask me about another country.
But you don't borrow money for charity. You don't walk the street, and if you are a poor person and you have four kids, and you provide enough for your rent and food and your gasoline, and you are barely getting by, and you see a homeless person, you don't say, ``Hey, honey, let's go to the bank and borrow $1,000,'' and give it to that homeless person. Even if you are sympathetic, you might help them up. You might help them to the side of the street. You do not go to the bank and borrow money.
Ukraine can be the greatest cause in the world, but we are borrowing the money. There is no money. There is no rainy-day fund. There is no surplus, and there is no reason on God's green Earth we should be borrowing money to send it to Ukraine.
We are either going to print it up, which causes inflation and hurts the working class, or we are going to borrow it, and we go further in debt.
So I, for one, think that the American people are opposed to this bill. I think they are opposed to the concept of Ukraine first and America last.
I predict that this issue doesn't go away. I predict that the House of Representatives is not going to take up this bill. I predict that the vast majority of the Republicans in the House of Representatives are more conservative than the Republicans in this body, and I predict that this fight is not over.
During this debate and the fact that we were able to delay and talk about this for 5 days--5\1/2\ days--the Speaker of the House spoke out. I don't know that he would have been prompted to speak out, although he has spoken out previously against this. But the Speaker of the House spoke out today and said he is not taking this bill up.
See, they have put together border reform that actually would transform things, border reform that acknowledges that it is an emergency.
So I will be a no and continue to be a no on this bill because I think it puts Ukraine first and America last.
With that, I yield my time.