Exclusive — Sen. Rand Paul: Big, Beautiful Bill ‘Has a Lot to Offer’ but ‘Needs a Little Bit of Makeup’

The “big, beautiful bill,” or what Sen Rand Paul (R-KY) has labeled the “big, not yet beautiful bill,” has “a lot to offer” but needs a “little bit of makeup,” he said during a discussion on Breitbart News Daily.

“I call it the big, not yet beautiful bill. I think it has a lot to offer, but it needs a little bit of makeup and a little bit of hair touching up. It’s going to have a little bit of work,” Paul said, highlighting what he is for in the bill: the tax cuts.

“Basically the main thrust of it is, is the tax cuts … making them permanent. 110 percent for that. I supported it in 2017 and will support it again. I think it’s important to make the tax cuts permanent,” he said, noting that he believes the CBO score on it — which asserts that the tax cuts would add to the deficit — is “incorrect.”

Paul, a critic of the bill, then listed what his issues are.

“What bothers me, though, is that we do — with or without this bill — we run about a $2 trillion deficit a year, and I don’t think this bill changes it,” he said. “This would be a good opportunity, by simple majority, to actually reform our spending ways. But the spending cuts, I think, are weak and anemic, and some of them, in fact, are fake,” he said, providing an example.

“So for example, Biden said he was going to forgive the student loans. The court told him he couldn’t do it. It adds up, to I don’t know 150, $160 billion, and in this bill, they say, ‘Well, we’re not going to forgive the student loans.’ Well, the courts have already said they’re not going to forgive the student loans, so they’re cutting something that’s never going to be spent,” he said.

“They’re counting that as a cut. We do know that the bill will add about $300 billion in spending, $150 billion for military, $150 billion for border. We think there’s another $100 billion stuck in for a variety of things. There’s about $400 billion worth of spending,” he said. “As far as spending cuts, they say over 10 years, it’ll be $1.5 trillion. That’s $150 billion a year. And if you’re adding 400 billion in the first couple years, it looks like you might have a wash in the first couple years. And most of these budgets in the past, or most of these bills in the past, they have ten-year windows, but most of the believable stuff happens up front, and stuff that may or may not occur seems to happen in the out years,” Paul said, walking through his issues. Ultimately, he believes there must be more spending cuts and wants spending levels brought back down to pre-pandemic levels.

But the number one issue for Paul is that the measure raises the debt ceiling $5 trillion.

“And my analogy is that if you’re a 16-year-old teenager, you give them a credit card in the first month they run out the maximum $2,000 on the credit card on booze and gambling. Would you give them — say, ‘Oh, hon, I’m so sorry. You ran against your debt limit. Why don’t we increase it to $10,000.’ Well, no one would do that. And I think Congress is sort of like reckless teenagers in their spending habits,” Paul said, contending that they should not get more credit.

“We should be restricting their line of credit,” he added.

“And so what I’ve offered is, instead of 5 trillion, I’ve said, let’s give them three or four months’ worth. And what’s scary about it is that’s over $500 billion for three or four months, that’s what I would give them. And then I’d have another vote in three or four months, and they make promises,” he said, concluding the debt ceiling could be used as a “lever” to “try to ensure that people actually act responsibly.”

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