Rand Paul Condemns 'Big, Not-So-Beautiful Bill' On The Senate Floor

Forbes Breaking News

During debate on the Senate floor, Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) rose in opposition to the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, and warned of its impact on the national deficit.

Transcript

00:00President. I recognize a senator from Kentucky. In deciding whether to vote for

00:06the big not-so-beautiful bill, I've asked a very specific question. Will the

00:11deficit be more or less next year? The answer, without question, is this bill

00:18will grow the deficit. The federal government has fancy formulas and

00:22hundreds of wonky accountants who inform us of their projections over ten years.

00:27But you often can't trust these projections. In an excellent piece

00:33written by the Foundation for Economics and Education, entitled, The CBO's

00:38Projections Are Worse Than Useless, Eric Schuller writes,

00:42long-term analysis and language is commonplace in U.S. national politics,

00:47but it achieves no useful outcome. It confuses far more than it clarifies. It

00:53does not provide accurate estimates of long-term results. It does not improve

00:57the average voters understanding of policy effects. And it gives politicians a means

01:03to claim they are being fiscally responsible without actually ever

01:08exercising any prudence whatsoever. Sometimes the predictions are off because

01:14a new Congress is elected and changes the law. Eric Schuller writes that for any

01:19projection of a ten-year budget to be accurate, the Congressional Budget Office

01:23has to assume that the law won't change for ten years, even as most of the

01:28politicians that make the laws risk being replaced every two years, and all of

01:33them advocate for changes of one stripe or another. Schuller states that few in

01:38Washington will admit Congress has a knack for starting any proposed cuts in the

01:44later years, while letting spending run wild in the immediate future. Sometimes

01:49these predictions are off by a trillion dollars or so because the economy grew more

01:54slowly or more quickly than anticipated. Bruce Thompson, a former Senate aide and

02:00Assistant Secretary of Treasury, writes, the Congressional Budget Office

02:05miscalculated the deficit last year by a trillion dollars. So in deciding whether to

02:10vote for any big, monstrous bill, it helps to ask the right question. To me the most

02:16pertinent question is how will the bill affect the deficit in the next year?

02:20Currently our deficit is estimated to be a little under two trillion dollars this

02:25year. What will happen to the debt in 2026 if this bill passes? Well using the

02:31math most favorable to the supporters of the bill, referred to as the policy

02:37baseline, the deficit in 2026 will still be two hundred and seventy billion dollars

02:44more than this year. So even using the math, even using the formulas that the

02:50supporters of the bill like, the deficit will grow by two hundred and seventy

02:54billion next year. This, that's just not good if you profess to be fiscally

02:58conservative. Why will the deficit grow next year? Well even if you argue that the

03:042017 tax cuts don't need to be counted in the calculation at all, the new tax cuts

03:09add up to two hundred and thirty four billion dollars to the debt next year. In

03:15addition, the big not-so-beautiful bill adds new spending of over five hundred

03:21billion dollars. Military, border, agricultural subsidies, etc. That spending is

03:27front-loaded and will be spent in the first four years of the ten-year window.

03:32Legislative spending is one of the few items in the bill that is exact. It isn't

03:37estimated. If they say they'll spend five hundred billion, they're going to spend

03:41five hundred billion, all in the first few years. So in order not to add to the

03:46deficit, the BBB, the big not-so-beautiful bill, has to have

03:50corresponding spending cuts to counter all the new spending. Unfortunately, the

03:56spending cuts are back-loaded to the final five years of the ten-year window when

04:00several tax cuts expire and the spending increases are finished. In addition,

04:06elections occur every two years and could easily wipe out any perceived savings

04:11that might occur in the later years. The only real certainty in this budget drama

04:16are the budget years coming in the immediate future. It's the next year or two

04:23are the only things that are actually of any certainty. So if we analyze this bill

04:27from that perspective, we discover that the bill increases the debt by five hundred

04:33billion dollars in the first five years. This is not the CBO projection that

04:38Republicans have not liked. This is the projection they are using says the debt

04:42will add five hundred billion dollars in the first five years. Now they say

04:47somehow miraculously in the last five years it gets to a five hundred billion

04:51dollars in savings. So it's a trillion dollars shipped from year five to year ten.

04:55The CBO scores it differently, not as encouraging, and says it adds over three

05:01trillion dollars in debt. So which is it? Does this bill save five hundred billion

05:06over ten or does it add three trillion over ten? The truth is that anybody, that even a

05:13person with a magic crystal ball, it's anybody's guess. Which brings us back to maybe

05:19we have to judge the effects of the big not-so-beautiful bill by looking at what

05:24happens to the debt next year. Supporters of the bill admit it adds two hundred and

05:30seventy billion dollars to the debt next year. That's the only thing we know for

05:35certain. We don't know what happens in year three, four, seven, eight, nine, ten, but we

05:40know next year this bill will grow the deficit by two hundred and seventy billion

05:45dollars. In addition, the bill increases the debt ceiling by five trillion dollars.

05:51What does that mean? That is an admission that they know they aren't controlling the

05:57deficit. They know that the ensuing years will add trillions more. So we're adding

06:02two trillion this year, but they're anticipating, the authors of the bill

06:07anticipating, adding more than two trillion next year. That doesn't sound at

06:11all conservative to me and that's why I'm a gnome.

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