https://www.zerohedge.com/political/plenty-gop-help-senate-shoots-down-rand-pauls-balanced-budget-resolution

With Plenty Of GOP Help, Senate Shoots Down Rand Paul's Balanced-Budget Resolution

Every few years, Kentucky Senator Rand Paul puts forth a quixotic proposal to balance the federal budget. It's not the financial math that makes it a daunting task, but rather Washington's bipartisan addiction to spending.

It predictably fails each time, but accomplishes two things in the process. First, it puts senators who've espoused fiscal discipline on the record as opposing it when the rubber meets the road. Second, over time, Paul's proposals illustrate the insidious effect of kicking the can down the road—as each new proposal requires bigger cuts to push Uncle Sam to breakeven.

Paul's first such budget resolution, in 2011, didn't even cut spending. By merely freezing it for five years, the budget was projected to reach balance this year.

In 2018, Paul put forth his "Penny Plan," which would balance the budget in five years by cutting just one cent out of every non-Social Security dollar for five consecutive years.

In 2019, the government's worsening fiscal condition forced the Penny Plan to become the "Pennies Plan," with the five-year plan now requiring consecutive 2-cents-per-dollar cuts for five years.

Things have gotten a lot worse. In just the two years since Paul's last proposal, our federal overlords have added an astounding $11 trillion to the national debt. Interest payments on the now-$30.5 trillion balance have grown by 32%. As a result, Paul's proposal this week required cutting six cents out each spending dollar for five years.

Bernie Sanders railed against what he described as "massive cuts to programs the American people need." However, as Paul noted in his own remarks, “All this plan does is return to 2019 spending levels. If the federal government spent at 2019 levels this year, we would have a $388 billion surplus."

The measure was defeated by a 67-29 vote. Faithful to their big government values, no Democrats backed the measure.

However, 17 "fiscally conservative" Republicans voted against it: Blunt (MO), Boozman (AZ), Burr (NC), Capito (WV), Collins (ME), Cornyn (TX), Graham (SC), Inhofe (OK), McConnell (KY), Murkowski (AR), Portman (OH), Rounds (SD), Sasse (NE), Shelby (AL), Thune (SD), Tillis (NC) and Young (IN).

Dodging Paul's intent to put everyone's true fiscal colors on the record, four Republicans skipped the vote altogether: Daines (MT), Moran (KS), Toomey (PA) and Wicker (MS).

Things were already bleak, but the fiscal math is now taking a sharp turn for the worse. Today's rising interest rates translate into more money required just to cover interest payments.

According to the Congressional Budget Office's latest baseline, interest expense will triple from nearly $400 billion in 2022 to $1.2 trillion in 2032—totaling $8.1 trillion over that horizon. As terrible as that sounds, it's going to be a major understatement.

That's because CBO's Treasury rate assumptions are in the midst of being mugged by reality. For its baseline, CBO assumes the 3-month T-bill rate will average 0.9% this calendar year, but it's already spiked to 1.69%. Similarly, CBO assumes the 10-year will average 2.4% in 2022 and only rise to 3.8% ten years from now. It was 3.28% on Thursday.

At least Rand Paul can say he tried.

https://thefederalist.com/2022/06/17/congress-finds-even-more-reasons-to-disregard-the-bill-of-rights/

Congress Finds Even More Reasons To Disregard The Bill of Rights

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There’s nothing so dangerous as a politician who undermines the Bill of Rights during a moment of tragedy or crisis. Those rights, set forth as the first ten amendments to the U.S. Constitution as a redundancy to make explicitly clear what is beyond the scope of the federal government’s enumerated powers, are not wishy-washy suggestions meant to be ignored during times of “emergency.” On the contrary, it is during such times when their safeguards become most critical.

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After suffering a terrorist attack, or enduring the ravages of lockdowns, or reeling from the staggering loss of young murder victims, trading freedom for the alluring promises of peace and security is at once reckless and irresistible. That is why our first ten amendments are a necessary line in the sand, so to speak, a caution from one generation of Americans to the next about the dangerous predilection of ever-encroaching government power to descend toward outright tyranny.

In this way, the Bill of Rights represents both a prohibition against illegitimate government action and a kind of easily digestible warning label counseling ordinary citizens: should your government attempt to infringe these most basic rights, then you will know that your continuing freedom is in jeopardy.

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The Ninth and Tenth Amendments’ dual assurances that “The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people” and that “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people” were meant to redress this risk. The Bill of Rights, in other words, provides expansive protection for individual liberty, constrained only by those powers constitutionally delegated to the federal government.

This moral idea — that personal freedom should be maximized and government power minimized — has always been revolutionary. It recognized that all legitimate power first originates with the people before they voluntarily cede some of their power to a functioning government. Conversely, when Congress decides that it may disregard the express prohibitions set forth in the Bill of Rights in order to pursue its own policy preferences, then it resurrects that same system where those with power “rule” and those without power “obey.”

To have any value, individual rights must belong wholly to the people. If personal freedoms were understood as nothing more than “gifts” from the government to the people, then they would be reduced to mere “privileges” either granted or denied according to the state’s prerogative. For unalienable natural rights to have substantive meaning, they must be inherently possessed by individual Americans, immune from the vagaries of government whim.

For free speech, the right to self-defense, freedom from unreasonable search and seizure, and due process to protect Americans ably from the potential threats of government tyranny, they must exist irrespective of any government action seeking their dilution or outright abrogation. Whereas man-made laws may sway from side to side when a nation faces heavy winds, it is imperative that unalienable natural rights never bend.

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