Beech Tree News Network

Our country is running a deficit, a very serious deficit. We are fiscally broke and there is no end in sight to curb the limitless spending in Washington. I am outraged by the waste that pollutes our government. It makes my blood boil to see money that should be spent defending our country, instead being wasted.
 
I have argued for years that we must not borrow money from China to give to Pakistan. Just this month I led the fight on the Senate floor to stop the United States from spending 300 million dollars of your taxpayer money to fund F16 fighter planes, which were being subsidized to Pakistan. Why are we funding planes for Pakistan when our own nation is starving for so many improvements?
 
While we often focus on egregious government waste, make no mistake that government waste exists at every spending level. Recently, I discovered that the U.S. State Department is spending $90,000.00 to promote peaceful relations with Great Britain. Really? I thought that the 200 years of friendship since the War of 1812 might be a clue that we have peaceful relation with Great Britain. How can this kind of wasteful spending continue to occur?
 
Every time the British Prime Minister visits Washington and dines with our President, we hear about our special relationship with the UK, but somehow Washington bureaucrats thought it would be wise to spend money to nurture this already strong relationship.
 
Our nation borrows nearly a million dollars a minute, and yet we are spending money on promoting tea with the British? How about we take that money and apply it towards our debt. There exists a culture in Washington, which requires government agencies to spend every penny of their budget, even if that means hosting film festivals and poetry readings in London. Personal fiscal responsibility is something which does not exist in Washington. Every household and business in America strives to balance their budget but somehow that does not apply to our federal government. 
 
We must lead by example. For every year that I have been fighting for you in Washington, I have returned unspent money from my budget back to the treasury. In the last five years I have returned $2.4 million of my annual budget. I do not believe in the mantra that if you’ve got it, you must spend it. I am outraged by this waste and you should be too. I will continue to fight for you every day in Washington and together we will stop all fraudulent spending, big and small.

U.S. Senator Rand Paul