--- title: Rand Paul: Stop Paul Ryan's Omnibus Spending Bill description: It’s absurd that conservatives would agree to any new spending canonical: https://time.com/4154635/rand-paul-paul-ryan-omnibus-spending/ author: Rand Paul article:opinion: true article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2015-12-18T13:23:50.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-08-04T07:56:46.450Z article:section: Ideas og:title: Rand Paul: Stop Paul Ryan's Omnibus Spending Bill og:description: It’s absurd that conservatives would agree to any new spending og:url: https://time.com/4154635/rand-paul-paul-ryan-omnibus-spending/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltde093bcdab65f2d0/6988d9b9bc6cfc69913e2a3c/time-logo.jpg?branch=production og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 675 og:image:alt: TIME og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Rand Paul: Stop Paul Ryan's Omnibus Spending Bill twitter:description: It’s absurd that conservatives would agree to any new spending twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltde093bcdab65f2d0/6988d9b9bc6cfc69913e2a3c/time-logo.jpg?branch=production --- # Rand Paul: Stop Paul Ryan's Omnibus Spending Bill > Sponsored content. 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It explains how TIME's journalism is made, from the first pitch through the editorial decisions behind a finished story or cover. #### How can I read about how TIME chooses its covers? Inside TIME is the newsletter where TIME's Editor-in-Chief explains cover selection and the editorial reasoning behind major stories. It is free at time.com/newsletters. #### Who is the editor of TIME? Sam Jacobs is TIME's Editor-in-Chief. He writes Inside TIME, a twice-weekly newsletter about the newsroom's reporting and editorial decisions. #### Is Inside TIME free? Yes. Inside TIME is a free newsletter, available at time.com/newsletters. A paid TIME subscription is separate and available at time.com/subscribe-agent. ## Video: TIME Raw: Paul Ryan Says Omnibus Bill Was a Bipartisan Effort [Watch (HLS stream): TIME Raw: Paul Ryan Says Omnibus Bill Was a Bipartisan Effort](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/1VIYyAZF.m3u8) (1:59)  _Published 2015-12-18. Paul Ryan discusses the omnibus bill in a press conference_  by [Rand Paul](https://time.com/author/sen-rand-paul/)  ## Rand Paul Dec 18, 2015 1:23 PM UTC  by [Rand Paul](https://time.com/author/sen-rand-paul/)  ## Rand Paul Dec 18, 2015 1:23 PM UTC Today, Americans are worried about their future, and the future of their country. They are afraid that a mountain of debt will weigh down their children’s opportunities. They are worried that the American dream—that each succeeding generation would be better off—is increasingly out of reach as the country is weighed down by the burden of government debt that grows larger every single day. Unfortunately, the disastrous omnibus spending bill that Speaker Paul Ryan negotiated pushes the American dream further away from too many families. Following an all-too-familiar script–despite Republicans holding the majority in both houses of Congress–GOP leadership betrayed our principles through this terrible bill, acquiescing to the Obama administration’s determination to swell to our $18 trillion dollar debt. This irresponsible bill is another reminder of the Right and Left’s unholy alliance of spending more of our money at every turn. Conservatives in the House and Senate must fight this big government bill if we are to build a better future where our children can thrive, not just pay off our profligate spending. In the last decade we’ve added nearly $10 trillion in new debt, but what have we gotten? This economic madness has resulted in “The Great Stagnation”—stagnation of wages, labor force participation, and job growth. This year has seen the smallest uptick in[ wages](http://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/realer.pdf) since we first started tracking it in[ 1982](http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-07-31/worker-pay-in-u-s-rises-0-2-smallest-gain-in-records-to-1982). At the current pace, there will be more layoffs [this year](http://www.chicagotribune.com/business/ct-jobs-report-1204-biz-20151203-story.html) than any other year since the Great Recession. Labor force participation hasn’t been this low since Jimmy Carter was President. Speaker Ryan’s spending bill will only increase the misery of ordinary Americans struggling to provide for their families. The size of government is inversely proportional to individual liberty. As government grows, liberty is diminished. The government has no power that doesn’t come at the expense of personal liberty. The government has no money on its own—just what it confiscates from its citizens. And during the Obama years, government spending has grown at a record pace. Today, total government debt, including inter-government debt, now equals our GDP. It’s never been higher, except during World War II. This huge increase in government spending has not significantly altered the poverty rate. Today, nearly[ 15 percent](https://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/R44211.pdf) of our population lives in poverty. This increase in spending hasn’t increased the wealth of the middle class—full-time workers are still making less than they did in[ 2007](http://blogs.census.gov/2015/09/16/employment-earnings-and-poverty-estimates-for-workers-2014-some-signs-of-economic-recovery-but-the-evidence-is-mixed/). Only[ one in five](https://books.google.de/books?id=GInmAgAAQBAJ&pg=PA129&lpg=PA129&dq=one+in+five+dollars+welfare+tom+woods&source=bl&ots=CdU7t2mSdA&sig=jMTCXlDoHb4Rm0Ydatt0TGbu1v4&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0CC8Q6AEwA2oVChMIoKignO%5FMyAIVQhw-Ch0VCg7M#v=onepage&q&f=false) dollars meant for welfare recipients goes to the recipients—the other four dollars feed the Washington Machine or goes to the same powerful and politically connected banks, federal contractors, and big businesses. This corruption is why conservatives must fight this terrible bill. Speaker Ryan’s bill will further increase our $18 trillion debt by keeping us on course to borrow a million dollars a minute, ignoring our budget caps and adding $60 billion in new spending. It’s absurd that conservatives would agree to any new spending. Currently, some $3 trillion comes in to the US Treasury in taxes. Couldn’t the country survive on just $3 trillion dollars? I propose we do something truly extraordinary — let’s just spend what comes in. That’s why I’ve proposed a balanced budget that eliminates $1 trillion in spending. It does away with four cabinet departments and reduces the federal workforce by 15 percent. Throughout my time in the Senate, I have also fought to pass a Balanced Budget Amendment to the Constitution to keep future spending under control. Raising spending by $60 billion is one thing, but raising it to fund Democratic entitlements, welfare, and pork is another. It’s shocking that the GOP played any role in the negotiations process. This 2,242-page bill will fully fund Obama administration priorities such as Obamacare and President Obama’s 2012 executive amnesty program, providing tax credits and other federal benefits to hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants. It will continue to fund sanctuary cities while also granting $1.6 billion for the President’s refugee program — bringing an additional 85,000 refugees from high-risk areas into this country, all while failing to improve the vetting process and true reform of the visa program. Half a billion dollars will still be funneled through to Planned Parenthood, and appropriations include green energy subsidies for wind, solar, and alternative fuels. It even expands the surveillance state through incentives for companies to turn over customer information to the NSA and FBI. Washington cannot continue to promise everything to everyone without a plan to pay for it. I urge all conservatives in Congress to fight this terrible spending bill–because to not do so is to bankrupt our children’s futures. ## Transcript [ BLANK_AUDIO ] We are where we are, and we have a Bipartisan compromise. Or by the way, I think we've got some good wins, and look, Democrats win some things too. That's the nature of Bipartisan compromises. And so the way I look at this is, we have made the best of the situation we have, there are some really good wins in here for the American people. There are very good wins in here for the economy, for job creators, for tax payers. There are some important developments in here that will help us build a confident America. This spending bill reigns in the IRS, it stops the EPA overreach, it blocks several Obamacare provisions, and it prevents a taxpayer bailout of the, excuse me, risk corridor program. Let me say this, you know I don't like this process. Right? I mean you know that we inherited a process, a cake that was pretty much more than half baked. I don't like the way that these bills come together because I think we should do these separately, individually, through what we call regular order. That's why I just started this press conference saying, next year We are going to do things differently. Next year when we have a fresh start, we are doing things differently because I don't think that this is the way that we should be governing. Look, we disagree profoundly with the president on so many issues and we will oppose his agenda where we disagree on a lot of things and I think that we have shown that. But we feel because we think the country is heading in the wrong direction. Because the president's policies have now been in place for seven years, it's not working. Look at poverty, look at wages, look at the economy, look at foreign policy, look at the military, look at regulations. This isn't what a confident America looks like. So we owe the country a better agenda, a better way forward. We owe the country A fresh approach, a new plan. And that's what we're going to do and so no it doesn't require the president. We don't agree with the president. This is why we are gonna roll out our own program growth agenda which will stand in stark contrast to the agenda that's been pushed though here in the last seven years. ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"OpinionNewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/4154635/rand-paul-paul-ryan-omnibus-spending/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/4154635/rand-paul-paul-ryan-omnibus-spending/"},"headline":"Rand Paul: Stop Paul Ryan's Omnibus Spending Bill","datePublished":"2015-12-18T13:23:50.000Z","dateModified":"2026-08-04T07:56:46.450Z","description":"It’s absurd that conservatives would agree to any new spending","url":"https://time.com/4154635/rand-paul-paul-ryan-omnibus-spending/","keywords":["Congress"],"thumbnailUrl":"","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Rand Paul","jobTitle":null,"url":"https://time.com/author/sen-rand-paul/"}],"articleSection":"Ideas","image":[],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"/section/ideas/","name":"Ideas"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/4154635/rand-paul-paul-ryan-omnibus-spending/","name":"Rand Paul: Stop Paul Ryan's Omnibus Spending Bill"}}]},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"VideoObject","name":"TIME Raw: Paul Ryan Says Omnibus Bill Was a Bipartisan Effort","description":"Paul Ryan discusses the omnibus bill in a press conference","thumbnailUrl":"https://cdn.jwplayer.com/v2/media/1VIYyAZF/poster.jpg?width=720","uploadDate":"2015-12-18T15:26:00.000Z","contentUrl":"https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/1VIYyAZF.m3u8","embedUrl":"https://time.com/4154635/rand-paul-paul-ryan-omnibus-spending/","duration":"PT1M59S","potentialAction":{"@type":"SeekToAction","target":"https://time.com/4154635/rand-paul-paul-ryan-omnibus-spending/?jw_start={seek_to_second_number}","startOffset-input":"required name=seek_to_second_number"}}] ```