On the recordDecember 20, 2018
as we come to a close of the 115th Congress, this will be my last speech in this Congress. It is an honor to be in this body. It is a privilege that I take very seriously, as I know the Presiding Officer does as well. Today, I come to talk about a topic that I told this body in my maiden speech was the reason I ran for the Senate, and at the end of each year, I try to remind us all of where we are on this topic--the financial crisis that the United States faces today. It is intertwined with the global security crisis that we heard about in a speech just a minute ago. They are very much interrelated. Today, we have $21 trillion in debt. What makes that so important is that just this week, just recently, the Federal Reserve increased the Fed fund rate one-quarter point. To most people, that really doesn't sound like a big deal, but this is the ninth increase in just the last couple of years. Just this one-quarter point increase means $50 billion of new interest that the Federal Government is obligated to pay each year, every year. Over the last couple of years, those nine increases together represent a 2.25-percent increase. So that 2.25 percent increase in the interest rate means an additional $450 billion of new interest expense liability the Federal Government has incurred over the last couple of years. To put that in perspective, we only raise about $2.2 trillion in total Federal income tax.…
