WASHINGTON, DC — In the four years he has served in the U.S. Senate, Rand Paul has made a name for himself by questioning party orthodoxy and challenging the political establishment.
Both qualities were on full display yesterday morning at a breakfast meeting of The Ripon Society, where the Kentucky Senator not only discussed the State of the Union Address delivered the night before, but shared his thoughts on the congressional agenda and issues he would like to see addressed in the coming year.
“He is on course to add more to the debt than all 43 previous Presidents combined,” Paul stated, referring to President Obama. “And he has the gall to brag about reducing the deficit. The man has no limits. What amazes me most about him is that he will say a lot of things that I can agree with. The problem is his lack of sincerity. On almost every issue where he said there was bipartisan support, he has not really helped to push the ball forward.
“A good example is the NSA. … Congressman Sensenbrenner was one of the authors of the Patriot Act, and he said that we never intended to have this kind of mass, bulk surveillance of the American public. And yet it is going on. The President could end it at any moment through Executive Order. It was done by Executive Order. He is very passive about changing it. He will say all the right things about privacy, and about balancing privacy with security. But he has not done anything.”
Despite his differences with the President on these and other issues, Paul made clear he does not believe that politics should stand in the way of good policy and the search for common ground.
“You know, for all the fire, I will work with him,” he stated, adding that he phoned the President recently to discuss one of our nation’s most pressing national priorities — rebuilding America’s roads and bridges. “I called and offered to work with him. I called him three months ago and said, ‘Do you want to build infrastructure in this country? I have a great opportunity, and it is something you supported in the past. There is $2 trillion overseas in American profit. Let’s try to bring it home and put it in the Highway Fund.’”
To that end, Paul noted that he is also working with California Senator Barbara Boxer on legislation that would achieve that goal.
“We’re very close to getting a bill written that will reduce the tax to bring that money home and then designate the money for the Highway Fund,” he said. “I think we can get 10 or 15 Democrats on board. My biggest opposition right now is actually Republicans who want repatriation, but want it to be a part of overall tax reform. I’m fine with that, but good luck getting the President to sign it and getting enough Democrats to support a tax reform bill that is of any value. It’s going to take forever and there are a thousand moving pieces with tax reform. We’re all for it, but it’s not going to happen quickly.
“If we’re looking forward to 2016 — and some of us are — we need to show that we can do something while we’re in charge and do something that works and move forward with it. I say let’s go ahead and pass this repatriation and see if money will come home and see if we can spur more economic gain, build more roads in the two years and take credit for it. And whoever our nominee is, our nominee can move forward and take credit for it.”
In addition to his effort to use repatriation dollars to rebuild America’s roads, Paul said he also spoke with the President about criminal justice reform – an area, he noted, where the President recently made some good strides.
“I will complement him,” Paul remarked. “He did something this week that ended, I hope, civil forfeiture. This, in my mind, is one of the worst things going on in this country. The local police force can take your money. There is an incentive because they get the money if they take it from you. Here’s the rub — you’re guilty until proven innocent.”
“Why is this a big deal?” he asked. “You saw all the protests across America. They began over specific instances, like the Michael Brown case and the Eric Garner case. But people are not just angry about that. It is more than that. There is an undercurrent of unease in this country. In 1967, Dr. Martin Luther King spoke at Stanford about two Americas — one America, where everyone sees opportunity and knows the American dream, and the other America, where people don’t believe in that dream.”
Looking out at the crowd of Hill staffers, members of the media, and Washington policy professionals, Paul continued:
“I can stand up and give this identical speech in a church, and I will. In an Evangelical, mostly white church, I will tell them the same thing — the war on drugs is having a racial outcome. And I think people are listening. So if the President wants to work with me, I have five or six bills. I have a bill to get rid of mandatory minimums. Mandatory minimums will often say that you have15 years to life imprisonment and the judge has no discretion. That is absolutely wrong, and we should get rid of it. We have a bill out there that would do that.
“I also have one that says that if you behave yourself, particularly for nonviolent crimes, you should be able to expunge your record. You know, many Republicans are complaining that everyone is on welfare and nobody is working. Well, why don’t we make it easier for people to work by getting rid of their record? How many people in here want to hire a convicted felon? The other thing we can do is to take some of these felonies and make them misdemeanors. This still doesn’t make things right, but we need to give people a chance. If Republicans want a bigger party, we should show compassion.”
In that regard, Paul concluded his remarks by saying he would also like to see Republicans take action on another key challenge facing America — immigration reform. “We can get that done,” the Kentucky lawmaker declared. “It’s not going to be everything the other side wants. The biggest thing you hear about in Silicon Valley is that they want people with advanced degrees to stay in the country. I’m all for it. The Republican House passed that overwhelmingly last time. Let’s do it again. Let’s pass expansion of that.
“There are economic visas. There is a visa where if you have a million bucks, you can come to this country. Who wouldn’t we want that has a million dollars? There are 10,000 of them who maxed out last year. Why not double that? Why not have 20,000 of these economic visas? And when we reach that peak, double it again. Why would we ever not want these people? We also want people at all ends of the spectrum. Migrant workers – if they’re not here, we’re not going to have the crops picked.
“When the Senate bill came forward last time, I ended up voting against it. One of the reasons was because it limited the number of workers coming in. It said only 100,000 people could come in to pick crops. But everybody estimates that 400,000 people come in every year. What is that? It is a recipe for disaster. It’s a recipe for more illegal immigration.”
Following his remarks, Paul was asked for his thoughts on U.S. foreign policy and the projection of military force abroad. Here, too, he was blunt.
“We have been projecting our power quite a bit,” he observed. “We projected our power in Libya, and it’s an absolute disaster. If there is one fact where the evidence is difficult to refute in the Middle East, it’s that we have toppled secular dictators, gotten less stability, chaos, and we’ve gotten a rise of radical Islam. I believe America to be more endangered now after the Libyan war than before the Libyan war.”
“Syria is just a huge mess. Both sides are bad. There are two million Christians living in Syria. Ask them whether or not they want Assad to be toppled and bombed. There is a Republican Senator who loves to project power everywhere. He’s for bombing both sides. He’s for bombing ISIS and Assad. You ask Christians, all 2 million of them in Syria, whom would they rather have in power: Assad or ISIS? They’ve lived with Assad. He’s not perfect by any means — that’s an understatement. He’s a horrible dictator that has oppressed his people and killed his people with chemical weapons. But they fear ISIS more than they fear him.”
“A year ago, there was this other debate. The President, after the chemical weapons attack, wanted to bomb Assad. If we would have bombed Assad, I feel very certain that ISIS would now be in control of all of Syria. Do we have to do something? Yes. I am not happy about going back into the Middle East. But we have to go back there because ISIS is now a threat to our embassy in Baghdad and to our consulate in Erbil. I am for protecting America’s vital interests around the world. But I see war as the last resort, and not the first.”
To view the complete remarks of Senator Paul before The Ripon Society’s breakfast discussion yesterday morning, please click on the link below:
The Ripon Society is a public policy organization that was founded in 1962 and takes its name from the town where the Republican Party was born in 1854 – Ripon, Wisconsin. One of the main goals of The Ripon Society is to promote the ideas and principles that have made America great and contributed to the GOP’s success. These ideas include keeping our nation secure, keeping taxes low and having a federal government that is smaller, smarter and more accountable to the people.