Budget hawk Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) on Tuesday mocked the Senate plan to cut $9.4 billion in Biden-era spending, demanding that if the chamber can’t make cuts of $100 billion or more, then the “public needs to get new senators.”
While committing to vote for the cuts in a spending recissions legislation this week, Paul called the total “a rounding error” compared to the nearly $2 trillion federal deficit.
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Talking to CNBC’s Maria Bartiromo, Paul called Republicans weak on spending cuts and said raising them to the level he’d like “would require a special sort of surgical procedure where they would implant spines into members of the Republican caucus.”
On Mornings with Maria, Paul said that it’s time to make cuts far more serious than $9 billion.
We need true fiscal conservatives in Congress who can easily eliminate wasteful spending.
— Senator Rand Paul (@SenRandPaul) July 15, 2025
If Washington can’t agree to cut $9 billion, we aren’t taking our fiscal challenges seriously.
Let's put an end to omnibus bills that combine multiple issues and commit to stopping this… pic.twitter.com/PJMAvotgZx
“The rescission package. It’s $9 billion, but it’s $9 billion compared to a $2 trillion deficit. It doesn’t really markedly shift or change the direction of the country. I’m for it, but you would have to do a lot more. And so, really, you’d have to be coming back with $100 billion here, another $100 billion, you’d have to really do significant. But we already have people, the big spenders, whining in the Senate saying, ‘Oh, we already voted for that. We love that spending, and we’re not going to vote to get rid of it,’” said the senator.
.@SpeakerJohnson on rescissions bill: "The Friday deadline looms. We're encouraging our Senate partners over there to get the job done and to pass it as is. That's what we did…this in our view is low-hanging fruit." pic.twitter.com/dz6TaJJ9dM
— CSPAN (@cspan) July 15, 2025
He added, “The House passed this just barely by a whisker. The question is, will the Senate pass it? If the Senate doesn’t pass it, frankly, the public needs to get new senators, you know, because if you can’t cut $9 billion, my goodness. It has to be done.”
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The recissions legislation includes cuts to high-profile programs, including funding for public TV and radio.
Paul won the support for further cuts from another of Bartiaromo’s guests on Tuesday’s show, Sen. Bill Hagarty (R-TN), who said the $9.4 billion cut is “just a start.”