The following is the transcript of an interview with Sen. Rand Paul, Republican of Kentucky, that aired on “Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan” on June 1, 2025.
MARGARET BRENNAN: And we go now to Republican Senator Rand Paul, who joins us from Lexington, Kentucky this morning. Good morning to you.
SEN. RAND PAUL: Good morning, Margaret.
MARGARET BRENNAN: You just heard the Treasury Secretary say a number of things, dismiss the potential price increases that could come from the tariffs when it comes to retailers. He also played down the cost of this tax and border bill that just passed through the House. Do you agree with his math?
SEN. PAUL: Well, the math doesn’t really add up. One of the things this big and beautiful bill is is it’s a vehicle for increasing spending for the military and for the border. It’s about $320 billion in new spending. To put that in perspective, that’s more than all the DOGE cuts that we found so far. So, the increase in spending put into this bill exceeds the DOGE cuts. When you look just at the border wall, they have 46.5 billion for the border wall. Well, the current estimate from the CBP is 6.5 million per mile. So, if you did 1,000 miles, that’s 6.5 billion, but they have 46 billion. So they’ve inflated the cost of the wall eight fold. So, there’s a lot of new spending that has to be counteracted. But essentially, this is a bill by the military industrial complex advocates who are padding the military budget. There’s going to be a lot of extra money. Look, the President has essentially stopped the border flow without- without new money and without any new legislation. So, I think they’re asking for too much money. And in the end, the way you add it up to see if it actually is going to save money or add money, is how much debt are they going to borrow? 5 trillion over two years, an enormous amount.
MARGARET BRENNAN: Right. That- that was the number that the Secretary was quibbling over. The President has taken note of some of your skepticism, and he did tweet yesterday saying that if you, Rand Paul, vote against his massive border and tax bill the people of Kentucky will never forgive you. Do you consider that a threat, and do you know if you have three other Republicans who will join you to block it from passage?
SEN. PAUL: I had a very good conversation with the President this week about tariffs. He did most of the talking, and we don’t agree exactly on the outcome. But when I come home to Kentucky, I talk to the Farm Bureau, which is opposed to the tariffs. I talked to the bourbon industry which is opposed to the tariffs. I talked to the cargo companies, UPS, DHL, all their pilots are opposed to it. I talked to the hardwood floor people. I talked to the people selling houses, building houses. I have no organized business- business interests in Kentucky for the tariffs. So I think it’s worth the discussion, and it’s worth people remembering that the Republicans used to be for lower taxes. Tariffs are a tax. So, if you raise taxes on the private sector, that’s not good for the private sector.
MARGARET BRENNAN: Well, you know, we hear from other senators who also get complaints from their people in their districts, but they’re falling in line. Do you have three other Republicans who will stand with you to block this bill?
SEN. PAUL: I think there are four of us at this point, and I would be very surprised if the bill, at least, is not modified in a good direction. Look, I want to vote for it. I’m for the tax cuts. I voted for the tax cuts before. I want the tax cuts to be permanent, but at the same time, I don’t want to raise the debt ceiling 5 trillion. So, I’ve told him, if you take the debt ceiling off the bill, in all likelihood, I can vote for what the agreement is on the rest of the bill, and it doesn’t have to be perfect to my liking. But I can’t be- if I vote for the $5 trillion debt, who’s left in Washington that cares about the debt. We will have lost it. The GOP will own the debt once they vote for this.
MARGARET BRENNAN: But that the leader, as you know, is sort of in a tight spot here. He needs a vehicle to raise that debt ceiling. Otherwise, you have to turn to Democrats to get that done. What was the White House response when you asked that to the President?
SEN. PAUL: Well, historically, the debt ceiling has always gone up and will always go up, and I’m not proposing that it doesn’t, but the people who should vote for it are the people who vote for the spending. Historically, all the Democrats vote for raising the debt ceiling, and about 15 big government Republicans vote for it. This will be the first time it’s voted on just by Republicans. This will be the first time that Republicans own the debt. They already own the spending. In March, we continued, not me, but most Republicans voted to continue the Biden spending levels. So you remember the campaign, everybody is talking about Bidenomics and Biden inflation and Biden spending levels. Well, the Republicans all voted to keep the Biden spending levels, and that’s why the deficit this year is going to be $2.2 trillion this year.
MARGARET BRENNAN: So, you think this is bad politics for Republicans. Some of your Republican colleagues, like Josh Hawley, are saying that changes to Medicaid are bad politics for America’s working people and for your party.
SEN. PAUL: I think it was a bad strategy. I think the tax cuts are good for the economy. When we passed the tax cuts in 2017 the economy grew like gangbusters. We had lowest unemployment historically. It was the great achievement of Trump’s first administration. They should have been satisfied by just doing the tax part of this and not getting involved into the debt part of it.
MARGARET BRENNAN: The last time you were with us in March, you talked about conversations you had with Elon Musk, as you know, he’s just left his work with the administration. You had proposed a rescission request, a claw back about $500 billion of money Congress had already signed off on. We know now that the White House is going to ask Congress this week for some rescissions. Sounds like it’s just $9.4 billion and it’s- it’s PBS, it’s NPR and it’s foreign aid. Is this really the best strategy? And do you think 51 Republican senators are on board with it?
SEN. PAUL: First of all, I will vote for spending cuts. The more the better. This is very, very small to put it in perspective, if the deficit this year is 2.2 trillion, if you cut 9 billion, the deficit is going to be 2.191 trillion. It really doesn’t materially change the course of the country. We should do it by all means. And it is the low hanging fruit. This is the money that was pointed out that was being spent for sex change operations in Guatemala, trans-opera in Columbia, all this crazy spending. Yes, it should be cut–
MARGARET BRENNAN: — Sesame Street.–
SEN. PAUL: — I had an amendment about a month- Excuse me–
MARGARET BRENNAN: It’s Sesame Street. It’s PBS and NPR.
SEN. PAUL: Yeah. And I think, yeah- you’re right. We’ll see if there’s the votes to cut it. I don’t think we necessarily need government programming anymore. We have so many choices on the internet and so many choices on television, but my preference has always been, in the past, to cut a little bit of everything, rather than cut a lot of something. So what I’ve done in the past is propose a penny plan budget where we cut a certain percentage of everything, but it includes entitlements, or it doesn’t really work. Once you exclude the entitlements, there isn’t enough money to cut so you can never achieve balance by not looking at the entitlements.
MARGARET BRENNAN: The budget director on another program this morning said they may not need to use this rescission, this claw back, because the White House has other tools. Do you think they need to go through Congress? Is this overstepping?
SEN. PAUL: Well, they- well, they absolutely have to use a recession- the rescission, and it is done by simple majority, by Republicans only. There is no filibuster of it. So, it’s a great tool to cut spending. If they don’t use, it will be a huge wasted opportunity. But I will tell you, they tried in the first Trump administration. It wasn’t their fault. They sent a tiny one, 16 billion, and it failed because two Republicans went the other way. So, we’ll see what happens on this. But if we can’t even cut welfare that we’re giving to other countries, if we can’t cut foreign aid welfare, I feel bad for the country. You know, interest rates are rising. We’re having trouble selling our debt. We’ve got a lot of problems.
MARGARET BRENNAN: Senator Rand Paul, we’ll be right back.