Sen. Rand Paul said Sunday he supported President Donald Trump’s tax cuts in 2017 and still supports making them permanent, but he thinks spending cuts currently in his “big beautiful bill” are “wimpy and anemic” and he will not vote for a Senate version of the bill that could raise the nation’s debt by as much as $5 trillion.
“I still would support the bill, even with wimpy and anemic cuts, if they weren’t going to explode the debt,” the Kentucky Republican said in an interview on “Fox News Sunday.” “The problem is the math doesn’t add up. They’re going to explode the debt. The House’s is $4 trillion. The Senate’s actually been talking about exploding the debt by $5 trillion.”
He added that the deficit is a “threat to the country.”
“I think it’s the greatest threat to national secuirty, and so I think you can’t do this,” the senator said. “There’s got to be someone left in Washington who thinks debt is wrong and deficits are wrong and wants to go in the other direction,” he said.
Paul also pointed out that in September, when the government’s fiscal year ends, the deficit will be at about $2.2 trillion.”
“In March, every Republican, virtually every Republican other than me, voted to continue the Biden spending levels, which will give us a $2.2 trillion deficit,” said Paul. “Now, if you increase the debt ceiling $4 trillion to $5 trillion, that means they’re planning on $2 trillion this year and more than $2 trillion next year. That’s just not conservative.”
Paul said that he has told party leaders that even with the bill’s imperfections, he’d vote for it if not for the debt ceiling increase.
“I can’t vote to raise the debt ceiling by $5 trillion,” he said. ‘There has to be someone left in Washington who thinks debt is wrong and deficits are wrong and wants to go in the other direction. The idea that we’re going to explode deficits and the projects are now looking at over $3 trillion in deficits over the next 10 years, I think, is not a serious proposal.”
Meanwhile, there are some Republicans who want to remove the debt ceiling raise from the bill “because it is a walk of shame,” said Paul.
“Every time the debt ceiling raises, the people who have been voting for the spending have to walk in shame to the front of the House or the front of the Senate and say, yes, I’ve been voting for all this deficit spending and now I’m willing to vote to raise the debt ceiling,” he said. “I would say the opposite. I offered an amendment two weeks ago to raise the debt ceiling for three months. That’s $500 billion, believe it or not, for three months, and the reason I do it every three months and force the vote is it’s a point of leverage.”
Meanwhile, there is opposition to cuts in programs such as medical coverage and healthcare, but Paul said that none of the programs are really free.
“You can say I’ll give you free healthcare, and people are ‘oh, thank you for free healthcare,'” he said. “What you don’t tell them is we’re borrowing the money from China to pay your healthcare, so we run a deficit of $2 trillion. [This] leads to inflation, which leads to rising prices, which squeeze you on the other side. So the bottom line is there is no free lunch. You can offer people free stuff, but if you’re borrowing money to do it you end up punishing them with inflation.”
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