Senator Rand Paul discusses individualism, freedom, and national security on Uncommon Knowledge

filibuster late 18th century from French feel bustier first applied to pillaging pirates now a prolonged speech that brings the ordinary workings of a Legislative Assembly to a standstill see for example the junior senator from Kentucky who one day this past spring rose in the Senate chamber to protest administration policy and kept talking for thirteen hours with us today Senator Rand Paul uncommon knowledge now welcome to uncommon knowledge I'm Peter Robinson born in 1963 Randall Howard Paul attended Baylor then received his medical degree from Duke although raised in Texas after medical school dr. Paul moved to Kentucky where his wife grew up to begin practicing ophthalmology and become active in politics found in Kentucky taxpayers United in 2010 dr. Paul was elected to the United States Senate the son of former congressman Ron Paul who ran for president once as a libertarian and twice as a Republican Senator Paul has in two years in the Senate become a national figure as a recent issue of The Economist put at Senator Paul quote is definitely not his dad Rand Paul is trying to build a coalition that can win Senator Paul welcome that was you governing philosophy let me quote you Senator Rand Paul quote the government isn't inherently stupid it just doesn't get the same signals explain that well you know I usually say they're not inherently stupid but it's an available question and the reason it is is that there's a difference between what drives the marketplace and what drives the excellence of the marketplace and I usually say there are sort of two reasons for minimal government one's a liberty argument that the more you give up of your wealth and your earnings the less Liberty you have and so you want to minimize government size but you also want to want to minimize government size because of efficiency as Friedman said nobody spends someone else's money as wisely as they spend their own and I think that's what that gets at the heart of as far as inherent stupidity it's just that they're just not getting the signal that a private business person gets as far as trying to maximize a profit and I'm actually in favor of trying to put some of that back into government to try to make government more efficient and I would actually pay government officials on how much savings they find in their department so you you suggest bonuses based on savings instead of increasing salaries based on the size of your department exactly and the incentive is now when there's money left in your department if you have a governmental department is to spend it all so you get it next year right you're the third of five children right of congressman and mrs. Ron Paul how did you come to your political philosophy it was this dinner table conversation in the ball household when you were a kid but my case is probably the argument of nature versus nurture and I may have had both and I think we're all born with an instinct you know to individualism you know too we grow up in a family and even if my family as a teenager I wanted I remember calculating how old I would be in the year 2000 how I'd be completely independent now to make my own decisions stay up as late as I want eat what I want go where I want earn my own money so I think we all have a little bit of that inside of us maybe some to one degree or more but then there's also the nurture argument of the sense that you know I've read most of the free market economists I am you know a student of history and what I see is that I would really like to see a government that truly is limited you know and and that our freedom is much more expansive okay so let's spend a moment considering what's gone wrong William vocally wrote a book never enough on the expansion of the welfare state and he made this very striking point that from 1940 to 2007 welfare spending grew at an average annual rate of just over 4% and this is while income is growing at about two point four percent the point is that for almost seven decades year in year out under presidents of both parties hunger congresses of both parties the federal welfare Leviathan has continued to grow and grow and Oh Ronald Reagan held back the growth in spending but even he wasn't able to cut it why what's the political dynamic well even welfare reform affected maybe four programs out of 70 or 80 program so it wasn't complete enough I put it in more personal terms and I think this is something that can appeal to people across both parties and independents as well as that if you look like me and you hop out of your truck you ought to be working and I think most people believe that we're now registering though more people as disabled than we are employing people and that's a real problem but it's a gradual problem Republicans and Democrats have been complicit in this but it's growing growing growing and people worried that such a great deal of dependency will ultimately drag us down as a country and that's where the burden of debt comes in and I think there really is a burden but our message is a more difficult one we need to explain to those who are working-class and trying to get ahead that this burden of big government that all of this stuff that government's offering you really has unintended consequences of dragging the economy down dragging job creation down all right in March you introduced a budget that would have eliminated the federal deficit in five years you voted against the budget the house sent over that Paul Ryan put together because although even as you were voting against Paul Ryan's budget the press was attacking it as too too dramatic to think Oh amazing yeah right but that would have reduced the federal deficit over 10 years and Rand Paul said not fast enough so I think we're dragging a lot of the party in the right direction Ryan's first budget was going to balance in 28 years now he's come up to ten years you know there were a little bit of unrealistic things they were going to get rid of Obama care spending but he left in the Obamacare taxes so we really think that we need to change and I'm for a much more dramatic change than some of the gradualists in our party I think we ought to just have a flat income tax 17% personal 17 percent corporate very few deductions you'd have a lot less revenue this would not be revenue neutral but I think you'd see an explosion in the economy as you left all of that money into the economy senator here's the first instance of a question that comes up again and again and again listening to you reading your speeches what makes him think he's different and here's the version the instance right now Republicans have been pushing for a flat tax since at least 1996 when Steve Forbes ran for president but he didn't win if he woulda won we've added by now so we need to win so that's the point what makes you think you're different what makes you do you see it I'll put it crudely because this is a question that's in the air about you is Rand Paul just trying to make a point and so so be it let him make a point there's nothing wrong with it it's a valid point or does he see a political opportunity can he actually get things done right see I don't think anybody can sit here and say oh I am different I'm going to be the one I'm the one that's that's a little bit presumptuous however I would say that there is a route to victory for Republicans nationally without diluting our message being for something passionately but I think it takes a twist it's slightly different you're from out in California California we say blue-ish it's a blue state to bring it back red you can have to attract people different than the standard cookie-cutter Republicans Ben so I am offering something's different in the libertarian twist of that I think has appealed to both ethnic minorities as well as the youth as well as independence it's really a message that gets beyond our just our hardcore Republican but it's not antithetical to what hardcore Republicans stand for but it is enough of a twist that I think it has a chance to resonate in areas where we have not done very well all right immigration that's the hutt the big big bill in the Senate right now the legislation is complicated but very briefly the legislation now before the Senate voted out of committee first proposed by the so-called gang of eight including your fellow freshmen Republican Marco Rubio of Florida immigrants already in the country illegally would be required to register with the government pay a fine they would then become RPI's a registered provisional immigrants a three part enforcement regime would be established a verify system system to track visa holders increased border security and then when all three parts of the enforcement regime are implemented and only after remaining in RPI status for 10 years with RP is again registered provisional immigrants only then would they be permitted to apply for green cards and then they'd have to remain on green arts for a period of three years before applying for citizenship how's that sound to you I'm for immigration reform we've got a broken system we have ten 11 million people here who came in illegally or they came in legally and now became undocumented so we have to fix the system if we do nothing in another 10 or 15 years we have another 10 million who come in illegally so I am for documenting the undocumented letting them pay taxes if you want to work in our country I'm for finding a place for you that being said there are still some problems with the bill the bill does what most bills around here or do it delegates the authority to the administration to say okay you have to fix border security but if you don't someone has to write a report about you not fixing it and then if the report doesn't work then we'll have a commission that was you another report that stuff doesn't work and that's why people are so distrustful of government as a conservative to support this I have to believe that we're going to fix the fix the problem the big driver of illegal immigration is that we have a work piece of program that's not working and so right now three or four hundred thousand people come in to pick crops every year but only 65,000 of them use the work piece of program so most of them are coming in illegally unfortunately the bill actually limits and adds new caps to AG visas that's a mistake it does expand some of these skilled workers which is good but it puts caps on the AG visas which if that cap is below what the market dictates you're still going to have illegal immigration so we have an amendment if I can get my amendment passed I may be able to support the bill in my amendments called trust but verify conservatives want to believe that's going to happen so we write into the law some of the same border security and then bill we just write it in the bill and they do it but then we say each year Congress gets to vote and if it's the borders not secured and we don't think the administration is enforcing it the way it's supposed to then the process stops so if you have 10 million people they're going to go from undocumented to documented workers it happens gradually over a five or six year period and each year we vote as to whether the border is becoming more secure I think that will concern that will convince conservatives like myself that we're serious people are still talking about the 1986 Simpson they're saying they promised us border security and then it never came that's why conservatives are hesitant to vote for immigration reform right so among conservatives then you listen to talk radio you read the conservative magazines and that's exactly it my own reading of the reaction against the immigration bill is less that conservatives across the country feel any animus toward immigrants at all it's a deep feeling of betrayal by the federal government which since 1986 has failed to enforce the law at the border right okay so you said that you're in favor of documenting undocumented workers if they're here to work let's find a way to let them do it legally Mark Krikorian of the Center for Immigration Studies registered provisional immigrant status brings with it work authorization illegitimate social security account driver's license travel documents since it transforms the illegal alien into a person lawfully admitted to the United States register provisional immigrant status is an amnesty well I think if we get trapped into words and describing things just as either amnesty or pathway to citizenship these are catch words that mean different things to different people what I would say is and I've come to look at this maybe slightly different than I once did the 11 million that are here almost half of them came here legally they got a visa and they came here to pick crops at $8 an hour but they were working hard to provide for their family at $8 an hour and they saw a construction job that was $14 an hour and it's a free market it's open and it's there it's like we tell them they can't do it so our visa program which is big government failed the immigrant and said you can't go take a higher paying job unfortunately this bill does the same thing it's locks you into agricultural work because the unions have gotten involved the Union and the Chamber negotiated caps on workers and the ability to go from job to job so you can't go from AG worker to construction worker under this bill for at least five years the problem is if you're a normal person you've been here two or three years and you make an $8 an hour it's not an easy way to provide for your family all the sudden to $14 an hour job opens up even under today's will you still move to that and when we still have this undocumented problem final question about immigration Jeb Bush has said the GOP the quotation is needs to get immigration behind it right you've said that it's impossible for the GOP to make any headway with Hispanics as long as the Republican Party is viewed as hostile toward Ryman's they just shut down they won't listen to the rest of the message okay but don't we know what will happen if this immigration reform is enacted during this ten year waiting period Democrats will again and again and again say shorten the waiting period again and again they'll say start giving these people federal benefits it won't put it immigration behind the Republican Party it maybe maybe and there is a prize that I give the Democrats a chance to just make these people such solid democratic voters a century from now it'll there there is a potential problem and I often believe that maybe the Democrats want voters not workers however I would say if we do nothing let's say we do nothing we have 11 million people here they are having children who are becoming citizens and many are been here long enough their kids are voting if their kids believe and if they believe that the Republican Party is the party of deportation we will never get any of their votes so I think really it's not the specifics of immigration reform when I talk to Hispanic leaders in Kentucky and elsewhere they tell me we want to be treated with dignity when you call us an illegal you're implying that we stole something when we robbed somebody or we hurt somebody really all we were trying to do was make a better way for our family so a lot of it is Republicans need to get away from harsh rhetoric they need to embrace immigrants as assets to our country my family were immigrants years probably were to all of us were and the rules were different and maybe easier to come here at one point in time but we can't have open borders either I mean Milton Friedman said that as well you can't have open borders and a welfare state right but some of the arguments for saying oh these people going to come in and overwhelm welfare is those are also arguments for fixing welfare because those are arguments against any kind of population expansion because any any new births we have in the country will eventually a certain percentage of them will be on welfare your fundamental position is shrink the welfare state and welcome immigrants because with a shrunken welfare state they'll be here for the same reason have always come here that's to get a job and better their families right and the other thing we will add to the bill is we also have a bill an amendment that says that each individual state has to check for citizenship before voting they have to have a process they can't just say oh are you citizen check they actually have to have a process or they're going to lose federal funding we also have in there that if you want to get welfare the bill says you can't get wealth is your Amendment yes right our Amendment says that if someone comes in and applies for welfare you have to check to make sure they're they're here legally or a citizen because the bill says oh we're not going to give welfare the problem is is that many states and cities just say but we don't care we're not going to put it on the form we're going to say it has to be put on the form because a lot of the money is federal money in the welfare programs there's federal mixed with state sometimes for voting and as far as for welfare so we're going to try to make the bill stricter but I want in the end to be able to vote for it but as it is it needs to be strengthened because it's not going to pass in the house this way either what do you think as we sit here today early June what are the chances you'll be able to vote for it if they will come and talk to me the chances will improve greatly so far there hadn't been a great deal of conversation we're going to see but some of it depends if I get no headway towards the things that I want amendment amended to the bill then I don't think I can support it okay getting to know Rand Paul let me just briefly go through a few other issues so people get a chance to know where you stand Obamacare this fall against okay done with that but where does it stand this fall this thing gets rolled out in a way that finally effects provisions here and there have been taking effect but this fall it'll affect the way millions of Americans purchase their health insurance Paul Krugman of the New York Times says the big surprise will be how well it works how badly how well this will not be the first time I disagreed with Paul Craig what I would say is we fought many different times but I'm not giving up the fight we fought and lost originally in Congress we fought again in the presidential campaign and loss we fought at the Supreme Court and lost narrowly and I think was still wrongly decided but if we're going to have one more fight when the bills come - initially the federal government is going to pay for it because that's free we know we've heard we have a printing press up here so it really doesn't cost anything but then ultimately the bills are going to be directed back to state government and what they'll find is is that when you offer people a free credit card to go get health care that they love it and so they use it all the time but then it cost so much there's not enough money so then they have to come back and have to tell you oh no you can't go unless you get someone's gonna have to screen you they're going to rash and how often you go to the doctor and then they'll come to the physician and say well we were paying you twenty dollars a visit but there's too many people coming to see you so we have to pay you $10 a visit so they will have to reduce the expenditures what they pay hospitals what they pay doctors and they will also have to limit access which is another word is rationing and the state governments despite all of this will still face bankruptcy not just the states like your state like California Illinois that are in trouble states that are relatively sound are going to face problems because Medicaid it's already a driving force towards insolvency at the state level so I think there's gonna be one more big fight on Obamacare but it's going to be at the state legislative level and when this year as the bills as a bills come due and there I think the state the switching over to the state is 2014 but some may be 2014-2015 by for sure but in time for the presidential and twice I think so I think it'll still be a hot topic in 2016 drugs The Economist magazine Senator Paul has called for the scrapping of mandatory minimum sentences for nonviolent drug offenders but would not legalize drugs right what I think is is that if your kid or you know one of his friends goes out and gets caught with marijuana sticking them in prisons a big mistake so I don't really believe in prison sentences for these minor nonviolent drug offenses but I'm not willing to go all the way to saying it's a good idea either I think people use marijuana all the time lose IQ points I think they lose their drive to show up for work a lot of states are going to make the decision I think ultimately to legalize I am I am for letting States make that decision but I'm not in favor of and I want to make sure people know that I'm not encouraging young kids to do this but I also don't want to see young kids who make mistakes be put in prison with hardened prison nurse and I think I think he when you talk to evangelical Christian and conserver social conservatives you ask them that question would you rather see your teenager in your church get counseling or incarceration almost everybody I'll answer counselling but when California loosens its laws and comes into conflict with federal laws you side with California not the feds yes all right social issues were Senator Rand Paul quote I am 100% pro-life I believe abortion is taking the life of an innocent human being close quote senator where I come from out in Northern California when somebody says he's a libertarian 98 percent of the time he's saying is libertarian about that pro-choice keep the government out of the bedroom right and so this is an unusual position in my experience for a libertarian to take how do you square that one up what I would say is that there is a primary and fundamental role for government and the primary fundamental role for government is to stop aggression of one individual against another individual so the question comes down to when do you think someone's an individual when do you think life begins and then I think you get more to the heart of the matter is the real debate is when does life begin and I think as you have that discussion it becomes difficult I think to be flippant about it for example you know I'm an ophthalmologist but I examine babies in the neonatal nursery that can fit in upon my hand 1-pound babies that are alive I look in their eyes to check against a disease that can cause blindness that can be treated now but let's say a week before they were you know inside the mother but they just they don't exist they're not a life at that point and so increasingly later on in gestation people are somewhat horrified I mean people are horrified by this dr. Gosnell that was snipping the spinal cords of them they're horrified by people you know crushing the skull to get the baby out you know a live baby injecting things into them to kill them so I think many people towards the end are like well gosh yeah it's not that much different than the nursery how can I be that this is just the woman's body and it that there isn't another individual there but it's a tough debate and I think the Republican Party when I say that I want to be a libertarian Republican it is also that we'll have disagreements like this within the party and there will be people if we leave the decisions more low cool to their jurisdiction I think we can have more of a diversity of opinion within the party within the country overturn Roe vs. Wade and send it back to the states yeah I think States would be a better better area for this gay marriage Senator Rand Paul quote I believe in the historical definition of marriage that being said I'm not for limiting contracts between adults close quote that sounds like me that's it's you there's a reason it sounds like yeah and I think that it's the same issue you know and I think some people get confused I stand with the founding fathers on this you know Jefferson Franklin nobody ever talks about them in marriage marriage was always a state issue in their day and that's the way it was written we didn't write a lot of things like that into the Federal Constitution in fact not only issues like that which don't really involve crime but issues of crime were all state issues they didn't really conceive of there were about four different things that were federal crimes under the Constitution and nobody really conceived of all these things now anything anytime there's a terrible tragedy it's got to be a federal law instead of a bunch go to your state legislature because that's maybe more appropriately where this should be handled all right well I want to turn to foreign policy in a moment one more last biggish question let me quote to you Daniel Patrick Moynihan 1965 his famous report entitled the Negro family the case for national action quoting Moynihan the fundamental problem is that of family structure the Negro family in the urban ghettos is crumbling middle classes managed to save itself but for vast numbers of the unskilled and poorly educated the fabric of social relationships has all but disintegrated so long as this situation persists the cycle of poverty and disadvantage will continue to repeat itself Moynihan writes that in 1965 when the illegitimate rate among African Americans was 25% today among whites the illegitimate rate is 36% among Hispanics more than half and among African Americans more than 72 percent so you can see where this is going block grants lower taxes more economic growth what does any of it matter if the American family continues to integrate well and now it's no longer if it ever was a racial problem it's a cultural problem it's a it's across all races charles Murray writes about this in coming apart and he's looked at the different strata and it's an amazing thing that every kid should know and should be taught in every school is that there are two groups of people in our country those who have kids when they're not married and those who don't and if you look at the two lines these are the ones in middle class and achieving well the ones in poverty of those who are having kids sometimes five six kids without being married I can't make a law to tell you to get married or your kids to get married so it really is the idea that really something bigger has to happen this is what I say in the churches all the time when I speak in churches is that don't look towards your politicians for all the answers look to your spiritual leaders look this country needs a revival and a cultural Reformation but it's not going to come from government or a law so this is this is one thing I wanted to draw out because again my understanding of libertarians is pretty heavily conditioned by Northern California and and another element of libertarian tends to be libertarianism tends to be sort of agnosticism you won't find too many libertarians showing up in church and yet they're Senator Rand Paul so the question is if the breakdown of the family produces a demand for big government it certainly produces Democratic voters we know single mothers kids who are upset young adults who've been raised in broken homes old elderly people who are living in isolation because they no longer have family support those are folks who tend to vote Democratic if you care about small government there's almost a requirement to care about supporting the family isn't there I think so do draw that connection within there are different ways to look at it because there's one which is a moral and religious argument for the family and for the traditions of it and you buy that libertarian though you are you buy the moral argument yeah but there's also an argument that completely beyond religion if you're an agnostic libertarian you say keep the government out of my family structure I would also say that why don't we simply teach that there's an economic argument for this that poverty is associated with having kids before you're married and the family structure helps to keep you out of poverty and it's not a perfect society and I think the danger in saying things like this is people say I had my kids before I was married I'm doing fine or I'm not a bad person I'm divorced so it really isn't directed towards the individual but you when you look at the statistics it is an enormous cultural problem and this is an argument you know it's it's not just just say no this is sort of an argument for birth control it's an argument for planning your family and planning you know when you have it foreign policies the second inaugural address of president george w bush quote the survival of liberty in our land increasingly depends on the success of liberty in other lands close quote to be safe at home we need to promote Liberty abroad do you buy that yes to a certain extent I think it depends on how you want to promote Liberty and you know we have some people who think supporting the Syrian rebels right now is a way to promote Liberty I think it's much more murky than that we need to have a healthier debate to determine when we get involved and when we don't get involved you know you could argue that the Arab Spring has brought more Liberty to the Middle East but you could also argue that democracy they have chosen people who are much more antagonistic towards our country and then if anything the governments that ultimately settle in Egypt in Libya and maybe in Syria depending on what happens may or may not be more friendly towards America and there's a very good chance we'll be less friendly so you have to be careful what you wish for okay I'm going to try to continue to draw you out here you gave a speech at the Heritage Foundation on foreign policy this past February quote Ronald Reagan did not shy from labeling the Soviet Union an evil empire but he also sat down with Gorbachev and negotiated reductions in nuclear weapons true of course Reagan sat down with Mikhail Gorbachev after the biggest military buildup in our history a 600 ship Navy arming freedom fighters in Central America and Afghanistan and initiating the Strategic Defense Initiative so Reagan Reagan uses rhetoric and uses diplomacy but boy did he also use power right yes but I would say if you look at him with regard to involvement I would say that he in some ways was more restrained than presidents before or after him as far as direct military involvement when we were in Lebanon and had the tragedy with the Marines there he actually made the decision to come home because he said it was too murky and they couldn't figure out and it wasn't a safe way to have them in there it gets you know goes forward to like Benghazi now was it safe to have an embassy there was it safe to have an embassy under State Department control was it safe to stay there when all your military support was saying we need more security and it was denied so I think that Reagan really exemplified peace through strength but I think some of the neoconservatives up here interpret that is war through strength that war is always the option that we always have to be involved but consequently they get caught up in a lot of contradictions so for example many of the people who wanted to arm the Libyan rebels also wanted arm Qaddafi the year before now many of them want to arm the Syrian rebels who are allied with al-qaeda against Assad again who is also allied with the Christians so it's really a murky situation you have in Syria and I'm not sure it's good your heroes as chief executives would be Ronald Reagan who uses a great deal of force but rhetoric and diplomacy and is very careful about actually using force or maybe Dwight Eisenhower who ends the war in Korea six weeks into his presidency and then throughout the rest of his presidency there's only one direct engagement in Lebanon I think Eisenhower's been underappreciated yeah I know and one of his quotes that I love is that he says I hate war like only a soldier who's lived it can write the stupidity the banality nobility Iraq was it a mistake to go in in the first place yes it was in the first place okay not with Afghanistan I was supportive of going into Afghanistan but even Afghanistan now the missions been lost and you know we've gotten bin Laden we've disrupted the Taliban and after ten years if we haven't trained the Afghan army we're not going to but I would say there's a good analogy in Afghanistan as to why Syria is such a mistake after ten years of being in Afghanistan and so fairly stable you know it's like we can pick people to be in the military on the Afghan side and we train them we still can't figure out friend from foe many people join the Afghan armed they just lie they say yes we love we were supportive of Americans when the American soldier turns they shoot him in the back that's happened a hundred times imagine how much more difficult it's going to be in Syria when you're handing out Stinger missiles and MANPADS and all of the sophisticated weapons to decide who's friend and who's foe okay so let me ask about Pakistan say we've got the drone prep program going on they're killing bad guys there's collateral damage horrible phrase for meaning deaths to civilians that requires as I understand it that requires a presence on the ground to develop our own intelligence separate from what the Pakistanis tell us and the notion would be that that's pretty directly related to the defense of this Republic we're not trying to engage in nation-building in Pakistan so you'd support the drone program I think that within and throughout the world on the ground intelligence is something that we do have to spend money on and that we do need to be concerned with and that means Arabic speakers in our military as well as our State Department and people living in those countries and knowing about it Pakistan's probably one of the most worrisome places in the world there's a you know significant amount of hatred for America there but I don't see giving two billion dollars a year directly to the Pakistan government they're imprisoning really the best informant we ever had maybe we were one of the betters Shakil Afridi who helped us get information on bin Laden we're not going to get much more information from informants if we don't protect our informants and I think it's been a mistake that we continue to give money to Pakistan despite them imprisoning him for the rest of his life with regard to the drone program there's definitely a usefulness for drones within combat and within within the military anything that can save our soldiers lives on for killing non-combatants American citizens I think they should be tried for treason it's a very rare occurrence we've only targeted one and I think he should have just been tried for treason then maybe you target him there really that should have been a court I don't like a politician deciding guilt of an American you know what next time you're in France I don't like them just deciding to you know waylay you with a drone as opposed to having some kind of court decide that you're a traitor with regard to foreigners I think there is a time you know bin Laden I think deserved what he got and he should have whether with a drone or with individual soldiers and so there are some leaders of these terrorists that that I think should be killed but once you've knocked off the top leadership and then you knock off the next leadership and the next leadership is there ever an end and is there a point in time at which it becomes sort of a recruiting tool and a negative thing for America and I think there is a point in time there's also a point in time when you antagonize the host country to a degree that they're no longer and fall interested in and I think that's where we are with Pakistan the wars gone on too long and people are ready for that war to be over and so am I doesn't mean that we withdraw from the world but it does mean that the time has come for the war to end in Afghanistan - two less questions on foreign policy once again let me quote president george w bush he's speaking in May 2008 Israel's population maybe just over seven million but when you confront terror and evil Israel's population is 307 million because America stands with you close quote is that an over construction should he make it clear that were two sovereign nations and our interest on always coincide that except in very rare circumstances we expect Israel to look to its own defense itself well I think it it is accepted in border skirmishes and this and that that Israel will act and their own self-defense and it doesn't always involve the US but I think it also is a useful thing to be known that we are an ally of Israel and that an attack on Israel will be something that we will respond to and last question in your March budget you brought down military spending but not a lot actually you called for a military budget as I recall of about 580 billion in other words we actually got rid of the sequester in our budget and allowed the military budget to grow above what the sequester levels were by cutting significantly other programs so it would be a misunderstanding of Rand Paul to say oh he just wants to bring everybody home you actually call for write a Pentagon a defense establishment that remains more powerful and better funded than the next X number of countries have put together correct right there's fourteen countries combined the next fourteen countries combined equal our budget now I'm not saying there's not room for savings within our budget I am for auditing the Pentagon I am for cutting costs in the Pentagon but what I would say is that if you are willing to cut in other parts of the budget significantly the defense is one of our priorities defenses what the federal government should be doing it is constitutional and I'm willing to do that and willing to make it a priority but I'm not willing to say oh let's throw out the sequester just to feed the military-industrial complex I'm saying you have to keep the sequester if you're not willing to cut significantly in other places less set of questions here the Senate of the United States Rand Paul of Kentucky Ted Cruz of Texas Marco Rubio of Florida Mike Lee of Utah the list could go on all freshmen all conservative all insisting on making themselves heard now and not waiting around for a few terms until the seniority system begins to work in their favor congressional scholar Thomas Mann of the Brookings Institution quote these are all highly visible intelligent articulate people who have a disdain for the institution of which they are part and don't accept the conventional notion of what that body should be close quote I like the intelligent and articulate part he left out good-looking yeah yeah but I would an athletic write of it I would but I would say that I would differ with the description that we have disdain for the body I have nothing but the greatest respect for you know the the body of the Senate the house the rules the Constitution we've simply use chosen to use the rules to try to protect the American people from overzealous and big government I'm getting signals that your time is out so in recent months you've been in New Hampshire you've been in Iowa you just got back from a trip out to California when do you intend to decide whether you're going to be a candidate in 2016 hmm right now would be nice all right make a little me no must just be a coincidence I don't know why those states keep popping up on schedule but no whether I do or don't I do want to be part of the Republican Party becoming a National Party again I think we've become a regional party and we're seriously in danger of becoming a red state party but we have states we need to compete in we need to compete in New England again we're losing our grip even in New Hampshire up there we need to compete on the west coast and I truly think we can particularly if we have a message and it doesn't need to be a less aggressive foreign policy it does mean to be Apollo a message that allows people in the party who culturally disagree on some of the cultural issues and it also needs to be a message that says to the youth we're going to stand on principle for the Bill of Rights we're going to stand against indefinite detention against a drone program that would strike Americans without any due process I said that would be the last question I lied this is last question john mccain referring to your filibuster your colleague Senator John McCain of Arizona it always seems to be the wacko birds get that get the media megaphone did that filibuster do anything good did it accomplish anything within the Senate absolutely not only just within the senate with in the country it's shown that really that when you stand passionately on principle for something as sacred as the right to trial by jury that it attracts people from across the spectrum and you know we've had people from the left the right the middle a huge outpouring i think we had a million retweets that day so it's just an incredible thing and it really is a burgeoning movement that i think becomes a movement that can win nationally again for the republican party Senator Rand Paul junior senator from Kentucky thank you very much thank you for the Hoover Institution in The Wall Street Journal I'm Peter Robinson [Music]

Channel: Hoover Institution

Views: 158,077

Keywords: immigration, unemployment, foreign policy, national security, taxes, personal responsibility, freedom, liberty, libertarian

Id: 5ZR0QsJsGQA

Length: 39min 24sec (2364 seconds)

Published: Fri Jun 14 2013