Sen. Rand Paul (R-Kentucky), son of Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas), responded to the debt ceiling calamity this week after the Senate passed the Budget Control Act of 2011. “I voted in opposition to this bill because it doesn’t do enough to provide a stable solution to our nation’s debt crisis,” Paul said. Ron Paul also voted against the debt ceiling plan.
The debt ceiling plan will raise the debt ceiling in two steps, enact $2.4 trillion or more in cuts over the next decade and create a special congressional committee to look into more cuts by November. Like his father, the Kentucky Senator believes that the debt ceiling plan won’t enact any real spending cuts despite its claims to the contrary. “It never balances, and it will add at least $7 trillion in new debt on top of our current 14 trillion. This is not sustainable,” Paul argued.
Following the Senate’s approval of the debt ceiling plan, President Obama released a statement in which he called for a “balanced approach” to fixing the federal budget. In response, Paul said that “the American people are calling for a balanced budget.” Paul also added that the debt ceiling plan “does nothing to fix the overreaches of both parties over the past few years: Obamacare, TARP, trillion-dollar wars, runaway entitlement spending.”
Paul argued that the consequence of Obama’s economic policies, such as TARP and Obamacare, will be “trillions of dollars in new debt.” While Sen. Paul is a proponent of government spending reforms, he stops short of his father’s insistence that the government limit its spending to services that are constitutionally mandated. Rep. Paul, a candidate for the GOP nomination, is celebrated for his Libertarian beliefs.
Sen. Paul and Rep. Paul were both signatories to the Cut, Cap and Balance Pledge on the debt ceiling. The debt ceiling pledge required its signatories to pressure lawmakers to cut federal spending, cap federal spending and pass a Balanced Budget Amendment to the Constitution as preconditions to a “yes” vote on the debt ceiling.
The Cut, Cap and Balance Act of 2011 didn’t make it through the Senate, but the newly approved debt ceiling plan will force both the House and the Senate to vote on a Balanced Budget Amendment.
At the conclusion of his statement on the debt ceiling calamity, Paul said that “Americans deserve more from their government than a weak compromise that doesn’t actually cut spending and they deserve better leadership from their President.” Sen. Paul assured his constituents that he would “continue to fight every day for fiscal sanity.”
