Rand Paul
Senator for Kentucky · Republican · United States
“If Americans are to live under this emergency rule, it will not be because the President sought too much power; it will be because Congress let it happen.”
“Tariffs are taxes, plain and simple. Tariffs don't punish foreign governments; they punish American families. When we tax imports, we raise the price of everything from groceries, to smartphones, to washing machines, to just about every conceivable product. Voters in the last election indicated they were fed up with high prices.”
“There are constitutional processes that are incredibly important. The Constitution doesn't allow the President of the United States to be the sole decider. Even the President must abide by the proper limits of Executive power.”
“Trade never occurs unless you want a product more than you want your money. Has anyone ever made a trade, a voluntary trade, where you thought you were being ripped off? No. You buy stuff only because you think you are making a good deal. Those who say that, oh, no, we are being ripped off--it is a fallacy.”
“But for those who care to listen closely, within that praise will be heard a touch of disdain. It is no secret that Congress lacks the fortitude to stand up for its prerogatives, and this is bipartisan.”
“we have congressional nonentity, choosing to become a nonentity, not participate, do whatever you want? It is a recipe for disaster. Madison and those of the revolutionary generation would have expected Members of Congress to jealously guard their authority from the imperial pretensions of the Chief Executive.”
The complete record
Every one of 55 lines we hold for Rand Paul, in date order, each linked to its source. Free to read, in full, without an account. Page 1 of 2.
“The oath I took upon taking this office is to the Constitution of the United States and not to any person or faction. I want to preserve the divisions of power that protect us and our children from the rule of one person. That is why I will today vote to end this emergency. I will vote to reclaim the taxation power of Congress, where the Constitution properly places it, and I urge the Members of my party to do the same. I yield the floor. The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Idaho.”
“Tariffs bring us closer to the day when the people are ruled by a czar of industrial policy. When that day comes, we will wish we had defended the Constitution when we still had the power to do so. We cannot afford to stand idly by while the constitutional principle of the separation of powers is eviscerated. Legislators who stand aside and abdicate the power to tax will one day rue the accumulation of power in the office of one person. I stand against this emergency, I stand against these tariffs, and I stand against shredding the Constitution. I have no animus towards the President. I voted for him and support his administration. I come to the floor today not because I want to but because I am compelled to. I love my country and the principles upon which it is founded.”
“Trade never occurs unless you want a product more than you want your money. Has anyone ever made a trade, a voluntary trade, where you thought you were being ripped off? No. You buy stuff only because you think you are making a good deal. Those who say that, oh, no, we are being ripped off--it is a fallacy. It asserts that one of the parties must necessarily lose or be taken advantage of. The argument belies a fundamental misunderstanding of trade. By definition, every voluntary trade is mutually beneficial. Trade is good. That isn't an opinion; it is a fact. For at least the last 50 years, as trade rises, so does wealth. And people say the middle class has gotten smaller? Slightly but only because it moved to the upper class. These tariffs will make Americans poorer, and they will make the defenders of those tariffs pay.”
“Tariffs are taxes, plain and simple. Tariffs don't punish foreign governments; they punish American families. When we tax imports, we raise the price of everything from groceries, to smartphones, to washing machines, to just about every conceivable product. Voters in the last election indicated they were fed up with high prices. Every time Americans went to the grocery store, they were reminded that inflation and putting food on their family's table was more difficult and left them with less money for other necessities. Many pundits say the 2024 election hinged on promises to reduce inflation and lower taxes. Does it make any sense to impose a tax on imports that will make all Americans worse off? Shouldn't we learn from our success? We should ask ourselves a fundamental question: Is trade good? Well, trade is simply capitalism.”
“If Americans are to live under this emergency rule, it will not be because the President sought too much power; it will be because Congress let it happen. If Americans are to live in a country where the President alone decides what is to be taxed, at what rate, and for how long, it will be because Congress is too feeble to stand up for the interests and bank accounts of the people. If Americans live in a country where their elected representatives in the legislature cannot or will not speak for them, it will be because those representatives silenced themselves. They gave in. They did not stand up and do their duty. We can show the people that the constitutional principle of the separation of powers still means something and that we can successfully challenge the Presidential attempt to raise taxes without the consent of Congress.”
“Congress said: Here. We don't want to deal with it. You can have it. Congress today can scarcely be bothered to even consider individual appropriations bills. By consistently waiting until the last second to pass a massive funding bill and threaten a government shutdown, the leadership deprives Congress of what Madison called its most complete and effectual weapon: the power of the purse. We just put it all in one bill, and then they say: If you don't for it, you are for shutting the government down. You can't shut the government down, so you have to vote for the massive bill, which includes more pork than you can probably ever imagine. Congress has--unique among the three branches--unilaterally disarmed and demonstrated itself unable and unwilling to check the Executive.”
“But for those who care to listen closely, within that praise will be heard a touch of disdain. It is no secret that Congress lacks the fortitude to stand up for its prerogatives, and this is bipartisan. Presidents in both parties routinely exceed their power because they know that Congress has weakened itself to such an extent that it cannot challenge and will not challenge Executive overreach. Congress delegates its legislative authority to the President so that the [[Page S2694]] laws we live under are, in reality, written by bureaucrats who the people do not know, will never meet, and cannot hold accountable through elections. But I don't want to let off both parties on this. The powers that have been given to the President over trade have been given to the President by Congress over many decades. Congress acquiesced.”
“Every time a party changes hands, they say: Well, you guys did this, so we are going to leapfrog and do this. And it goes back and forth until the individual citizen knows nothing other than the loss of liberty. Even President Trump didn't try to argue that this law called IEEPA, which is normally used for sanctions--he didn't act upon it in his first term. He makes a claim today, though, likely because the appropriate trade laws on the books require months to be implemented, and he can't wait. And the Republicans go along, and they say: Emergency? No problem. Constitution? What? Constitution? Forget about it. Members of his political party will stand by his assertion. Some may cast their actions today as an exercise of party loyalty. Some may even be praised by Pennsylvania Avenue.”
“we have congressional nonentity, choosing to become a nonentity, not participate, do whatever you want? It is a recipe for disaster. Madison and those of the revolutionary generation would have expected Members of Congress to jealously guard their authority from the imperial pretensions of the Chief Executive. To endorse governance by emergency rule is to fail to live up to what the Constitution demands of us, and failure to do our constitutional duty is an invitation to further emergency rule. I know some Republicans like the idea of taxing trade, but what if there is a next President who is a Democrat who says: By emergency rule, I decree there will be no gasoline-using cars. We will have only electric cars. That is what we are preparing ourselves for. Every distortion of the checks and balances of powers gets worse.”
“They are looking the other way and saying: Well, it is our President now. I had a reform of the Emergencies Act under the previous President, a Democrat. I had the same bill under a Republican. This should not be a partisan issue. The Founders would not have expected the upper chamber, the Senate, to let the novel use of a statute traditionally used to sanction adversaries to become used for tariffs to tax American people and to let it go unchallenged. This is not constitutionalism; this is cowardice. Our system of government cannot work when Congress abdicates its legislative authority. Madison said we would pit ambition against ambition, but what if we have Presidential ambition and we have congressional acquiescence? we have congressional timidity?”
“The House has essentially ruled that days are not days and they are not to be counted as days until such time as the House again agrees to allow days to be counted as days. Does that sound absurd? Absolutely. It is absurd. It is craven. It is cowardice at its best, and it is dishonest because a rule of the House is preventing a law from being obeyed. I didn't know we could pass a rule to prevent a law from being obeyed. When the emergency powers were granted to the President in 1966, the Emergencies Act was meant to constrain the Republic. We were already worried about too many emergencies. Many on my side have actually cosponsored bills that say emergencies should automatically end unless affirmatively approved by Congress. Many of those people now are looking the other way.”
“But they would be surprised-- the Founders would be shocked that Congress would voluntarily and recklessly and fecklessly give up their power to the Presidency, to submit to emergency rule. The Founders would not have expected the House of Representatives to become so craven as to refuse to even allow a vote on ending the emergency. The law says that the vote we will have is mandatory. It is privileged. The Senate will adhere to the law. The House will not have a vote. The House, in its haste to give away its power to tax, actually passed a rule to prevent a mandatory vote on ending the emergencies. They prevent it because the rule says that days no longer exist. They declared that legislative days will not exist despite the legislature continuing to meet each day.”
“Madison wrote in the Federalist Papers that the Constitution was to pit ambition against ambition. The natural ambition of men and women to accumulate power was to be checked by other branches of people who would say: You can't have that power. It is our power. That pitting of ambition back and forth was to constrain government. It was to constrain government from running away and power from being run away with one person. The Founding Fathers empowered Congress with tools to ensure that the liberties of the people would not be threatened by one-person rule. The Founders would not be surprised that the Executive would attempt to aggrandize power at the expense of the legislature. They would have expected it. Indeed, they did expect it.”
“There are constitutional processes that are incredibly important. The Constitution doesn't allow the President of the United States to be the sole decider. Even the President must abide by the proper limits of Executive power. Thankfully, our Constitution does more than merely hope that our Chief Executive will remain within the confines of the Constitution; our Constitution explicitly limits the power of the Presidency. Our Founders led a rebellion against a King precisely over this. They went to great lengths to circumscribe and limit the power of the Presidency. Devoted as they were to the preservation of individual liberty, the Founders divided power among three branches of government. But more importantly, those three branches were to check and balance each other to prevent one branch from accumulating too much power.”
“They worried about having too much power with the President, and so they severely constricted the power of the Presidency. They said the President couldn't take us to war; only Congress could. They said the President couldn't spend money; only Congress could. They said the President couldn't tax people; only Congress could. These were the very bedrock and still are the very bedrock of our constitutional principles. Yet, people--particularly on my side--are looking away and saying: Oh, whatever. We will just let the President do whatever. Look, I supported President Trump. I still support President Trump on many things. But I am not for a country run by emergencies. Even if the person was doing what I wanted and was, you know, making every day my birthday, I would not be for that unless we deliberated upon that.”
“The tariffs we discuss today are global tariffs. Just about every country in the world is subjected to at least a 10-percent tariff, to say nothing of the dozens of countries whose imports will be taxed at a much higher rate. Congress didn't debate these tariffs. Congress didn't vote to enact these tariffs. The tariffs are simply imposed by Presidential fiat, by proclamation. Government by one person who assumes all power by asserting a so- called emergency is the antithesis of constitutional government. It was Montesquieu that our Founding Fathers looked to in setting up the separation of powers. And Montesquieu said that when you unite the legislative power with the executive power in the body of one person, that no liberty can exist. They worried about this. They fretted about it.”
“It should not come as a surprise that in a country founded on a tax revolt, one person [[Page S2693]] is not allowed to raise taxes. Our Founding Fathers saw this and said: No, we want to make sure that the authority of taxation begins not only in Congress, that it actually originates in the House, the body closest to the people. Our Constitution forbids taxes from being enacted without the approval of Congress, and yet here we are. An emergency has been declared, as the Senator from Virginia remarked, everywhere. There is an emergency everywhere. Sounds like an emergency everywhere is really an emergency nowhere. But despite the constitutional restraints or constraints on executive power, Americans have now been ordered to pay higher taxes in the form of tariffs but without the consent of Congress.”
“Mr. President, you know, there was an old-fashioned conservative principle that believed that less taxes were better than more taxes; that if you taxed something, you got less of it, so that if you place a new tax on trade, you will get less trade. There was also this idea that you didn't do taxation without representation. That idea goes not only back to our American Revolution, it goes back to the English civil war as well. It goes back to probably Magna Carta. I mean, for hundreds of years the English were arguing of the supremacy of Parliament, that Parliament would be able to have the power over the King. So when we were leading up to the Revolution, the cry from James Otis was, ``Taxation without representation is tyranny.'' These were the words of James Otis, but they still ring true today.”
“I ask for the yeas and nays. The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there a sufficient second? There appears to be a sufficient second. The clerk will call the roll. The senior assistant legislative clerk called the roll.”
“I ask consent to waive the mandatory quorum call with respect to the Hoekstra nomination. The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered. ____________________”
“I ask for the yeas and nays. The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there a sufficient second? There appears to be a sufficient second. The clerk will call the roll. The assistant bill clerk called the roll.”
“In all the countries around the world that we object to is the idea that they don't have democratic rule. We should vote. This is a tax, plain and simple. Taxes should not be enacted by one person. So I will vote today to end the emergency. I will vote today to try to reclaim the power of taxation, the power of the tariff to where the Constitution designated it should properly be, and that is in Congress. The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mrs. Blackburn). The Senator from Louisiana. Russia”
“They so feared the power of taxation that they gave it specifically to originate in the House before it came to the Senate because the House was closer to the people, with elections every 2 years. This goes against the traditions of our country. I stand to speak against these tariffs. I stand to speak against these emergencies. I stand against the idea of skipping democracy, of skipping the constitutional republic, of rejecting our founding principles, not because I have any animus toward the President; I do this because I love my country, and I want to see the division of power enabled such that it protects us all from the amalgamation of power into one person such that it can be abused. Another name for ``emergency rule'' is ``martial law.'' Who would want to live under one person? That is the thing we all object to.”
“As we move forward in this debate, you will see that there are people on both sides of the aisle who question really whether we should be ruled by one person or whether the power should be separated. To me, this is not a partisan question. Some will try to make it a partisan question. To me, it makes no difference whether the President is Republican or Democrat. This is about the distribution of power. This is about the separation of power. This is about the admonition that Montesquieu gave us that when the Executive power and the legislative power are united in one person, there can be no liberty. Our Founding Fathers all believed that. They so feared the power of taxation that they gave it only to Congress.”
“We used to abide by the ancient principle of ``no taxation without representation.'' One of the first acts enacted into the law was the Tariff Act of 1789, which sought to generate revenue by placing a 5-percent tax on all imported goods and was signed into law, after passage by Congress, by George Washington. Alexander Hamilton's ``Report on Manufacturers'' is well known. According to Professor Douglas Irwin of Dartmouth College, every tariff recommendation put forth in the report was adopted by Congress in 1792. But simply voting on tariffs does not convert them into a good idea. It could make them constitutional. It could make this legal if Congress voted on it. It would still be economically a bad idea.”
“Under this doctrine, the Supreme Court will reject claims of Executive authority on issues of vast economic and political significance. It is hard to imagine that a 25-percent tax on everything from Canada would not be considered to be of vast economic significance. Congress has not clearly empowered this administration. I think it is hard to even argue that it is ambiguous. The power was never granted. This question is ripe, and this power is ripe to be rejected by the Supreme Court. Hundreds of billions of dollars' worth of imports from Canada are at issue here. Clearly, this is a major economic question. Yet Congress has not expressly delegated the authority to impose tariffs to the President. We need to return to constitutional government.”
“As legal scholars have pointed out, there is reason to believe that this bill--this IEEPA, this emergency bill--does not authorize the President to impose tariffs for at least two reasons. First, despite broad powers conferred to the President by this act, the plain, simple text does not mention the ability to impose a tax, tariff, or duty. It runs counter to Congress's habit of clearly referencing tariff authorities in other trade statutes. This may explain why no previous President has attempted to use emergency powers to impose tariffs. Second, it is difficult to see how using this emergency power, this IEEPA Act and a national emergency, to impose tariffs would comport with something called the major questions doctrine.”
“That messiness is a check and a balance on power. Unlike most of our trade laws that require several procedural hurdles, IEEPA just says ``Declare an emergency,'' and it becomes very hard for Congress to overturn this. When the Trump administration first implemented tariffs on China, it took 11 months before the tariffs could take effect. By using IEEPA, the technique now, the tariffs have an almost immediate effect. [[Page S2124]] We are not at war with Canada. I don't even think we have real disagreements with Canada. They are an ally that buys more of our stuff than almost any other country in the world. Expediency is not the same as legality, though.”
“It was 1994 in the House and in the eighties in the Senate. They went 50, 60 years into the desert because tariffs were such a turmoil to the country that the country rejected Republicans for nearly half a century. The emergency declaration we are considering today is unprecedented. By declaring an emergency, the President invoked the International Emergency Economic Powers Act. They call it IEEPA, but it is an acronym. Don't get me started about government acronyms. It is a law that has been used to put sanctions on, like, Iran. That is what it was intended for. But it was never intended for tariffs and ``tariffs'' doesn't appear in the law. Using this bill to impose tariffs is attractive to a President. He doesn't have to work with the messiness of democracy, the messiness of Congress. But do you know what?”
“Once again, the ruling party lost seats. When is the last time this happened in dramatic fashion? Well, if you study history and you want to know when the Republicans went to their lowest ebb in the entire history of our country, it came after the Smoot-Hawley tariffs in the early 1930s. Hoover was President, a Republican. Republicans controlled Congress. They passed this dramatic tariff, which most historians and most economists now say prolonged the Depression for 10 years and caused the worst part of the Depression to actually be in 1937--7 years after the tariff and nearly 8 years after the stock market crash. Do you know what happened to the Republicans in 1932? The Democrats won the Presidency, and they won the House. Do you know when Republicans got back in charge after 1932?”
“The tariffs on Canadian imports, the tariffs on Mexican imports, the tariffs on European imports--the chaos it creates in the marketplace makes it difficult to plan for businesses. The interesting thing also about the tariffs is--some have said: Well, you know, the people will see that we are standing up for them with tariffs and we are for America first. Yet, when we put tariffs on historically, it has been Republicans. In 1890, McKinley put tariffs on. He was all for it. So there were people lauding McKinley. In 1890, the big McKinley tariff goes on. Do you know what happened in 1892? Out of 170 Republicans, they lost 100 seats because prices went up with tariffs. Has this ever happened before? Yes. It happened in the 1840s when they put on the ``Tariff of Abominations'' under John Quincy Adams. He signed it.”
“It is being used to place a tax on the American people. But already we have seen a response from Canada. In response to the threat of tariffs, Canada announced a $1.3 billion plan dedicated to border security, to up border security on fentanyl. Yet the tariffs are still coming despite their help. They have also announced more tariffs as well. The threat of tariffs seems to have worked. We need not make Canada and America go through this when they have already responded to our request. The chaos of one day the tariffs are on, one day they are off, the next day there is a loophole for this industry or that industry, is chaotic and is leading to turmoil in our markets. A week ago, when the thought of tariffs came forward, the markets plunged to historically low levels.”
“The former and never-were conservatives who try to sell tariffs as anything other than a tax cannot fool the American people, who know that their purchasing power will be weakened with every new protectionist measure unilaterally imposed by the White House. None of these tax hikes are necessary. The populists argue that the threat of tariffs is needed to force Canada to stop the flow of illicit drugs. In fact, one of the social media posts today said there was going to be a tariff on fentanyl. Really? You think the drug dealers are going to pay a tariff on fentanyl? Fentanyl is not being tariffed. That is some kind of mistaken notion. This isn't going to happen. As I have stated, there is more fentanyl going from the United States into Canada than there is coming from Canada to the United States. It is not a real emergency.”
“If we make it more expensive to import lumber from Canada and steel from Canada, the price of your house goes up. Look, people already can't buy a house because interest rates are so high. Young people are living in apartments. More and more, people feel stuck in their life, and we are going to add to the price of lumber and steel to make homes even harder to purchase? It is a terrible idea. Washing machines were already almost $100 more expensive as a result of the original tariffs 4 years ago. Here is really bad news: Even beer will become more expensive. A professor at Northeastern University states that a six-pack of Corona could go up by 45 cents, but a small craft beer could be increased by as much as $1 a pint.”
“If you think the cost of eggs is high, just wait until the tariff hits. Tariffs will raise the price of a car between $5,000 and $15,000. Despite arguments to the contrary, Americans know that tariffs are a tax they will have to pay. That is why vehicle sales jumped almost 13 percent last month--because people are trying to buy their cars before the tariff gets on their car and raises the price. People are smarter than politicians. That is nothing new. It is not just cars that will be more expensive as a result of tariffs; energy will be more expensive. Gas prices in some parts of the country could see a 15- to 30-cent per-gallon increase in price. According to the National Association of Home Builders, the building of a single-family home could become up to $10,000 more expensive. Why? Because we import lumber. We import steel.”
“In fact, according to the analysis, tariffs could cost the least fortunate families on average $2,400. The middle class will likely pay higher costs of about $3,000. Tariffs are a cost. Taxes are a cost. If you tax a good, it is added on to the cost. This is what happens. It happens whether inflation is the tax or whether the tax is a tariff. It adds to the cost of goods, and it will be passed on to the consumer. The average American family won't get the bailouts though. If you are a special interest and the taxes hurt you, the tariffs hurt you, you will get a bailout. But if you are just an average person working for yourself, self-employed, and the tariffs cause all of your groceries to go up and cause your electronics to go up, no one is going to help you; you will just pay higher prices.”
“We have seen this one. We have seen this story. What our parents told us when we were kids is still true today: Actions speak louder than words. The supporters of tariffs know that their policies impose suffering, and they are willing to spend your money to alleviate that harm. So they know tariffs are going to hurt farm exports. So they are going to take your money and give it to the farmers. Well, what kind of policy acknowledges: Hey, I have got a terrible policy. I am going to hurt these people. We will just give them some of your money. It makes no sense at all. In addition to the previous costs, the Peterson Institute estimates that tariffs will cost the average family $1,200 a year. The Budget Lab at Yale University estimates that tariffs will cost the average family $4,200 a year.”
“They admit it readily. The tariffs that they put on in 2019 are still punishing the farmers in our country to such an extent that the farmers are still asking for more subsidies. When the Trump tariffs went on in 2018, 2019, the farmers immediately [[Page S2123]] complained, and they were given $20 billion of taxpayer money. That is an acknowledgment that the tariffs hurt farmers. So we are going to do it again, and they are all lining up. People say we are going to have to bail them out. Are we going to have to bail out the car companies? Are we going to bail out everybody that is going to be hurt by these tariffs? It is not a good idea. The administration is currently considering a bailout for farmers. The idea that the American taxpayer will have to bail out an industry to dull the pain of tariffs is not a novel one.”
“Canada is also the leading provider of grain, livestock, meat, and poultry. The United States imported $97 billion worth of oil and gas from Canada last year. Canada is a major provider of cars, car parts, steel, lumber, aluminum. This amount of trading demonstrates that no American will be able to avoid the high taxes, the high prices. They will be forced to pay because of tariffs. The taxes on Canadian imports will come at a great cost to American families. The taxes on Canadian imports will make the cost of food, fuel, cars, and furniture more expensive. The former conservatives that now sing a populist tune know deep down that their advocacy of higher taxes will cause suffering for the American family. The converts to this protectionist faith cannot help but acknowledge that even they know that the tariffs will raise prices.”
“If it is a voluntary trade, everyone benefits or the trade doesn't occur. It is perhaps no surprise, then, that the United States and Canada share the world's longest international land border and are continuously at peace. Canada is a great customer of ours. In fact, Canada buys more American goods than China, Japan, England, and France combined. So do we want the Canadians to buy less of our stuff or more of our stuff? It is a crazy notion to put a 25-percent tariff on this enormous amount of goods. There are predictions that cars are going to cost $10,000 more because the cars go in and out. We have cars made in Kentucky, but some of the parts go to Mexico. Some of the cars go to Mexico. Some go to Canada. They come back--a $10,000 increase. Do you love the idea of tariffs? Is it such a great word to pay $10,000 more for a car?”
“And so when people say: Oh, we have lost, and China is winning, and China is winning, and we have a trade deficit with China--America doesn't trade with China. An individual buys a product. You are the trader. When you go to Walmart and you buy something at Walmart, and you say, ``My goodness, I can get this TV for $200 less than I can get it if there were only domestic TVs,'' you are the contractor. The U.S. Government didn't buy the TV; you bought the TV, and you did it because you saved $200. You are now $200 richer and can go somewhere. You can buy gas to go on a trip somewhere. If trade were bad, you wouldn't buy the TV. You made the decision; the government didn't. Our government doesn't trade with their government. Our individuals buy products from their individuals.”
“If you look at a chart or a graph of world trade over the last 70 years, it has gone like this. We have been trading more with each other. If you look at a world map of prosperity, it is the same curve. It is a hockey stick. It is going up exponentially. If you look at a curve of poverty, 100,000 people are escaping poverty every day around the world, and it is because of international trade. Trade is good, not bad. Think about it. If you buy something, you are trading. If you go to the store and you buy a smartphone, and you give them $1,000, you want that smartphone, and you don't lose. It doesn't matter where the money went; you got your smartphone. You only give money to somebody for something if you want it. If it is a voluntary trade, it is always equal. Well, it is, actually, always mutually beneficial.”
“To those who still call themselves conservatives but now support tariffs, let me remind them that Milton Friedman said tariffs ``raise prices to consumers and waste our resources.'' To those who still have a fond memory of Ronald Reagan on my side, Ronald Reagan said: Protectionism costs consumers billions of dollars, damages the overall economy, and destroys jobs. Ronald Reagan's vision for America can be seen in our trading relationships with Canada. In 1986, President Reagan said: Our trade policy rests firmly on the foundation of free and open markets. . . . I . . . recognize the inescapable conclusion that all of history has taught: The freer the flow of world trade, the stronger the tides for human progress and peace among nations. And it is absolutely true.”
“When we tax imports, we raise the price of everything from groceries to smartphones, to washing machines, to prescription drugs. Every dollar collected in tariff revenue comes straight out of the pockets of American consumers. Conservatives used to understand that tariffs are taxes on the American people. Conservatives used to be uniformly opposed to raising taxes because we wanted the private marketplace, the private individuals to keep more of their incomes. So we were always for lower taxes. And yet now the mantra that is coming is: We want higher taxes. What happened? Did we, all of a sudden, give up all of the things we used to believe in as conservatives? I, for one, haven't. I still think more taxes is bad for the economy. More money taken out of the productive sector, the private sector, given to the government is a mistake.”
“But the thing is, the Constitution doesn't let us give our power away. There is something called the nondelegation clause, and it says that we are not allowed to give power away. We can't just say: Here, Mr. President, take it. In this particular case, it is even worse. The rule of law--IEEPA is the acronym for it--has never been used for tariffs before and doesn't mention the word tariff. So this isn't something that was targeted in times of need: The President can have the power to put on tariffs. It never says that. This will be an extraordinary use of something never intended to be a way to have--unilateral--one single person invoke a tax on the people. With regard to tariffs, let's be very clear. Tariffs are simply taxes. Tariffs don't punish foreign governments. They punish American families.”
“I would want to live in a constitutional republic where there are checks and balances against the excesses of both sides, right or left. If one person rules, that person could make a horrible mistake. On things so important as war, it is the same thing. We don't want a President just to go to war because a President might get angry with some country or have a vendetta. We are supposed to vote. That is why there is a declaration of war. War originates also in Congress. But we have lost so many of these things and so much of this. It is Congress's fault for giving it. Over the last 70 years, there are probably a dozen pieces of legislation where Congress said to the President: Here, take this power. Create emergencies. Put on tariffs. Negotiate for us because we are too feeble-minded to do it ourselves.”
“Part of the problem we face today with this emergency, though, is that Congress has abdicated their power--not just recently, not just for this President. This is a bipartisan problem. I am a Republican. I am a supporter of Donald Trump. But this is a bipartisan problem. I don't care if the President is a Republican or a Democrat. I don't want to live under emergency rule. I don't want to live where my representatives cannot speak for me and have a check and balance on power. One person can make a mistake. And guess what: Tariffs are a terrible mistake. They don't work. They will lead to higher prices. They are a tax, and they have historically been bad for our economy. But even if this were something that was magic, and there was going to be a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, I wouldn't want to live under emergency rule.”
“The Canadians have actually been cooperative with us and said they will try to do even more. The problem isn't in Canada. Even if the problem is valid, even if that is something that we all agree on, [[Page S2122]] you can't have a country ruled by emergency. You can't have a country without a separation of powers, without checks and balances. Madison put it this way. Madison said that we would pit ambition against ambition; that all men--and, frankly, all women--are motivated by self-interest and the self-accumulation or aggrandizement of power; and so we would limit their power by pitting ambition against ambition. We would give some of the power to the House, some to the Senate, and some to the President. There would be checks and balances in a jostling of power, but we would check and balance each other.”
“But even if we were successful in the House, the President would veto it. It would take a two-thirds vote in order to stop an emergency. That is such a burden that we need to consider reforming the emergency powers and reversing this. I think a President can have times that there are emergencies and the President can declare an emergency. But it should last 30 day, at most. At the end of 30 days, the emergency would be brought to the people's House--the House of Representatives and the Senate--and we would vote to affirm or uphold the emergency. Right now, the pretense of this emergency is fentanyl. I don't discount fentanyl. I know families who have lost kids to fentanyl. But there is more fentanyl going from the United States into Canada than there is from Canada going into the United States. There is no emergency.”
“You can't simply declare an emergency and say: Well, the constitutional Republic was great, but, gosh, we have got an emergency. The times are dire. The Supreme Court has repeatedly said: There are no exemptions for emergency. There was no exemption for a pandemic. There was no exemption for emergencies. The taxation clause stands. It is an important part of the Constitution: Taxes must originate in the House. They must be voted on in Congress. No one man can raise taxes on the people. They are set to do this through a process in which an emergency has been declared. But realize this: One person declares an emergency, the President. And even if we are successful, which I think we will be successful here today--a majority will vote to say: This is wrong- headed, and the emergency should end. It would have to go to the House.”