Rand Paul

Rand Paul

Rand Paul was born in Pennsylvania on January 7, 1963, third of five children born to Ron Paul, a U.S. Congressman and 2012 Republican Presidential Candidate. He graduated from Baylor University and then Duke Medical School, his father's alma mater, in 1963. Paul worked as an ophthalmologist, notably performing many free eye care surgeries and providing free eye care for young and impoverished patients. Paul, a lifelong Republican with libertarian leanings, became involved in politics in 1994, when he founded Kentucky Taxpayers United, a watchdog group that tracked taxation and spending issues in the Kentucky state legislature until it disbanded in 2000. Rand Paul gained national attention when he campaigned for his father, who was running for the Republican Presidential nomination in 2008. He attracted a small, passionate following which helped him win the U.S. Senate seat for Kentucky in 2010. Paul is also the first U.S. Senator to serve alongside a parent in the U.S. House of Representatives. [1] Campaign Website

Tax Reform

In consultation with some of the top tax experts in the country, including the Heritage Foundation’s Stephen Moore, former presidential candidate Steve Forbes and Reagan economist Arthur Laffer, Rand Paul devised his Fair and Flat Tax proposal. The Tax Foundation, estimates that in 10 years it will increase gross domestic product by about 10%, and create at least 1.4 million new jobs. [2]

Rand Paul's tax reform consists of "The Fair and Flat Tax" proposal:

• • $2 trillion tax cut that would repeal the entire IRS tax code
  • Replace the tax code with a low, broad-based tax of 14.5% on individuals and businesses applied equally to all personal income, including wages, salaries, dividends, capital gains, rents and interest
  • Eliminate every special-interest loophole
  • Eliminate the payroll tax on workers and several federal taxes outright, including gift and estate taxes, telephone taxes, and all duties and tariffs
  • All deductions except for a mortgage and charities would be eliminated
  • First $50,000 of income for a family of four would not be taxed
  • For low-income working families, the plan would retain the earned-income tax credit
  • 14.5% tax would be levied on revenues minus allowable expenses, such as the purchase of parts, computers and office equipment
• All capital purchases would be immediately expensed, ending complicated depreciation schedules

Health Policy

Overall attitude towards U.S. health care:

• Advocate of repealing Obamacare, in favor of free-market principles/against over-regulation of health care market/opposes any government-run health care system
• Supports making all medical expenses tax deductible, allowing insurance to be bought across state lines, tort reform (state-level), and removing the high-deductible insurance policy requirement to access to Health Savings Accounts [3]
• Statement from Paul's website:

"As a doctor, I have had firsthand experience with the immense problems facing health care in the United States. Prior to the implementation of Obamacare, our health care system was over-regulated and in need of serious market reforms—but Obamacare is not the answer."

Side views on health care:

• Protect vitamin manufacturers from regulation
• Get rid of mandatory mental health screening in schools
• Encourages vaccinations, allows for religious exemptions- "Parents own the children, and it is an issue of freedom and public health."- Paul

Drug Policy

• Rand Paul is an advocate of more rehabilitation and less incarceration
• Apply the 10th Amendment to allow states to make marijuana legal
• Bans on marijuana discriminates against lower income levels/ higher levels of incarceration among poor children than wealthy children
• In addition to ending the over-criminalization of marijuana, Paul has risen awareness of an important issue among drug-related incarcerations, war on drugs has unintentionally had a racial outcome: "Even though whites used drugs at the same rate as black kids, the prisons are full of black kids and brown kids. There are Republicans trying to correct this injustice." - Paul
• Supports community treatment rather than federal anti-drug programs
• Favors legalizing medical marijuana
• Exclude industrial hemp from definition of marijuana
• Exempt industrial hemp from marijuana laws
• Believes drug-abuse isn't a federally pressing issue, should instead be dealt with on the state level

[4]

Middle East

• Against sending troops/fighting battles in Middle East
• Quote from Paul on involvement in Middle East:

"The Kurds deserve to be armed and I'll arm them. But the boots on the ground need to be the people who live there. Why are we always the world's patsies that we have to go over there and fight their wars for them? We need to defend American interests, but it is not in America's national security interests to have another war in Iraq."

• Believes U.S. intervention in Libya strengthened Islamic State
• Proposed a bill called the "Stand with Israel Act" to cut off the flow of U.S. taxpayer dollars to the Palestinian Authority. As long as the Palestinian Authority is allied with Hamas not one more tax dollar should flow to them
• Cut foreign aid to most countries, including Israel

[5]

Immigration

While serving in the Senate, Paul introduced legislation to make immigration reform conditional on Congress voting on whether the border is secure, requiring completion of a border fence in five years and a protection against the federal government establishing a national identification card system for citizens. His "Trust but Verify" amendment requires Congress to write and enforce a bipartisan border security blueprint rather than using bureaucracies, such as the Department of Homeland Security, to come up with a plan. The amendment also would provide new national security safeguards to track the holders of student visas and those provided asylum and refugee status.

Paul does not support the concept of "amnesty," but instead "supports legal immigration process" [6]. If elected President, Paul would implement his "Trust but Verify" plan and apply pressure on the Department of Homeland Security to secure the border and produce an effective visa tracking system.

• Replace current path to citizenship with work visas for illegal immigrants: supports "probation" followed by "assimilation," putting undocumented immigrants on an eventual track to either permanent legal status (a green card) or citizenship
• Immigrants get a temporary "work visa" but are not put ahead of anyone waiting to enter the country
• Opponent to the federal government creating a national ID card
• Believes U.S. can accommodate current 11 million illegal immigrants already leaving in the country; however, we must completely secure the border before any other action can be taken [7]