The House Republicans’ plan to cut $74 billion out of the budget will add $3 trillion of debt over the next five years and is only slightly better than President Barack Obama’s plan, Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., tells Newsmax.TV. The tea party favorite said the country must act more boldly.
Paul, who has called for $500 billion in cuts, said everything should be on the table, including third-rail items like defense spending and Social Security.
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“I hope that we’ll get more significant cuts, and the reason is that, if we get what the Republicans are proposing in the House, it will add $3 trillion in debt over five years,” he said in an exclusive Newsmax interview at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington. “President Obama’s plan adds more, $3.8 trillion, that’s just too much. I don’t think a country can continue to add trillions of dollars of debt and I fear the consequences if we don’t act more boldly.”
Washington isn’t quite ready to make the bold moves necessary to shrink government such as ending the Department of Education, whose budget the GOP doubled in 2002 and 2003, he said.
“If you’re only going to look at this much of the budget, they’re only looking at non-military discretionary spending,” Paul said. “That’s all the president’s looking at, it’s all the Republicans are looking at. The president freezes it at 2010 levels, it does nothing but add debt. Republicans freeze it at 2008 levels, but it still adds enormous debt. The only way you balance the budget is you have to look at the whole budget . . . You have to look at military spending.”
When asked about his plan to fix Social Security, Rand whispered, “It’s secret.” Nonetheless, he added that the age of eligibility has to be changed.
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