This is a rush transcript from "Hannity," December 12, 2014. This copy may not be in its final form and may be updated.
SEAN HANNITY, HOST: And joining me now to tell us whether House Speaker John Boehner and the GOP establishment completely betrayed conservatives by supporting this spending bill, we have -- Kentucky Senator Rand Paul is with us.
Senator, I referred to John Boehner last night as John Gruber Boehner. I think he did let down. I think the fact that he would have had the new majority, he needed a continuing resolution into the new year, I think they would have had more leverage. I think going this way and funding ObamaCare through the year was foolish. What are your thoughts?
SEN. RAND PAUL, R-KY.: You know, I think it's an indictment of the whole process. We've got a 2,500-page bill. No one will have a chance to read this bill, much less even have it printed for everyone to read. And it's a crummy way to run your government because the bill's 2,500 pages long. There'll be no amendments. There'll be no reforms.
This is how we've been running government for a decade. We lurch from deadline to deadline, and we now have an $18 trillion debt. So it's a terrible -- I'm a no vote on it because I won't get a chance to even look at the entire bill before we can vote on it!
HANNITY: Yes.
PAUL: So it's a crummy way to run government.
HANNITY: Well, that's another thing. I mean, Speaker Boehner said 2,000-page bills were not a good thing. This one was 1,774 pages. There was no 72-hour window that people could actually read what they were actually voting on. This is -- this to me was like business as usual, except John Boehner was in charge, not Nancy Pelosi.
PAUL: We have the same rules in the Senate. We're supposed to wait a period of time. And we will breach our own rules on this because we can't seem to be -- to function the way we normally would function. Normally, you would pass 12 individual spending bills, and not this huge conglomeration that no one has a chance to read. So the process is so screwed up. And that's why our country is so threatened by this debt...
HANNITY: Yes.
PAUL: ... because we aren't doing our job.
HANNITY: And on top of it -- let's say Speaker Boehner had taken the advice of some conservatives -- and I supported a continuing resolution -- in January, when they got power and they had a new majority, wouldn't they have been able to maybe bring the budget down below a trillion dollars?
Maybe they could have done something with energy which would have benefited people and created jobs in the country. Maybe they could have offered their alternative to health care. Maybe they could have secured the borders. Maybe they could have put forward a dynamic vision for the country. And now, basically, that's not going to happen.
PAUL: Well, here's the interesting thing. We did have something we called the sequester, and it had a $63 billion cut in all this discretionary spending. And both Republicans and Democrats got together and abandoned that about a year ago. We passed a new budget and said, We're no longer going to have these cuts...
(CROSSTALK)
HANNITY: The one thing that actually worked, putting a little discipline in the fiscal process, right?
PAUL: I'm hoping we're going to do better. I'm in my caucus every day debating this and saying we need to do a better job. When we're in control, let's pass every appropriations bill, and let's put thousands of instructions in every bill to the president how to spend money because next year, we will control, completely, the power of the purse. And all I can say is we damn well better use it.
HANNITY: You better use it and it better be a pretty darn inspiring alternative with solutions to get the country on the right track. This is a window of opportunity for conservative ideas. And if they blow it, then they will pay a price. Senator, good to see you.
PAUL: Thanks, Sean.
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