[MUST WATCH]Rand Paul Rips Big Government Republicans a New One on COVID Bailout Hypocrisy, ‘Spending Monstrosity That Makes ‘Modern Monetary Theory Look Like Child’s Play’

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) a consistent champion for reining in big government, regardless of the parties inflating it, excoriated his colleagues in a fiery speech on the floor of the Senate Monday. Paul blasted fellow Republicans who claim the mantle of fiscal conservatism — a supposed plank in the Republican platform — yet literally push for free money giveaways whenever it’s politically expedient.

It’s a must watch speech, and a gut check for Republicans in the age of trillion(s) dollar spending bills.

Voting for free money handouts is easy. Harder is working to prevent the government mandates that put suppressed livelihoods in the first place. And, so the ratchet effect moves all but the convicted into accepting ever more government, more spending, more control, and less freedom. All while campaigning on the opposite.

Senator Paul, obviously, is convicted.

He condemned the latest COVID bill, slapped together in a race against the clock, as living example of the Left’s en vogue Modern Monetary Theory. We as conservatives mock belief in what Paul calls ‘quackery,’ but then our Republican representatives vote for it in practice.

“To so-called conservatives who are quick to identify the socialism of Democrats: If you vote for this spending monstrosity, you are no better. […] If free money was the answer […] if money really did grow on trees, why not give more free money? Why not give it out all the time? Why stop at $600 a person? Why not $1,000? Why not $2,000? Maybe these new Free-Money Republicans should join the Everybody-Gets-A-Guaranteed-Income Caucus? Why not $20,000 a year for everybody, why not $30,000? If we can print out money with impunity, why not do it?“

It’s a good question.

The federal government, long comfortable with $1 trillion deficits, has spent more this year than ever before ($6.5 trillion+), going $3.1 trillion in the hole and doubling the record set in 2009. Back in 2009, when attacking Obama’s spending wish list and campaigning on deficit hawkishness was seemingly prevalent.

In 2020, about $4 trillion and counting will be spent on COVID ‘relief’ alone. It’s no secret that the relief is needed because Pandemic Panic inspired authoritarians to shutdown livelihoods by government diktat.

Paul had something to say about such ‘tinpot dictators’ as well.

Making it all that much more insulting is that fact that this bill — the second largest in US history, apparently, at $2.5 trillion, and thousands of pages long — was presented to the Senators for the first time just hours before they were expected to vote on it.

Senator Mike Lee (R-UT) described the absurdity of the current process, something every American should find appalling:

“This process, by which members of Congress are asked to defer blindly to legislation negotiated entirely in secret by four of their colleagues, must come to an end. It won’t come to an end until no longer works for those empowered by it. That can happen, but only when most members of both houses and both political parties stop voting for bills they haven’t read — and, by design, cannot read until after it’s too late.”

Far too many Americans are hurting due to government (re)actions that have abridged our freedoms in the name of panicked collective fear. Instead of addressing those harms, the consensus has led to waiting with bated breath for the next trillion dollar bill to hand out free money to hold the public over.

That’s not pragmatism; it’s submission.