PAUL: I'm very worried about that because I think when you have a fearful time or an angry time, that people are coached into giving up their liberty. In the United States, all phone records are still being collected all the time and we still had the attacks. And realize that in France, they have bulk collection or surveillance of their citizens a thousand fold greater than what we have with very little privacy protections. They still didn't know anything about this. So what I would argue is that you can keep giving up liberty but in the end I don't think we'll be safer, but we may have lost who we are as a people in the process.
PAUL: If you're doing surveillance on religious institutions, yes. I think surveillance, though, has lower threshold for individuals. I think the discussion should be, "will we have surveillance, will we follow people who we think are a risk?" That's even a lower threshold than getting a search warrant. So, yes, we should follow people who are a risk. Should we talk to their neighbors and friends? Should we talk to their imam? Sure, all of that is legitimate. But should we target mosques and have a database of Muslims? Absolutely not. And I think that's really disqualifying for both Donald Trump and Marco Rubio to say that we're going to close down every place that potentially has a discussion that might lead to extremism. That would require some sort of religious czar that I think isn't consistent with our freedom.
PAUL: I think the first thing we have to do is learn from our history. In the past several decades, if there's one true thing in the Middle East, it's that when we've toppled secular dictators, we've gotten chaos and the rise of radical Islam. So if we want a long lasting victory and peace, the boots on the ground are going to have to be Arab, and you're going to have to have Sunni Muslims defeating Sunni Muslims because even the Shiite Muslims can't occupy these Sunni cities. ISIS is essentially surrounded, but what we have to do is, we do need a ceasefire in Syria, and probably Russia's going to be part of that solution if we're willing to talk with them, but we also need to engage Turkey on one side. We need to engage the Kurds on one side.
A: I don't think there's any instance in which we found that the indiscriminate bulk collection of records have helped us. Three independent commissions looked at this, every one said that no terrorist has been caught through bulk collection. So I do want more individualized investigations. The Fourth Amendment says you can collect records, you just have to name the target, have some suspicion that you present to a judge. But I don't want the blanket surveillance of all Americans. I'm not willing to give up on the Bill of Rights in order to say, "I can feel more safe". We've been doing this for ten years. Not one terrorist has been caught through this program. When you look and you say, "is it illegal?" The courts have said it's illegal. Many scholars are saying it's unconstitutional.
PAUL: We have to look at everything across the board and all of government needs to be smaller. I have put forward three five-year plans that balance the budget over five years, including significant tax cuts. If you want a Republican that's going to keep government the same size by having revenue neutral tax and not really cutting tax, I'm not the guy. The Tax Foundation said that my plan would create millions of jobs and that mine is the most pro-growth tax plan ever presented. [My tax plan] helps the poor and the working class because my tax plan gets rid of the payroll tax. Social Security will be paid for by businesses and not by individuals, so a guy making $40,000 a year will get $2,000 more in their check every year.
PAUL: Income inequality is due to some people working harder and selling more things. If people voluntarily buy more of your stuff, you'll have more money. And it is a fallacious notion to say that rich people get more money back in a tax cut. If you cut taxes by 10%, 10% of $1 million is more than 10% of $1,000 so obviously people who paid more in taxes will get more back.
A: I think most Americans don't want their tax dollars going to this. I think most people do want to defund this. We have 9,000 community health centers that do everything Planned Parenthood does, but they don't get into abortions. So it would be much less emotional for everyone if we just funded community health centers.
Q: Do you support continued funding for community health centers?
A: I do support a role for government in community health centers. The specific bill, including it in ObamaCare, obviously would make it such that I can't support that particular bill.
Q: Ted Cruz said he's prepared to shut down the government, if that's what it takes to defund Planned Parenthood. Do you support that?
A: I support any legislation that will defund Planned Parenthood. But I don't think you can start out with your objective to shut down the government.
PAUL: I've submitted a discharge petition--this is highly unusual for a non-leadership position to submit a discharge petition. This means that I'm going to try to force a vote on this. I really think that the time has come in our country to debate whether people want their taxpayer dollars going to this kind of procedure.
Q: And it looks like you're not going to get a vote on the Senate floor?
PAUL: They may block me today on this bill, but I'm trying to file for a discharge position to have a separate bill. If I have 16 senators to sign a bill saying they think we should defund Planned Parenthood, and I guarantee you that people across America who are outraged by this are going to call their senators and say, "Have you signed Rand Paul's discharge petition?"
PAUL: There was a poll not too long ago in Iowa that asked, do you think we should be more involved in foreign wars, like John McCain, who wants to be everywhere all the time, or do you think we should be less involved or more judicious and only go to war when we have a threat to an American interest, like Rand Paul? And it polls equally in Iowa. So I think the party is split on some of these things. I do want to defend America. In fact, I think we are distracting ourselves from the real terrorist threat by collecting so much information that we get inundated by the information and we get distracted. I want to collect more information on terrorists, but I want to do it according to the 4th Amendment--which puts forward that suspicion should be individualized and there should be a warrant with a judge's name on it.
Unlike President Obama's recent action, this bill will require the return of all equipment currently being used by law enforcement agencies that becomes prohibited under this legislation.
"Big government has created an incentivized system in which local law enforcement is provided mass amounts of equipment to build up forces that resemble small armies. We can eliminate the wasteful spending these programs have created and stop the militarization of our police forces," Senator Paul said.
PAUL: No, I would actually keep the NSA. In fact, I would have the NSA target their activities, more and more, towards our enemies. I think if you're not spending so much time and money collecting the information of innocent Americans, maybe we could've spent more time knowing that one of the Tsarnaev boys, one of the Boston bombers, had gone back to Chechnya. We didn't know that, even though we'd been tipped off by the Russians. We had communicated, we had interviewed him, and still didn't know that. Same with the recent jihadist from Phoenix that traveled to Texas, and the shooting in Garland; we knew him. We had investigated him and put him in jail. I want to spend more time on people we have suspicion of, and we have probable cause of, and less time on innocent Americans. It distracts us from the job of getting terrorists.
There has to be the threat of military force. But my hope is really that negotiations continue. There are some in my party who say, "Oh, I don't want any negotiations." They're ready to be done with it. But once you're done with negotiations, the choices are war, or they get a weapon, and I don't want to have just those two binary choices.
PAUL: I do believe people ought to be left alone. I am a "leave me alone" kind of guy.
Q: But not when it comes to marriage?
PAUL: Well, no. States will end up making the decisions on these things. I think that there's a religious connotation to marriage that has been going on for thousands of years I still want to preserve that. But I also believe people ought to be treated fairly under the law. I see no reason why, if the marriage contract conveys certain things, that if [a woman] wants to marry another woman, they can do that and have a contract. You could have traditional marriage, and then you could also have the neutrality of the law that allows [same-sex couples] to have contracts with one another.
PAUL: Interestingly, many of the hawks in my party line right up with President Obama. The war that Hillary prominently promoted in Libya, many of the hawks in my party were right there with her. Their only difference was in degree. They wanted to go into Libya as well. Some of the hawks in my party, you can't find a place on the globe they don't want boots on the ground.
Q: And that's their point, that you're to the left of all them.
PAUL: No, my point is, is that they are actually agreeing with Hillary Clinton and agreeing with Pres. Obama that the war in Libya was a good idea. I'm not agreeing with either one of them. I'm saying that that war made us less safe, that it allowed radical Islam to rise up in Libya. There are now large segments of Libya that are pledging allegiance to ISIS, supplying arms to the Islamic rebels in the Syrian war.
A: I think the thing about the Clintons is that there's this grand hypocrisy in the sense that we've got this war on women thing that they like to talk about. And yet Hillary Clinton has taken money from countries that rape victims are publicly lashed. In Saudi Arabia, a woman was gang raped by seven men. She was publicly lashed 90 times. And then she was convicted of being in the car with an unmarried man. We should be voluntarily boycotting a country, not buying stuff from a country that does that to women.
Q: What would you say to Hillary on that?
A: I would expect Clinton--if she believes in women's rights--she should be calling for a boycott of Saudi Arabia. Instead, she's accepting tens of millions of dollars. And I think it looks unseemly. And there's going to be some explaining she's going to have to come up with.
PAUL: I have proposed several 5-year budgets. And for me, the most important thing of the 5-year budgets has been to balance. The last one I produced did actually increase defense spending above the military sequester. But I did it by taking money from domestic spending. My belief has always been that national defense is the most important thing we do, but we shouldn't borrow to pay for it.
Q: But by proposing an increase in military spending before you announce for president, it could look like pandering.
PAUL: Well, 3 or 4 years ago, we did the same thing. So we have been for quite some time proposing increases in military spending, but always the point is that I believe any increase in spending should be offset by decreases in spending somewhere else.
PAUL: What I want to do first is secure the border. If we secure the border and we can say who is coming, who is going, and only people come, come legally, the 11 million that are here, I think there could be a work status for them. And I think what I have tried to say is, what we want is more legal immigration, so we have less illegal immigration. But I am open to immigration reform. I voted against the bill that came forward, though, primarily because it limited the number of legal work visas.
PAUL: Well, you add that to the fact I am also one of the most conservative members of the Senate, in the sense that I vote against spending, I vote against unbalanced budgets, I'm a proponent of lower taxes. So all of those are right within the mainstream of the party. But I do have some additional things--I call them sometimes the libertarian-ish kind of issues--of believing in privacy, believing in criminal justice, that everyone should be treated fairly under the law, no matter the color of your skin. We still have a large problem in our country that, if you are black, you are not always being treated fairly under the law. And I want to fix that.
PAUL: Occasionally, I can be partisan, but, on this, I don't think I would jump to the conclusion that, all of a sudden, the ayatollah of Iran is telling the truth, and my government is lying to us. Now, the biggest problem we have right now is that every time there is a hint of an agreement, the Iranian foreign minister tweets out in English that the agreement doesn't mean what our government says it means. So I keep an open mind as to who is telling the truth. It is very, very damaging to the American public, and to the details of this agreement, if we can't trust the sincerity or the credibility of the Iranian government
Q: So, at this point, you have an open mind about this?
PAUL: Yes. I want peace. I want negotiations. I don't want another war. But I also want a good agreement.
There are two million Christians in Syria. And you know what? If you asked them who would they choose, they would all choose Assad over ISIS, because they see the barbarity of perhaps both. But they see the utter depravity and barbarity of ISIS. And so bombing Assad probably isn't a good policy.
Well, that's all they'll let me attach it to. But I forced them to debate. And I think that's one of the things to me that has been most exciting about being in the Senate, is I could be at home saying, "Congress should declare war," and, "Why won't Congress get involved?"
But now, I'm actually there. And I can say, "You know what? I'll make them vote on this. And they will have to discuss war." And they did. We had a great discussion. It didn't come to a resolution, but I'm still pushing to say, "Look, you should not be at war." And in fact, I've said the president, if he wanted to be a great leader last August should have come before a joint session of Congress and laid out the plan.
Early in his Senate career, Paul was clearly influenced by his father's views. In 2011, he proposed eliminating all foreign aid, including to Israel, insisting: "I just don't think you can give other people's money away when we can't rebuild bridges in our country." As he seeks the presidency, facing a wide and varied GOP field that includes candidates with far more hawkish views, Paul has backed off on his past support for ending U.S. aid to Israel
It's all part of a campaign strategy to eliminate the widespread suspicion that Paul is an isolationist. But to many foreign-policy conservatives, Paul's past expressions of skepticism about US intervention abroad and support for sweeping cuts to the defense and foreign-aid budgets speak more loudly than his words on the campaign trail.
Paul's advisers insist that his views have matured since being elected to the Senate. He has educated himself on international affairs, and he's developed a "conservative realist" vision of America's role in the world that is not isolationist but still judicious about U.S. entanglements overseas.
First, "Defeat the Washington machine." The idea of a less-specific "political machine" is an old one, dating back to 1850. But a candidate in 2012 used the same term to make his case as an outsider: Ron Paul, Rand's father.
Then there's the second line that's glued on to the first: "Unleash the American Dream," [a term which dates back to the 1930s]. Over the course of the Obama administration, the idea of unleashing the American dream--shackled, in the eyes of the Republicans using the phrase, by that Washington machine--has been in vogue. Given its history, then, the slogan is perfect for Rand Paul, fusing together the campaign of his father and the ideas of the Republican mainstream.
Paul's support for the Kurds includes giving them more weapons, but he doesn't feel the same about Syrian rebels for reasons that include fear the arms would land in the hands of extremists. He also insists the Obama administration was wrong to intervene in Libya.
But it's unclear how far--and to whom--Paul extends the argument that rights cannot be defined by behavior. Practicing religion, for example, is a behavior enshrined in the Bill of Rights, , as is the behavior of free speech. Does Paul believe those behaviors are protected rights?
A Paul spokesperson said the rights that count are those in the country's founding charter. "He does not classify rights based on behavior, but rather recognizes rights for all, as our Constitution defines it. Sen. Paul is the biggest proponent for protecting the Bill of Rights, which, as you know, protects the rights of all Americans as stated in our Constitution."
The move completes a stunning reversal for Paul, who in May 2011, released his own budget that would have slashed the Pentagon, a sacred cow for many Republicans. Under Paul's original proposal, defense spending would have dropped from $553 billion in 2011 to $542 billion in 2016. But under Paul's new plan, the Pentagon will see its budget authority swell by $76 billion to $696 billion in fiscal year 2016. The boost would be offset by a $106 billion cut to funding for aid to foreign governments, climate change research and reductions to the budgets of the EPA, HUD, and the departments of Commerce and Education.
Paul continued, "I think having competing contracts that would give them equivalency before the law would have solved a lot of these problems, and it may be where we're still headed."
For Paul's vision of equal rights for same-sex couples through contracts to become a reality, the first step would be have to be a ruling from the U.S. Supreme Court in June upholding state prohibitions on gay nuptials.
Minutes later, Paul, who last month introduced the Federal Reserve Transparency Act, drew raucous applause when he warned its policies are undermining U.S. currency. "Anybody here want to audit the Fed?" Paul said. "Anybody feel that the Fed is out to get us? They're all over the TV! They're going to be out there saying, 'Oh, we can't audit the Fed.' What, are they too big to be audited? Too secret to be audited?"
[Remembering his father's campaign in Iowa], Paul said chuckling, "We used to have an 'end the Fed' dunk booth over there," pointing toward a nearby sidewalk. "People threw balls at Ben Bernanke in order to get someone in the tank."
Paul said Hillary Clinton was to blame for what he described as foreign-policy failures: she was a proponent of interventions during popular uprisings against the ruling regimes in Libya and Syria. "Hillary's war in Libya has been an utter disaster," Paul said. "There are now jihadists roaming all across Libya. It's a jihadist wonderland."
The US was part of an international coalition to oust Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi from power in 2011. "Gadhafi was a secular dictator," Paul said. "Not the kind of guy that we want to have representing us in country, but he was secular. He didn't like radical Islam, and he kept them down because they were a threat to him. What happened when we toppled the secular dictator? Chaos. More radical Islam."
In Syria, Paul said that Islamic State--a militant group operating in Syria and Iraq that is also known as ISIS--was essentially created by the US aid program under the Obama administration. "I think we have to do something about ISIS," he said. "But, you know why we're doing something and why we have to be there again? Because of a failed foreign policy that got us involved in a Syrian Civil War. By supporting the Islamic rebels, ISIS grew stronger and stronger. And now we have to go back."
"I'm not sure I'm different from the president or anyone else on the position," Paul said. "We have rules to encourage people to have vaccines in the country, but I don't think anybody's recommending that we hold them down."
Pressed on whether vaccinations should be required when an illness could spread to other children, Paul said certain school vaccine requirements were already "somewhat of a mandate," but really more of an encouragement. "Interestingly, 48 out of 50 states do have a religious as well as philosophic exemption if you have a problem," Paul said.
Paul, however, doubled down on his view that the decision whether to vaccinate one's child is a matter of personal liberty: "The state doesn't own your children," Paul said. "Parents own the children, and it is an issue of freedom and public health."
Paul also said he's heard of cases where children were left with "profound mental disorders" after being vaccinated. Some opponents have drawn links between vaccines and autism, although this has been discredited in the medical community. [Paul recalled his irritation at doctors who tried to press him to vaccinate his own children. He eventually did, he said, but spaced out the vaccinations over a period of time.]
What about rapidly-changing opinions on the matter? He took a soft tone. "Society's changing," he said. "People change their minds all the time on this issue, and even within the Republican Party, there are people whose child turns out to be gay and they're like, 'maybe I want to rethink this issue.' So it's been rethought. The President's rethought the issue. A lot of people have rethought the issue."
Was Paul hinting that he, too, could change his thinking? He said, "I believe in old-fashioned traditional marriage. But, I don't really think the government needs to be too involved with this, and I think that the Republican Party can have people on both sides of the issue."
"You could rethink it at some point, too?" I asked. He shrugged. It wasn't a yes or a no.
Paul championed his anti-abortion stance; he was introduced to the crowd by a video montage of his own pro-life remarks interspersed with sonograms of babies in the womb. "I'm one who will march for life and who will stand up in defense of life as long as I'm privileged to hold office," Paul told the crowd.
Paul's strongest applause came when he brought up was his failed legislative attempt to stop foreign aid from reaching countries that persecute Christians. "Let's stop this madness!" he said.
Q: What are your thoughts on the president's deal here with Cuba?
PAUL: I grew up in a family that was about as anti-Communist as you could come by. And when we first opened up trade with China we were thinking it was a bad idea. But over time, I've come to believe that trading with China is the best way to actually, ultimately, defeat Communism. You know, the 50-year embargo with Cuba just hasn't worked. I mean, if the goal was regime change, it sure doesn't seem to be working. And probably it punishes the people more than the regime, because the regime can blame the embargo for hardship. And if there's open trade, I think the people will see all the things that we produce under capitalism. So in the end, I think probably opening up Cuba is a good idea.
Paul then posted this message on Facebook: "Senator Marco Rubio believes the embargo against Cuba has been ineffective, yet he wants to continue perpetuating failed policies. After 50 years of conflict, why not try a new approach? I believe engaging Cuba can lead to positive change. Seems to me, Senator Rubio is acting like an isolationist who wants to retreat to our borders and perhaps build a moat. I reject this isolationism. Finally, let's be clear that Senator Rubio does not speak for the majority of Cuban-Americans. A recent poll demonstrates that a large majority of Cuban-Americans actually support normalizing relations between our countries.
Florida's Sen. Marco Rubio weighed in with one of the strongest responses, in a joint statement with Idaho's Sen. Jim Risch, calling the release of the report "reckless and irresponsible" and demanding a more current detention and interrogation policy. Sen. Ted Cruz said "Senate Democrats have endangered Americans" by releasing the report.
A high-stakes vote over the future of the NSA further tested Republicans' relationships in the Valley. Paul and others had supported a major overhaul of the agency's authorities to collect Americans' communications in bulk--but the senator shocked tech giants and civil-liberties groups when he pulled support at the last minute, as the USA Freedom Act reached the Senate floor for a key procedural vote. Rubio long had stated his opposition, citing emerging terrorist threats and the need for more intelligence.
Paul defended his vote on surveillance reform, stressing in an interview he "couldn't vote for it because it reauthorized the PATRIOT Act"--a law he described as "heinous."
Companies like Facebook, Google, Yahoo and Yelp--through their Washington trade group, the Internet Association--are public backers of net neutrality. They together have praised Obama for endorsing an approach that might subject the Internet to utility-like regulation. All three Republicans, however, rejected the president's suggestion.
To hear Paul tell it, the party hasn't hurt its standing among the tech crowd. He and others, for example, have backed high-skilled labor reforms in the past. The GOP senator also stressed that support for net neutrality is "not actually uniform throughout Silicon Valley."
PAUL: One of the things I have talked to the president about is criminal justice reform. This means extending back the right to vote for people who made youthful nonviolent mistakes, expunging their records, trying to make it easier for them to find employment. I think put somebody in jail for 10 years for possession of marijuana or sale of marijuana is ridiculous. Some people are in jail for life. So, I have called the president, and I have told him, I agree with commuting some of these sentences, lessening some of these sentences, treating it more as a health issue. So, I think people's opinions on criminal justice for nonviolent drug crimes has changed. That is something we could do together.
PAUL: It depends on your stage of the disease. Quarantine is a tough question, because the libertarian in me is horrified at the idea of indefinitely detaining anyone without a trial. One of our basic rights is habeas corpus: if anybody was detaining you, you have recourse to a lawyer and to a judgment.
Q: She had a lawyer. They filed suit to get her out of New Jersey. Now she's in Maine and again saying, "I am not contagious."
PAUL: Well, I think common sense would say that it makes a different whether or not you're febrile, afebrile or asymptomatic.
Q: She doesn't have a fever.
PAUL: Right. When you're febrile, you're beginning to be contagious. And so there is a reasonable public concern. I think that we have to be very careful of people's civil liberties, but I'm also not saying that the government doesn't have a role in trying to prevent contagion.
PAUL: I think the president's biggest mistake was saying," oh, it's no big deal, you can't catch it if you're sitting on a bus. And we're not going to stop any travel." It's very contagious when someone is sick. I don't think anybody should be riding on a bus or coming from Liberia to visit when they could be contagious. So, I think a temporary stop of travel for elective travel, if you're coming to visit your relatives, couldn't that wait for a few months?
Do you think we ought to tighten the restrictions on who can come to this country?
PAUL: From the beginning of our country, we always had restrictions on infectious disease. That was one of the primary things we did at our border. Commercial travel for people who just want to visit the US, that really isn't a necessity, and we can wait few months on it. And it would make our problem a lot less if we were only thinking about health care workers coming back.
PAUL: I have mixed feelings. When I go in a government building, I have got to show my driver's license. So, I am not really opposed to it. I am opposed to it as a campaign theme. If you want to get the African-American vote, they think that this is suppression somehow and it's a terrible thing. I really think that we should restore the voting rights of those who had a previous conviction; that's where the real voting problem is. I'm not against early voting. I grew in Texas. We voted early for a month or two before elections for probably 20 years, and Texas is still a Republican state. But it's perception. The Republicans have to get beyond this perception that they don't want African-Americans to vote. Now, I don't think it's true. I'm not saying it's true. But by being for all these things, it reinforces a stereotype that we need to break down.
A number of social conservatives--plenty of them in Iowa--have condemned the morning-after pill as an on-demand abortion drug, sometimes confusing the contraceptive with RU-486, which can be used to induce abortion.
Noticeably uncomfortable with the question, Paul first gave a terse answer: "I am not opposed to birth control," he said. After a pause, he elaborated. "That's basically what Plan B is. Plan B is taking two birth control pills in the morning and two in the evening, and I am not opposed to that."
"Intervention is a mistake. Intervention when both sides are evil is a mistake. Intervention that destabilizes the Middle East is a mistake. And yet, here we are again, wading into a civil war," Paul said.
His doubts ran contrary to the thinking of Rubio, who advocated an aggressive response, saying the threat should have been addressed earlier. "If we do not confront and defeat ISIL now we will have to do so later, and it will take a lot longer, be a lot costlier, and be more painful," Rubio said, using an acronym for Islamic State. "If we fail to approve this, the nations of that region will say America is not truly engaged."
PAUL: If you're African American and you live in Ferguson, the belief is, you see people in prison and they're mostly black and brown, that somehow it is racial, even if the thoughts that were going on at that time had nothing to do with race. So it's a very good chance that had this had nothing to do with race, but because of the way people were arrested, that everybody perceives it as, "My goodness, the police are out to get us," you know? I don't know what happened during the shooting, so I'm not gonna make a judgment on the shooting. But I do know what's happening, as far as that you look at who's in our prisons.
Rand Paul says, "This is an amazing enterprise. We have a surgery center. We have a dental clinic and we have a place doing glasses."
Scores of people line up every day for a week--hoping American doctors can give them their sight--and their lives back. A 79 year-old great-grandmother who has cataracts. A farmer just wants to see again so he can work in his field. A mission to restore sight, and hope, to the poorest of the poor.
When asked if this helps his presidential ambitions, Paul notes, "I've been doing this kinda stuff for 20 years--I think the first kids I operated on were 1996. This isn't something new that we're doing. A physician is who I am."
In January 2008, Guatemala shut down all intercountry adoptions. Paul noted, "There were thousands of kids being adopted from Guatemala until 2009, and then it's dwindled. They've cleared some of the backlog, and they said it used to be maybe too easy and now it's way too hard but there could be a legal way to try to improve immigration this way. But with regards to immigration, I let him know I don't think the source of the problem is in Guatemala. It's in our White House."
White people have accounted for more than half of all executions in the United States since 1976. Kentucky has executed three people since 1976--all white males--but none since 2008. The state's death penalty has been on hold since 2010 pending the outcome of a state lawsuit.
Paul said he did not know if the death penalty is an important issue to minority voters, whom he has been courting in recent months.
In February, Paul pressed Republicans in the Kentucky Senate to pass a bill that would restore voting rights to some convicted felons. It ultimately failed.
Paul plans to talk about those issues in a speech Friday at the National Urban League's annual conference in Cincinnati. He said his ideas have been well received in minority communities because "people are ready for something to happen."
I disagree with Sen. Paul's representation of what America should be doing, and when you read his op-ed, he talks about basically, what I consider to be, isolationist policies.
PAUL: It's the biggest voting rights issue of our day. There may be a million people who are being prevented from voting from having a previous felony conviction. I'll give you an example: I have a friend who, 30 years ago, grew marijuana plants in college. He made a mistake. He still can't vote, and every time he goes to get a job he has to tick a box that says convicted felon. It prevents you from employment. We should be for letting people have the right to vote back, and I think the face of the Republican Party needs to be not about suppressing the vote, but about enhancing the vote. My bill would allow somewhere a million people to get the right to vote back.
PAUL: Three out of four people in prison are black or brown for nonviolent drug use. However, when you do surveys, white kids are doing drugs at an equal rate, and they are a much bigger part of the population. So, why are the prisons full of black and brown kids? It is easier to arrest them. It is easier to convict them. They don't get as good of attorneys. And, frankly, they live in the city more than in the suburbs, and so the police are patrolling the city more. But it is unfair. The war on drugs has had a racial outcome, unintentionally, but it has a racial outcome. And I want to try to fix it.
Q: And your bill does change some drug laws in order to try to even out the punishment for similar drugs?
PAUL: Yes.
PAUL: I think if you want to be Commander-in-Chief the bar you have to cross is will you defend the country--will you provide adequate security--and that's why Benghazi is not a political question for me. To me it's not the talking points--that's never been the most important part of Benghazi--it's the six months leading up to Benghazi where there were multiple requests for more security--and it never came. This was under Hillary Clinton's watch. She will have to overcome that--and we will make her answer for Benghazi.
PAUL: She will have to explain how she can be commander and chief when she was not responsive to multiple requests for more security in the six months leading up. She wouldn't approve a 16-person personnel team and she would not approve an airplane to help them get around the country. In the last 24 hours, a plane was very important and it was not available. These are really serious questions beyond talking points that occurred under her watch.
Q: Benghazi is disqualifying for her?
PAUL: I think so. The American people want a commander-in-chief that will send reinforcements, that will defend the country, and that will provide the adequate security. And I think in the moment of need--a long moment, a six-month moment--she wasn't there.
PAUL: I think that everyone needs to be for some form of immigration reform because the status quo is untenable. I think that if we do nothing, 11 million more people may be coming illegally, so we have to do something. But here's the conundrum, I think the conundrum that is really being pointed out by the children being dumped on the border right now--there's a humanitarian disaster of 50,000 kids being dumped on this side of our border. It's because you have a beacon, forgiveness, and you don't have a secure border. I am for immigration reform, but I insist that you secure the border first because if you have a beacon, of some kind of forgiveness, without a secure border, the whole world will come.
PAUL: I think that that's the whole point: What is amnesty? Because, [for those who say] "no deportation and no amnesty," well, if you're not going to deport people you are somehow changing the current law because the current law says everybody must go.
Q: But you've said that the party should give up this word "amnesty"?
PAUL: I think we need to get beyond it. We need some form of immigration reform.
Q: And a path to citizenship?
PAUL: Well, the path to citizenship is a longer, more difficult goal.
Q: But you don't rule it out as an end game?
PAUL: What I would say is that at this point in time I don't think any type of immigration reform will get out of Washington that includes a path to citizenship. But I do think that there is a path to a secure border and an expanded work visa program.
PAUL: I see mostly confusion and chaos, and I think some of the chaos is created from getting involved in the Syrian civil war. You have to realize that some of the Islamic rebels that we have been supporting are actually allies of the group that is now in Iraq causing all of this trouble.
Q: ISIS, as a terrorist organization, has been billed by many as a clear and present danger. Do you see that?
PAUL: I look at it on a personal basis. I ask, "Do I want to send one of my sons, or your son, to fight to regain Mosul?" And I think, "Well ya, these are nasty terrorists, we should want to kill them." But I think, "Who should want to stop them more? Maybe the people who live there." Should not the Shiites, the Maliki government, should they not stand up? Yes, we should prevent them from exporting terror; but, I'm not so sure where the clear-cut, American interest is.
PAUL: Was the war won in 2005, when many of these people said it was won? They didn't really understand the civil war that would break out. And what's going on now, I don't blame on Obama. Has he really got the solution? Maybe there is no solution. But I do blame the Iraq War on the chaos that is in the Middle East. I also blame those who are for the Iraq War for emboldening Iran. These are the same people now who are petrified of what Iran may become, and I understand some of their worry.
Q: You're not a "Dick Cheney Republican" when it comes to American power in the Middle East?
PAUL: What I would say is that the war emboldened Iran. Iran is much more of a threat because of the Iraq War than they were before--before there was a standoff between Sunnis and Shiites--now there is Iranian hegemony throughout the region.
Paul often complains that his worldview is caricatured by people who are eager to cast him as a clone of his father, former Representative Ron Paul of Texas, who is deeply suspicious of American involvement overseas. "They start out with a mischaracterization of his point of view, bastardize it, make it worse," the senator said.
Part of Paul's strategy is to appear before audiences that are not necessarily friendly to him, such as the Heritage Foundation, where he left the impression that he knew he must evolve.
Some observers say this is the evolution of a savvy politician with presidential ambitions. Paul says it is more like a slow reveal. "I've been expressing gradually where my foreign policy is," he said. "Foreign policy isn't set in stone. It isn't either-or. And it isn't always right or wrong."
Democrats have blasted the effort in Republican states to enact strict voter identification laws, arguing they disproportionately affect minority voters. Paul acknowledged that much of the animosity surrounding the debate centers on race. Republicans claim the laws are essential to combat voter fraud. In past comments, Paul has acknowledged fraud exists but that "Republicans may have overemphasized this."
"There's 180,000 people in Kentucky who can't vote. And I don't know the racial breakdown, but it's probably more black than white," he said.
It is a dumb idea to announce to Iran that you would accept and contain that country if it were to become a nuclear power. But it is equally dumb, dangerous and foolhardy to announce in advance how we would react to any nation that obtains nuclear weapons. If, after World War II, we had preemptively announced that containment of nuclear powers would never be considered, the US would have trapped itself into nuclear confrontations with Russia & China.
I believe all options should be on the table to stop Iran from getting nuclear weapons, including the military option. I have voted repeatedly for sanctions against Iran and will continue to do so. But I will also continue to argue that war is a last resort.
(VIDEO CLIP) PAUL: Dick Cheney then goes to work for Halliburton, makes hundreds of millions of dollars as CEO. Next thing you know, he's back in government it's a good idea to go to Iraq. (END VIDEO CLIP)
Q: Do you really think that Cheney was motivated by his financial ties to Halliburton?
PAUL: I'm not questioning his motives. I don't think Dick Cheney did it out of malevolence, I think he loves his country as much as I love the country.
Q: But you said we don't want our defense to be defined by people who make money off the weapons.
PAUL: There's a chance for a conflict of interest. At one point in time, he was opposed going into Baghdad. Then he was out of office and involved in the defense industry and then he became for going into Baghdad.
PAUL: I think that's an incorrect conclusion, you know. I would say my foreign policy is right there with what came out of Ronald Reagan.
Q: But Reagan went through a huge defense buildup. One of the first things you did when you got elected was propose a nearly $50 billion cut to the Pentagon, bigger than the sequester.
PAUL: The sequester actually didn't cut spending; the sequester cut the rate of growth of spending over 10 years.
Q: But the point is you proposed curbing defense spending more than the sequester.
PAUL: Even though I believe national defense is the most important thing we do, but it isn't a blank check. Some conservatives think, oh, give them whatever they want and that everything is for our soldiers and they play up this patriotism that--oh, we don't have to control defense spending. We can't be a trillion dollars in the hole every year.
(VIDEO CLIP): JEB BUSH: Yes, they broke the law, but it's not a felony. It's an act of love.
Q: Do you agree with him on this?
PAUL: You know, I think he might have been more artful, maybe, in the way he presented this. But I don't want to say, oh, he's terrible for saying this. If it were me, what I would have said is, people who seek the American dream are not bad people.
Q: Even if they came into this country illegally?
PAUL: They are not bad people. However, we can't invite the whole world. When you say they're doing an act of love and you don't follow it up with, "but we have to control the border," people think well because they're doing this for kind reasons that the whole world can come to our country.
PAUL: I've repeatedly voted for sanctions against Iran. And I think all options should be on the table to prevent them from having nuclear weapons. I'm a stickler on what the wording is, because I don't want to have voted for something that declared war without people thinking through this. They said containment will never, ever be our policy. We woke up one day and Pakistan had nuclear weapons. If that would have been our policy towards Pakistan, we would be at war with Pakistan. The people who say, "by golly, we will never stand for that", they are voting for war.
Q: Could the US live with a nuclear armed Iran?
PAUL: It's not a good idea to announce that in advance. Should I announce to Iran, "well, we don't want you to, but we'll live with it." No, that's a dumb idea to say that you're going to live with it. However, the opposite is a dumb idea too.
PAUL: You know, it's a hardened resistance. It's been going on for decade after decade. So it's not going to easy to change. We got 3% of the vote in Detroit [for Romney in the 2012 election]. There's not one Democrat that's offered to help the people in Detroit. I went to the people of Detroit and I offered them a billion dollars of their own money to try to help them recover.
Q: But you're offering tax cuts. If you don't have a job, if you're in poverty, tax cuts aren't going to help.
PAUL: That money would be left in the hands of businesses that people in Detroit are already voting on. Let's grow those businesses and they will employ more people.
It wasn't immediately clear who Paul was attacking. He did not name names, but that may simply have been because he had too many targets. He could have been referring to several of his potential rivals for the presidency.
Paul's remarks were at least a change in tone from last month, when he said that, "Some on our side are so stuck in the Cold War era that they want to tweak Russia all the time and I don't think that is a good idea."
Paul's dovish line started to seem a bit embarrassing when men with unmarked uniforms began to seize control of parts of Crimea. Paul then issued this timid warning for the Kremlin: "Russia should be reminded that stability and territorial integrity go hand in hand with prosperity. Economic incentives align against Russian military involvement in Ukraine."
Eight days later, he published an essay in Time under the headline, US Must Take Strong Action Against Russian Aggression. He wrote, "It is our role as a global leader to be the strongest nation in opposing Russia's latest aggression."
Paul said in an interview that it's not for him to judge whether the New Jersey governor should step down as chairman of the Republican Governors Association while he deals with the bridge scandal, but "It's important that people think that their government not be used to bully them," Paul told the CNN affiliate in Houston. "So for example, one of the things that conservatives have been upset with President Obama is that it looked like he was using the IRS to target taxpayer groups."
"Nobody wants to think their government would shut down a bridge or do something just because you're a Democrat and I'm a Republican," Paul said. "It's unsettling and it's a serious charge. I don't know if it's true, but it's unsettling."
PAUL: Well, you know, I think we have a lot of debates in Washington that get dumbed down and are used for political purposes. This whole sort of war on women thing, I'm scratching my head because if there was a war on women, I think they won. You know, the women in my family are incredibly successful. I have a niece at Cornell vet school, and 85% of the young people there are women. In law school, 60% are women; in med school, 55%. My younger sister's an ob-gyn with six kids and doing great. You know, I don't see so much that women are downtrodden; I see women rising up and doing great things. And, in fact, I worry about our young men sometimes because I think the women really are out-competing the men in our world. I think the facts show that women are doing very well, have come a long way. So I don't really see this, that there's some sort of war that's, you know, keeping women down.
PAUL: It sounds vaguely like a threat and I think it also has a certain amount of arrogance in the sense that one of the fundamental principles of our country were the checks and balances that it wasn't supposed to be easy to pass legislation. You had to debate and convince people. So, there's a lot of things the president's not allowed to do. President's not allowed to write or amend legislation. He's not allowed to initiate war. And he's not allowed to tell us when we're in recess and when we're not. He says, "oh, well, it's hard to get Congress to do anything." Well, yes, welcome to the real world. It's hard to convince people to get legislation through. It takes consensus. But that's what he needs to be doing is building consensus and not taking his pen and creating law.
PAUL: You know, we make the mistake up there that we try to agree to too much. I'm the first to acknowledge the president and I don't agree on every issue, but if you took ten issues I think there are two or three that we agree on, and we agree firmly on, and why don't we go after the issues that we agree on? When I was at the White House a couple of weeks ago, I said to the president, "I want to increase infrastructure spending, and I know you do. Let's let companies bring back their profit from overseas at 5% and put it all in infrastructure." And I've been talking with Senator Durbin, others in the Senate on the Democrat side. I think we could agree to that tomorrow, but we have to go ahead and just narrow the focus and not say, "Oh, we're going to do overall tax reform," because we don't agree on overall tax reform.
PAUL: Well, I think what's really cruel is to have an economy that doesn't have jobs in it. So we have to talk about what policy creates jobs. With regard to unemployment insurance, I'm not opposed to unemployment insurance, I am opposed to having it without paying for it. I think it's wrong to borrow money from China or simply to print up money for it. But I'm not against having unemployment insurance. I do think, though, that the longer you have it, that it provides some disincentive to work, and that there are many studies that indicate this.
Q: But if this extension is paid for, you can support it
PAUL: Well, what I have always said is that it needs to be paid for, but we also need to do something for long-term unemployed people, and that is, we need to create something new that creates jobs.
PAUL: One single warrant should not apply to everyone who has a cell phone in America. One of the things that Edward Snowden released was a single court order to the company Verizon that all of their customers records would be looked at. That to my mind smacks of a generalized warrant. That's what we fought the revolutionary war over. So, I think by bringing a class-action suit, where we have thousands of people who come forward and say, "my cell phone records are mine unless you go to a judge & ask a judge specifically for my records," you shouldn't be able to have a general warrant. A class-action lawsuit really brings to the forefront the idea that this is a generalized warrant and it should be considered unconstitutional.
I don't think we can't selectively apply the law. Edward Snowden did break a law and there is a prison sentence for that. I don't think Snowden deserves the death penalty or life in prison. I think that's inappropriate. And I think that's why he fled, because that's what he faced. Do I think that it's OK to leak secrets and give up national secrets and things that could endanger lives? I don't think that's OK, either. But I think the courts are now saying that what he revealed was something the government was doing was illegal.
So no clemency for Edward Snowden, but perhaps leniency?
PAUL: Well, I think the only way he's coming home is if someone would offer him a fair trial with a reasonable sentence. I think, really, in the end, history is going to judge that he revealed great abuses of our government and great abuses of our intelligence community.
PAUL: I do support unemployment benefits for the 26 weeks that they're paid for. If you extend it beyond that, you do a disservice to these workers. There was a study that came out a few months ago, and it said, if you have a worker that's been unemployed for 4 weeks and on unemployment insurance and one that's on 99 weeks, which would you hire? Every employer, nearly 100%, said they will always hire the person who's been out of work 4 weeks. When you allow people to be on unemployment insurance for 99 weeks, you're causing them to become part of this perpetual unemployed group in our economy. And while it seems good, it actually does a disservice to the people you're trying to help. You know, I don't doubt the president's motives. But black unemployment in America is double white unemployment. And it hasn't budged under this president.
PAUL: I would like to apply the Fourth Amendment to third-party records. I don't think you give up your privacy when someone else holds your records. So, when I have a contract with a phone company, those are still my records. And the government can look at them if they ask a judge. But the most important thing is, a warrant applies to one person. A warrant doesn't apply to everyone in America. So, it's absolutely against the spirit and the letter of the Fourth Amendment to say that a judge can write one warrant and you can get every phone call in America. That's what's happening. I think it's wrong. It goes against everything America stands for. And I will help to fight that all the way to the Supreme Court.
Q: So, you would ban mass data mining?
PAUL: I'm not opposed to the NSA. But I am in favor of the Fourth Amendment.
PAUL: Well, it hasn't worked. I mean, the president poured $1 trillion into the nation's economy. And when you divided it out, it was about $400,000 per job. The problem with a government stimulus is you pick the winners and losers. With this stimulus, a free market stimulus, you simply leave the money in the hands of those who earned it. So customers have actually picked out the successful people, the ones they choose to buy products from. Those people get more money.
Though Paul did not address Christie by name, he railed against funding campaigns in New Jersey that heavily featured political candidates: "Some of these ads, people who are running for office put their mug all over the ads while they're in the middle of a political campaign," Paul said, adding that this could create "a conflict of interest," upsetting taxpayers who expect their dollars to be spent otherwise.
Christie appeared with his family in an ad encouraging people to visit the Jersey Shore over the summer. Paul was among 36 Senate Republicans to vote against a $50.5 billion Hurricane Sandy relief bill last year, later accusing Christie of "bankrupting the government."
PAUL: Nearly 90% of them are signing up for Medicaid, free health insurance from the government. My concern is not that we shouldn't help people. I do want to help these people to get insurance. But there is going to be a cost. So I see the positive, but I also see the negative. And the real problem is we're driving everyone out of the individual market. Where there were once hundreds of plans that you could choose from, there's now four government-mandated plans. If your insurance is not as good as them, or even if it's too good, you can't buy it.
Q: If the web site problems are fixed, will ObamaCare work?
PAUL: You know, I think government is inherently inept, because they don't work on a profit motive. Government has to do certain things. But government shouldn't take on new things to do when it's not managing what it has now.
PAUL: I don't know whether any information has been distributed to foreign powers, and that would be a great deal of concern. But I'm also concerned that the national defense director lied to Congress. He's seriously damaged out standing in the world. Now, we're seen to be spying not only on foreign leaders, but there's an accusation that we spied on the pope, as well.
Q: Do you think the NSA should get out ahead of all of this and put out everything they knew Snowden to have?
PAUL: Maybe. But I think the fundamental question about whether or not this is constitutional or not should not be decided by the administration, nor by a secret FISA court. It needs to get into the Supreme Court. I've introduced a FISA bill that would allow cases like this to be challenged in open court. And we should determine once and all whether or not a single warrant can apply to every American. I don't think it does and I think the Supreme Court will side with us.
PAUL: I'm willing to compromise. But we're borrowing more than a million dollars every minute. So, we do have to address that. I think the one thing I cannot accept is the Democrats want to exceed the sequester caps, these things that we put into law to restrain spending already. And it's funny, they're all about ObamaCare being the law of the land, but so is the sequester. The sequester is the law of the land, and if we exceed that, it's a real big step in the wrong direction.
Q: The sequester means forced budget cuts that unless there is some agreement on Capitol Hill about spending, they go into place.
PAUL: Yes, and to clarify what the sequester cuts are, they're a cut in the rate of increase of spending, because over ten years, even with the sequester, government will grow. It goes down for a year or two, but over 10 years, it grows.
PAUL: Well, because it's Congress's job to oversee spending. The power of the purse resides with Congress and they fund programs every year. So it's not their obligation once something is law to never change it. So it's a silly argument for Democrats to say, "Oh, the law has been passed. We can't ever change it." Well that's what Congress's job is.
Q: You talk about compromise a lot with regard to ObamaCare. What part of ObamaCare do you like and want to keep?
PAUL: I don't really like any of ObamaCare. But I realize I'm not going to get my way. But we do control a third of the government. People did elect us to fight. I'm supposed to go and fight to make bills either less bad or make them better if possible. So I think it is my job to stand up and provide oversight for legislation. It's precisely what Congress is supposed to be doing. This is Congress's job.
PAUL: No. And I think it's a mistake to get involved in the Syrian civil war. I would ask, "Do you think that it's less likely or more likely that chemical weapons will be used again if we bomb Assad?" Is it more likely or less likely that we'll have more refugees in Jordan or that Israel might suffer attack? I think all of the bad things that you could imagine are all more likely if we get involved in the Syrian civil war.
Q: Secretary Kerry says for you and others not to authorize force is really hurtful to US credibility.
PAUL: The one thing I'm proud of the president for is that he's coming to Congress in a constitutional manner & asking for our authorization. That's what he ran on: his policy was that no president should unilaterally go to war without congressional authority. And I'm proud that he's sticking by it.
PAUL: The line in the sand should be that America gets involved when American interests are threatened. I don't see American interests involved on either side of this Syrian war. I see Assad, who has protected Christians for a number of decades, and then I see the Islamic rebels on the other side who have been attacking Christians. I see Al Qaeda on the side we would go into support. And I don't see a clear-cut American interest. I don't see [the rebels, if] victorious, being an American ally.
Q: How would the US look if the president decided to take military action and Congress does not give that authority?
PAUL: I think it would show that he made a grave mistake when he drew a red line. When you set a red line that was not a good idea to beginning with, and now you're going to adhere to it to show your machismo, then you're really adding bad policy to bad policy
"They're precisely the same people who are unwilling to cut the spending, and their 'Gimme, gimme, gimme--give me all my Sandy money now.'" Paul said, referring to federal funding after the hurricane last year. "Those are the people who are bankrupting the government and not letting enough money be left over for national defense."
Paul said he wasn't the one itching for a fight: "I didn't start this one, and I don't plan on starting things by criticizing other Republicans," he said. "But if they want to make me the target, they will get it back in spades."
Today, Christians in Iraq, Libya, Egypt and Syria are on the run--persecuted or under fire--and yet, we continue to send aid to the folks chasing them. While they burn the American flag and the mobs chant "Death to America," more of your money is sent to these haters of Christianity.
Even if all the atrocities to Christians were not occurring in these countries, we simply don't have the money to engage in this foolishness. We must borrow the money from China to send it to Pakistan.
It is clear that American taxpayer dollars are being used to enable a war on Christianity in the Middle East and I believe that must end.
PAUL: I was pleased with his words, However, there still is a question in my mind of what he thinks due process is? You know, due process to most of us is a court of law, it's a trial by a jury. For example, last year we passed legislation that I voted against, and that's detaining citizens indefinitely without a trial, and sending them to Guantanamo Bay.
Q: The president did speak about closing Guantanamo. Do you think it should be closed?
PAUL: No. I think it's become a symbol of something though, and I think things should change. For example, I think the people being held there are bad people. What I would do though is accuse them, charge them, and try them in military tribunals, or trials. And I think that would go a long way toward showing the world that we're not going to hold them without charge forever.
The student insisted that he wanted assistance for his college education and asked if Rand Paul supported a culture change within the nation. Paul responded that he believed that government should allow people to believe whatever they wanted, and clarified that he didn't believe in the absence of government.
The Kentucky Republican added that he supported the idea of student loans from the government but added that the federal government shouldn't be allowed to spend more money than it takes in: "I think 'leave me alone' is a good mantra for government because government has to be involved in certain things but there are many things that we can leave government out of," Paul concluded.
[FROM LIBRARY OF CONGRESS]: S.583 & H.R.1091:
Life at Conception Act
Sponsored by Sen. Rand Paul along with 132 House members. Introduced 3/12/2013
Declares that the right to life guaranteed by the Constitution is vested in each human being beginning at the moment of fertilization, cloning,
or other moment at which an individual comes into being. Prohibits construing this Act to authorize the prosecution of any woman for the death of her unborn child.
At the same time, Paul suggests that the tax code and health insurance should be made neutral so that gay couples benefit from the same breaks as married ones. Like Rubio, he has said that gay marriage should be left to the states to decide. He said Sunday that he is okay with the government being "neutral" on gay marriage; in February he said he was "not sure" how he felt about DOMA.
But he's already willing to let other states legalize gay marriage and to let gay couples have some federal benefits; he could expand that to mean marriage in all but name.
PAUL: I think it's a really complicated issue. I've always said that the states have a right to decide. I do believe in traditional marriage, Kentucky has decided it, and I don't think the federal government should tell us otherwise. There are states that have decided in the opposite fashion, and I don't think the federal government should tell anybody or any state government how they should decide this. Marriage has been a state issue for hundreds of years. DOMA is complicated, though, because DOMA does provide protection for the states from the federal government. But, then part of it federalizes the issue. I think the way to fix DOMA is maybe to try to make all of our laws more neutral towards the issue, and I don't want the government promoting something I don't believe in.
PAUL: The main thing I've said is not to legalize them but not to incarcerate people for extended periods of time. With Senator Leahy, we have a bill on mandatory minimums. There are people in jail for 50 years for nonviolent crimes. And that's a huge mistake. Our prisons are full of nonviolent criminals. I don't want to encourage people to do it. Marijuana takes away your incentive to work. I don't want to promote that but I also don't want to put people in jail who make the mistake. There are a lot of young people who do this and then later on, they get married and they quit; I don't want to put them in jail and ruin their lives. The last two presidents could conceivably have been put in jail for their drug use, and it would have ruined their lives. They got lucky, but a lot of poor kids, particularly in the inner city, don't get lucky.
PAUL: If people are attacking the Twin Towers with planes, I never argued you wouldn't use drones or F-16s to repel that kind of attack. The problem is, a lot of the drone attacks are killing people not actively engaged in combat. If you are accused of being associated with terrorism, which could mean you are an Arab-American and you've sent e-mails to a relative in the Middle East, you should get your day in court. Did the president completely slam the door on not using drones? No, I think there's wiggle room in there, but we did force him to at least narrow what his power is and that was my goal.
PAUL: Well, that's not the main part of my plan. The main part of my plan is trust but verify, that says we have to have border security. The amendment that I will add to the bipartisan plan will ensure that there is border security and that Congress gets to vote on that border security every year, in order for it to go forward. With regard to E-verify, it's not that I'm opposed to some sort of database check. For example, when you come into the country, I think the country should do a background check on you to find out if you are a felon or if there's a problem. So I'm not against any kind of checking, I just would prefer the government to be the policeman and not the businessman.
Q: Is that enough? America still works?
PAUL: Well, I don't think we need new principles. I think the principles we have, we need to be more explicit with. And, instead of saying, "oh, we want revenue-neutral tax reform," I think we need to stand up and say, "we want to leave more money in the economy. We want to reduce taxes--that when Reagan did it, we had 7% growth in one year." That's the kind of bold leadership we need but it's not a new principle. We don't have to reinvent ourselves in that way, but we do have to stand on principle. And unless you really stand for something, people aren't motivated to go out and vote for you.
Indiana has joined the growing list of right to work (RTW) states, followed by heavily-unionized Michigan. That means that forced unionism is still legal in 26 states, but that number is dwindling.
RTW laws are still government intervention into what used to be private matters between employers and employees, but they lift the most onerous parts of labor union agreements which demand either the complete exclusion of non-union workers from being employed by a union shop or requiring any non-union workers to support the union with their dues anyway.
In his announcement, Paul stated: "Every American worker deserves the right to freedom of association--and I am concerned that the 26 states that allow forced union membership and dues infringes on these workers' rights."
PAUL: I am concerned about one person deciding the life or death of not only foreigners but US citizens around the world. And the chance that one person could make a mistake is a possibility. So having the president decide who he's going to kill concerns me. I would rather it go through the FISA court. They make the decision over weeks and months. They target people and go after them. I see no reason why there couldn't be some sort of court preceding, even a secret court preceding, to allow some protection. I mean, even in the US where we have the best due process probably in the world, we have probably executed people wrongfully for the death penalty. They have found out through DNA testing, many people on death row are there inaccurately. So I think when we decide to kill someone, that's obviously the ultimate punishment. We need to be very, very certain that what we're doing is not in error.
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The above quotations are from Sunday Political Talk Show interviews during 2013-2015, interviewing presidential hopefuls for 2016.
Click here for main summary page. Click here for a profile of Rand Paul. Click here for Rand Paul on all issues.
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