Rand Paul: “this is an amendment to pay for the emergency funds. I think for too long in this body we have just simply added on…”

“this is an amendment to pay for the emergency funds. I think for too long in this body we have just simply added on funds, often for good causes, but we keep spending money we do not have. I think the mark of a good legislator is making priorities. If we choose to spend some money on an emergency, we should take the money from somewhere else in the budget. In this amendment we have proposed to take the money from foreign aid. When the American people are asked if they think we should be sending welfare to other countries or building bridges in other countries when our bridges are falling down in this country, 77 percent of them think we should not be sending money overseas when we have problems at home. This amendment would take unspent foreign aid money from this year and apply it toward the disaster funding. It would also take some unspent money from the State Department. I think it is responsible budgeting. It is essentially taking money from another area, spending it, and not adding to our debt. There are repercussions to the debt we have. I tell people the debt has a face. Every time we drive to the store our gas prices are rising or our food prices are rising. The reason our prices are rising is because we have to pay for the debt by printing new money. As we print new money at the Federal Reserve to pay for our debt, we diminish the value of the dollar so our gas prices rise and our food prices rise.…”