Unless you are living under a rock, you have heard this week that Senator Rand Paul, the libertarian firebrand Senator from the Commonwealth of Kentucky, announced that he is running for President. Now, this isn’t news to anyone who remotely keeps up with things going on in the Republican Party. He’s been running for President since the nano-second his hand touched the Bible to be sworn into the US Senate. But there is a major problem with his record that is being thoroughly ignored at the moment.
I am going to say this once: RAND PAUL IS A FLIP FLOPPER ON MILITARY SPENDING.
And before I get branded in the media as a liar, lets look at the video.
In this video taken in late 2010, Senator-Elect Rand Paul is supporting cutting the military because we have to balance the budget. Then, he offers a budget amendment, which according to FreedomWorks, would cut the military by 6%. The measure did not pass, nor did it receive much support from his Senate Colleagues.
Yet his Presidential Aspirations and his love of slashing budgets got in the way of each other. Let’s fast forward to 2015, when he is announcing his Presidential run, Senator Paul submits an amendment to raise defense spending. This, according to Time Magazine, would INCREASE military defense spending by 16%. http://time.com/3759378/rand-paul-defense-spending/
The move completes a stunning reversal for Paul, who in May 2011, after just five months in office, released his own budget that would have eliminated four agencies—Commerce, Housing and Urban Development, Energy and Education—while slashing the Pentagon, a sacred cow for many Republicans. Under Paul’s original proposal, defense spending would have dropped from $553 billion in the 2011 fiscal year to $542 billion in 2016. War funding would have plummeted from $159 billion to zero. He called it the “draw-down and restructuring of the Department of Defense.”
But under Paul’s new plan, the Pentagon will see its budget authority swell by $76.5 billion to $696,776,000,000 in fiscal year 2016.
Senator Paul supported cutting the military when you first get elected, and then you want to raise Defense Spending 4 years later, when its politically expedient to your Presidential run? Yes, that’s a fact.
It’s sad to see that someone could so want to be President that they throw their convictions by the wayside just to get the keys to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. But its a PROVEN fact here folks that Rand Paul has went from a defense spending cutter to a defense spending raiser, just to pander to a Presidential Election crowd, in 4 years flat. One has to wonder, what are Rand Paul’s real convictions? Because from what I see, he has ZERO.
