#rand paul
The Fed has been manipulating our money for far too long and we deserve to see an audit of the Federal Reserve. Will Donald Trump keep his promise and support an audit?
Written by Ron Paul and Rand Paul for Rare:
As presidents and Congresses come and go, the addiction to busting the budget remains; its voraciousness fueled by the same enabler, the Federal Reserve.
While it took our nation more than 225 years to accumulate nearly $20 trillion in debt (and much, much more if you factor in unfunded liabilities), our central bank can put Americans on the hook for trillions without blinking by simply creating whatever funds it needs out of thin air. Its status as “the lender of last resort” signs a blank check for politicians to spend to their heart’s content without worrying about the immediate consequences.
When pressed to at least provide some measure of substantive transparency for its actions, the Fed tells the American people it’s none of their business.
We disagree.
Time and again, we have been asked to justify our desire to Audit the Fed. Time and again, we answer, how can we afford not to? …
Throughout its existence, the Fed’s manipulation of interest rates and expansion of the money supply have led to malinvestment and helped generate a devastating boom-and-bust cycle that routinely levels our economy as the market corrects course. …
Time is of the essence. The Federal Reserve cannot be allowed to continue denying full accountability to the hundreds of millions of people whose financial futures hinge on its actions.
We cannot wait until we find ourselves slipping underwater to ask the tough questions about what keeps putting us there.
With President Trump indicating his support for Audit the Fed, the window of opportunity has never been more open.
If we hope to ever rein in spending, change a failed status quo and avoid paralyzing downturns, we must not let it slip away.
Did you know that over 25,000 Americans had their phones searched upon reentering the U.S. last year? Rand Paul is fighting back to protect our rights.
Written by Brandon Morse for The Blaze:
Ashocking statistic from the Department of Homeland Security has appeared recently shown that cell phone searches of U.S. citizens reentering the country has gone from 5,000 in 2015 to 25,000 in 2016.
This is something Kentucky Senator Rand Paul finds “obscene,” or so he puts it when he was questioning DHS Secretary John Kelly during a hearing for the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee.
“We’ve gone from 5,000 people having their cell phones searched, to 25,000,” said Paul. “We are denying people entry who are citizens or green card holders who are coming back home, and your department is saying to them you cannot return to your home without giving us your fingerprint, and giving us all the data on your phone.”
Paul made it clear that he understands the difference between a citizen, and a visitor, and that sometimes safety measures are warranted, sometimes in the form of denying someone entry into the country, however this does not need to apply to citizens.
“I could travel abroad, and be told I cannot enter America unless I let you look at my phone. That’s obscene,” said Paul.
Regardless of the President or the political party in power, Sen. Rand Paul has always remained in support of a sensible foreign policy that always follows the Constitution.
Written by WBKO News Staff:
After President Donald Trump ordered an airstrike to hit the Syrian airbase that’s supposedly behind Tuesday’s gas attacks that killed over 80 people, the world reacted to the decisive action. …
Russia and Iran have strongly condemned the action. Russia even going as far as to say that the move ‘violated international law’, and has threatened to stop all military cooperation with the U.S.
Kentucky Senator Rand Paul had his say in a statement posted on his Facebook page last night.
“While we all condemn the atrocities in Syria, the United States was not attacked. The President needs congressional authorization for military action as required by the Constitution and I call on him to come to Congress for a proper debate. Our prior interventions in this region have done nothing to make us safer and Syria will be no different.”
All Americans condemn the atrocities in Syria, but sensitive and emotional times like these are why the Founding Fathers wanted a deliberate and thoughtful discussion before the United States got into war.
Written by Sen. Rand Paul for Fox News:
Every American condemns the atrocities in Syria, and we cannot help but be shaken by the images of innocent women and children dying. It is also true that often in foreign policy, things are not as simple as they appear, and actions often have consequences well beyond the obvious.
It is for this very reason that the Founders wanted a deliberate, thoughtful foreign policy, and when military action was needed, they wanted it debated and authorized by Congress.
Make no mistake, no matter who is president or what their party is, it is my firm belief that the president needs congressional authorization for military action, as required by the Constitution. I call on this president to come to Congress for a proper debate over our role in Syria, just as I did in 2013 when President Obama contemplated acting in Syria. …
Before any act of war, we should have a serious and thoughtful debate over the ramifications.
In Syria – what is our goal? What happens if we depose Assad? Will the Islamist rebels, as they have threatened, turn their weapons and attention elsewhere, including Israel next door?
I will hold accountable and oppose the actions of any president who takes military action without proper legal authority and congressional consent.
We’re proud Sen. Rand Paul voted to confirm true constitutionalist Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court.
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The Constitution is clear: the President must receive congressional authorization before dragging out nation into another costly war.
Written by Brooke Seipel for The Hill:
Sen.Rand Paul (R-Ky.) said Thursday night that President Trump needs congressional authorization for military action in Syria after Trump ordered an airstrike in retaliation for a deadly chemical attack earlier this week.
“While we all condemn the atrocities in Syria, the United States was not attacked,” Paul said in a statement shortly after reports that the U.S. had launched more than 50 Tomahawk cruise missiles against an airfield in Syria.
“The President needs congressional authorization for military action as required by the Constitution, and I call on him to come to Congress for a proper debate,” Paul said. “Our prior interventions in this region have done nothing to make us safer, and Syria will be no different.”
Paul expressed similar sentiments earlier Thursday amid reports that the Trump administration was considering a strike. Earlier this week, President Bashar Assad’s forces reportedly used chemical weapons against opponents, including civilians and children, in Syria’s years-long civil war.
Rand Paul met with President Trump and the House Freedom Caucus to craft a truly conservative Obamacare repeal bill.
Written by Tom Howell, Jr. for the Washington Times:
Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky floated a compromise Obamacare repeal plan Monday, hoping to break a stalemate on Capitol Hill by proposing to cut the level of spending to try to appease conservatives but keep the basic model of taxpayer subsidies in place to win over moderates.
Mr. Paul, a Republican, has met with President Trump to try to find a way forward after conservatives and moderates balked at Mr. Trump’s first attempt. …
“I think the compromise could be keeping some of the underlying payments in Obamacare, some small percentage of them, in order to placate the people who want that, but not affirmatively putting it in the bill,” Mr. Paul said. “Conservatives want 100 percent repeal, let’s say moderates want 80 percent repeal. Let’s vote on 90 percent repeal and be done with it.” …
The House GOP plan had scrapped Obamacare’s generous taxpayer subsidies to help people afford to buy insurance, and replaced it with a refundable tax credit. Mr. Paul would keep the subsidies in place, so conservatives don’t have to back a new GOP entitlement, but would cut the level of spending so it’s more palatable to budget hawks.
Mr. Paul said he mentioned the idea to Mr. Trump, White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus and Budget Director Mick Mulvaney over a Sunday round of golf, but that they leaned toward tweaks instead of wholesale changes.
“I think really their opinion right now is to see if they still want to just keep working with what they have, and we’ll see. If they can get enough votes, maybe it goes that way,” Mr. Paul said. “I’m trying to offer a different way in case we’re still at an impasse.”
Mr. Paul also pitched the idea to members of the House Freedom Caucus — the conservatives who helped sink the repeal effort last month.
The bill died largely because conservatives like Rand Paul and the House Freedom Caucus stuck to their guns and demanded a full repeal of Obamacare.
Written by Peter Suderman for Reason:
The House bill to partially repeal and replace Obamacare is officially dead.
The American Health Care Act (AHCA), which was scheduled for a vote this afternoon, has been pulled from consideration. …
The bill failed in part because… more conservative members of the House Freedom Caucus, who argued that the bill was too much like Obamacare, retaining its core scheme of subsidies and regulations.
But it also failed because Trump proved himself an ineffective negotiator and dealmaker—one whose preference for shallow political victories over substantive policy wins ultimately proved insufficient in a complex policy negotiation. …
The bill Trump backed made no attempt to balance either the policy or political interests of the legislators, influence groups, or stakeholders involved. Trump spent the week negotiating changes changes to the bill, but because he neither cared nor understood what was in it, and what lawmakers wanted from the bill, he couldn’t act as an effective negotiator. A handful of last minute updates to the bill intended to pick up holdout votes backfired: One reduced the bill’s projected deficit reduction, while another was so imprecisely drafted that it ran the risk of killing the individual insurance market entirely, while leaving the federal government in control of the regulations it was supposedly devolving to states. …
Trump repeatedly promised to repeal and replace Obamacare with “something terrific.” But he never described the policy mechanisms of the replacement he preferred. And the outcomes he described—coverage for everyone, lower premiums, no changes to Medicaid—had little or no connection to the bill that House Republicans eventually drew up.
That didn’t seem to matter to the president. As has always been the case with Trump, making a deal—any deal—was all that mattered.
In the end, though, the bill died. Trump couldn’t close the deal. And one of the biggest reasons that Trump couldn’t close the deal is that he didn’t understand or care about the details.
Trump says he’ll keep Obamacare if the awful GOP bill isn’t passed. It’s a disgusting slap in the face to his conservative supporters.
Written by Kyle Chaney, et. al, for Politico:
President Donald Trump’s ultimatum to Republicans to overturn the Democratic health care law they’ve been campaigning against for years heads to the House floor Friday for a momentous showdown that will test the GOP’s ability to govern.
And no one, not even the people in charge of counting the votes, can say what will happen.
Top House leaders, squeezed by hardline conservatives and skittish moderates, privately worry that too many Republican lawmakers have publicly panned the health care proposal they crafted, making them less susceptible to last-minute arm-twisting and a pressure campaign from the White House. But they also saw signs that the resistance has begun to weaken in the face of Trump’s Thursday night ultimatum: pass my bill or leave Obamacare in place. …
Asked Friday morning on ABC’s “Good Morning America” if the White House and GOP leadership-backed bill has enough votes to pass, Mulvaney, himself a former Freedom Caucus member, said “don’t know.”
If the House GOP bill known as “Obamacare Lite” doesn’t pass, Trump says he’ll break his campaign promise and keep the original Obamacare.
Written by Leigh Ann Caldwell for NBC News:
Office of Management and Budget director Mick Mulvaney made clear Thursday evening that President Donald Trump is done negotiating on the hotly-debated health care bill and wants a vote on Friday.
And, if the president doesn’t get a vote to repeal and replace Obamacare, he will move on to other priorities, Mulvaney said according to a source in the room during the tense talks with GOP members. A senior administration source confirms to NBC News the “very definitive, very clarifying” message from the president and the administration’s intention to move on, should the health care bill fail to move forward, to other matters such as tax reform, trade and border security. …
Trump’s latest salvo comes after House Republican leaders abruptly postponed a planned vote on the GOP health care bill Thursday as they struggled to find sufficient support to pass it. GOP lawmakers had previously been told procedural votes on the bill will still be held tonight and that a full vote on the measure could take place Friday.
The move to delay the vote came after House conservatives said there was no deal struck on the bill following a meeting with President Donald Trump at the White House Thursday. According to the NBC News vote count, GOP leaders were still at least eight votes short of winning enough backing for passage.
The president’s latest posture came as news to Rep. Mark Meadows R-North Carolina, chairman of the conservative House Freedom Caucus, who earlier told reporters that there was no deal after the meeting, but added he was still hopeful one can be struck. …
“It is our leadership team that has set an arbitrary deadline — we are happy to keep working with the White House and the leadership team but we don’t think the arbitrary deadline of (Thursday) really means anything,” said Rep. Justin Amash, R-Michigan., who is voting against the bill unless desired changes are made.
The intense negotiations come as outside groups are putting more pressure on lawmakers.
The Charles and David Koch-backed Americans for Prosperity and Freedom Partners have reserved “seven figures” to reward members who oppose the bill. The development came as Trump told Republicans a day earlier that they’d be lose their seats if they voted against the Republican plan. And another conservative group, Club for Growth, is running television ads in some Republican districts to push members to vote against it.
Thanks to the hard work of Rand Paul and the House Freedom Caucus, Obamacare Lite didn’t have enough votes to pass! Hopefully true negotiations can begin!
Written by Julie Hirschfeld Davis, Robert Pear, and Thomas Kaplan for the New York Times:
House Republican leaders postponed a planned vote Thursday in the full House on legislation to repeal the Affordable Care Act as President Trump and his allies struggled to round up votes amid a tide of defections from the proposed replacement bill. …
“We’re certainly trying to get to ‘yes,’” said Representative Mark Meadows, Republican of North Carolina and the chairman of the House Freedom Caucus. “We’ve made very reasonable requests and we’re hopeful that those reasonable requests will be listened to and ultimately agreed to.” …
The emerging power of the Freedom Caucus, a group that has been historically marginalized in policy-making but a thorn in the side of leadership, is one of the surprises of the rushed health care debate. The Freedom Caucus has been empowered by the addition of one of their own, former Representative Mick Mulvaney, to the senior White House staff as budget director, and Mr. Trump’s disengagement from policy details coupled with his intense desire to score a win after a rocky start to his presidency. …
As the crucial vote approached, party leaders appeared to be short of a majority, as moderate Republicans continued to move away from the bill. …
Conservatives say the mandates, as interpreted in rules issued by the Obama administration, add to the costs of health insurance and make it difficult for insurers to offer lower-cost options tailored to the needs of consumers. …
A spokeswoman for the Freedom Caucus, Alyssa Farah, said Wednesday that more than 25 members of the caucus were considered “no” votes on the health care measure — enough to sink the bill in the House, though that count could not be independently verified.
The sooner GOP leadership trashes Obamacare Lite, the sooner we can focus on completely repealing Obamacare, Rand Paul said.
Written by Neil McCabe for Breitbart:
The House Freedom Caucus announced after a Wednesday lunch meeting with Sen. Rand Paul (R.-KY) that it has 25 hard-no votes, enough to defeat the American Health Care Act crafted and promoted by Speaker Paul Ryan (R.-WI) as a rescue for insurance companies caught in the Obamacare “death spiral.”
Paul said the sooner the House Republican leadership disposes with the RyanCare bill, the sooner leadership can get together with Capitol Hill conservatives to draft a bill that repeals and replaces the 2010 Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, which created Obamacare.
There is no other way to go than for the speaker and his team to start over, Paul said. “They are going to have to, they don’t have the votes.” …
“This is really a defeat for Paul Ryan,” he said. “Ryan is going to have to come to conservatives now and ask for the votes he doesn’t have–if he has the votes, he doesn’t have to–but he is going to have to give conservatives a seat at the table.”
The chairman of the House Freedom Caucus Rep. Mark Meadows (R.-NC) said Ryan does not have the votes to pass RyanCare if House Republican leadership insists on bringing the bill to the floor Thursday.
If Mike Pence sits as Senate President, full Obamacare repeal needs just 51 votes. This is a much better idea than the Obamacare Lite bill!
Written by David Wright for CNN:
Sen. Rand Paul on Wednesday backed a controversial method for passing Obamacare repeal that could dramatically change the way the Senate operates, if successful, but which faces long odds, even among Republicans.
The proposal – which has also drawn support from Sen. Ted Cruz – purports to ease passage of a more expansive Obamacare replacement bill by foregoing traditional Senate rules and seating Vice President Mike Pence as Senate chair for the vote.
Paul argued that with Pence as chair, he would be empowered to make decisions about what can be passed through budget reconciliation, a procedural distinction that has a simple majority-vote-threshold. That would allow Republicans to bypass the larger, 60-vote requirement that would otherwise be required to repeal and replace key components of the Affordable Care Act – a major roadblock.
Paul – who opposes the current GOP health care bill moving through the House – said Wednesday on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” that leadership “is afraid of the Senate parliamentarian. But we’ve read the rules, and it looks to us like the vice president can sit in the chair, and the vice president can decide for the Senate what is reconcilable.”
He explained, “the rules, the budget rules that everyone touts and are so arcane, they say the chair rules, and not the parliamentarian. The chair rules. The vice president has the prerogative of sitting in the chair, and if they want this done, the vice president should come to the Senate.”
Paul’s proposal comes as Republicans are under growing pressure to pass an Obamacare repeal bill – but divisions within the party, a slim Senate majority, and legislative procedure have complicated those efforts.
“What are the people saying that are for this on Capitol Hill? Well, they’re trying to tell us it’s a binary decision, that you can either take it or leave it.”
Written by John Hayward for Breitbart:
“This bill would replace the subsidies, penalties, and mandates of Obamacare with subsidies, penalties, and mandates of what we’re calling ‘Obamacare-lite,’” said Massie, who is obviously not a supporter of the bill.
“Frankly, the number of calls to my office – and we only keep track of the constituents who call, in other words, those who are among the 750,000 people I represent – the calls are running 275 against this bill to 4 supporting the bill,” he revealed. “That’s like almost 100 to 1 against this bill. And I can tell you, every other congressional office is receiving the same number of calls.” …
Massie said he could confirm the vote count offered by Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY), who has predicted the bill will be pulled and extensively rewritten.
“I have personally spoken to 29 colleagues here, conservative colleagues who oppose the bill as of yesterday evening. That’s not counting the moderates, and there are at least six of those on the record in the news. So there are three dozen against this bill,” he said.
“What are the people saying that are for this on Capitol Hill? Well, they’re trying to tell us it’s a binary decision, that you can either take it or leave it,” Massie said of the bill’s proponents. “We think the negotiation starts when one party says ‘no.’ That’s why we’re going to say no.” …
“It’s an interesting phenomenon in Kentucky,” he observed. “We’ve got Senator Paul against this bill. I’m against this bill. I can’t speak for our governor, but it’s interesting that he has not come out and publicly supported this bill. We’re one of those Medicaid expansion states where we’ve got to try and get the genie back in the bottle, and the governor is doing a great job working on that, but he’s not going head-over-heels for this bill, even though Trump and Mike Pence have both been to Kentucky.”
Montenegro’s ascension into NATO would add even more to our nation’s military burden, with little to gain from the deal.
Written by Ellen Mitchell for The Hill:
Sen.Rand Paul is drawing the ire of his colleagues by being the lone holdout on a treaty allowing Montenegro to have membership in NATO.
The Kentucky Republican says it is in the United States’ best interest to keep the small Eastern European country out of the alliance, but some of his colleagues think he is playing a leverage game with Senate leadership. …
Paul’s office also released a statement that said it is “unwise” to allow Montenegro into NATO because it would add to America’s military burden.
“Currently, the United States has troops in dozens of countries and is actively fighting in Iraq, Syria, Libya, and Yemen (with the occasional drone strike in Pakistan),” his office wrote following McCain’s accusation. “In addition, the United States is pledged to defend 28 countries in NATO. It is unwise to expand the monetary and military obligations of the United States given the burden of our $20 trillion debt.”
One Republican senator who spoke on the condition of anonymity said Paul blocked the treaty because he wants a floor vote on the 2016 authorization for use of military force (AUMF) that former President Obama used to launch the ongoing military campaign against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria.
Paul has spoken out at length about the need to review, reform or repeal the AUMF, which allows the president to decide how and when to go to war with another nation with little congressional input or involvement.
Rand Paul knows of at least 35 Republicans who plan on voting against the Obamacare Lite bill. Just 21 “No” votes kill the bill.
Written by Matthew Boyle for Breitbart:
Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) told Breitbart News exclusively on Tuesday afternoon that he expects House Speaker Paul Ryan will be forced to pull the American Health Care Act (AHCA) before a scheduled Thursday vote because Ryan will not get the votes to pass the legislation.
The AHCA has been dubbed “Obamacare Lite” by Paul — a leading conservative critic of the plan — and by other conservatives as “RyanCare,” “RINO-Care,” and “Obamacare 2.0,” since the bill does not actually fully repeal Obamacare and keeps many of the main structures that the now-former President Barack Obama installed in the healthcare system. It has come under intense scrutiny from both sides of the Republican Party — moderates and conservatives are lining up against the bill — and Ryan, despite publicly projecting confidence, cannot find the necessary 216 votes to pass the legislation. …
If you keep all the insurance mandates, and you keep subsidizing insurance, basically it’s Obamacare Lite. So I think it’s still Obamacare Lite. The modifications, some are going in the right direction, but they actually expanded some of the subsidies. So one of the new things about it is it’s actually $75 billion more in subsidies. So, I think they’re stuck trying to split the baby. They’re trying to give conservatives a few token changes. And they’re trying to give the moderates more subsidies. …
I’m still unclear as to why they completely ignored conservatives early on in the process and then they had the audacity to look at conservatives and say ‘this is what you all campaigned on.’ That just, frankly, was never true. I was elected in 2010 in the big Tea Party wave that was for repealing Obamacare root and branch, rip the whole thing out. We were for repealing it. I still think that our grassroots conservative supporters are for repealing it. But somewhere along the line, Paul Ryan decided that it wasn’t so much about repealing it but about replacing it with Obamacare Lite. And I think that was a tactical error on their part to think ‘oh, we’ll just be for this and everybody will be for this’ when in reality no conservatives are really for the Ryan plan.
Thankfully, Sen. Rand Paul has opposed the bill since the very beginning. We need full repeal, not a GOP-branded Obamacare.
Written by Bob Bryan for Business Insider:
The American Health Care Act, the GOP’s bill to repeal and replace Obamacare, does not seem to be winning over the American public.
Republican Rep. Justin Amash, a critic of the AHCA since its introduction, tweeted Monday that the bill was the most “universally detested piece of legislation” he has seen as a lawmaker. …
The AHCA is currently making its way through Congress. After a slew of changes were announced Monday through a manager’s amendment, the House vote on the bill — expected on Thursday — will be a close call, since many conservative Republican lawmakers have threatened to vote against it.
Rand Paul says that Obamacare Lite would result in health insurance companies “socializing the losses and privatizing the gain.”
Written by Chris Larson for the Louisville Business Journal:
U.S. Sen. Rand Paul said he hopes the current Republican health care reform bill fails its vote in the U.S. House of Representatives on Thursday. …
Paul said the current Republican health care reform plan — which he called “Obamacare Lite” — would result in health insurance companies “socializing the losses and privatizing the gain” of health insurance business.
“That’s not fair; that’s crony capitalism,” Paul said. “Who wouldn’t love that in their business?”
He also said that government subsidies for health insurance create a price floor that allows health insurance prices to go up. …
He also encouraged the attendees to ask health care providers for prices for procedures and shop for better pricing to encourage price reductions through competition.
Paul cited the openness of the corrective eye surgery market as an example of price reduction through the mobility of prices, or the ability of prices to go up or down based on supply and consumer demand.
Paul criticized the current health care reform effort in the U.S. House of Representatives for removing the individual mandate — the requirement for people to have insurance — but allowing health insurance companies to charge consumers a fee of 30 percent of annual premiums for those who have lapses in coverage.
