Rand Paul: “Although I recognize the chairman of the committee's points that this literally is not the appropriation, I rise in…”

“Although I recognize the chairman of the committee's points that this literally is not the appropriation, I rise in opposition to the bill, but I do want to speak out against this whole process of what we are trying to do with the bailout, not only this time but the time before. It is a system that has brought this country to its knees, and I think we haven't recognized what the cause has been, and therefore, we're not looking at this problem in the proper manner in order to solve the problem. There has been a lot of money involved and a lot of money spent. There have been appropriations that we've made here in the Congress as well as the trillions of dollars the Federal Reserve has used to try to bail out the financial industry, and nothing seems to be working. I think it's mainly because we haven't recognized nor have we admitted that excessive spending can cause financial problems. Excessive debt can cause some problems. Inflation--that is, the creation of new money and credit out of thin air--can cause a lot of problems, and we've been doing it for decades. It was predictable. It was not a surprise that we got ourselves into a financial mess because of a system that is deeply flawed. So what do we have? What have we been doing now for the last 6 months to a year? We have been spending more. We have been running up debt like we've never run up debt before, and we're printing money like we never have before. We think that is going to solve the problem.…”