Rand Paul Quotes
I will continue to fight for legislation that forces Congress to read the bills! I will fight for a vote on my bill that calls for a waiting period for each page of legislation. I will continue to object when Congress sticks special interest riders on bills in the dead of night! And if Congress refuses to obey its own rules, if Congress refuses to pass a budget, if Congress refuses to read the bills, then I say: Sweep the place clean. Limit their terms and send them home!
Paul, Rand. "Presidential Campaign Announcement." Galt House Hotel, Louisville, KY, 7 Apr. 2015. Speech.
Advocating term limits on Congress:
What is fascinating about this quotation is that although the head of a religion, Smith was not advocating the kinds of personal lifestyle issues of his church the way modern religious leaders do, but was concerned with the much larger issues of expansionism, corruption of the courts and judiciary, and land distribution. He was a classic reform candidate in that sense. Smith had written to most of the then likely Presidential candidates of both major parties asking for their position on the Mormons who were facing persecution wherever they went. None of the politicians would make any satisfactory commitments. Smith took Direct Action and became the only major religious official to have run for the Presidency of the United States until Pat Robertson tried and failed in 2000. Smith’s assassination shortly thereafter cut his run for the Presidency short before it made much headway and politically he had no chance to affect the race.
In general, there are so many versions of a bill as it goes through the Congressional process, that the members of Congress do not read each and every draft. Some do not read any of the drafts and leave it to the Committee; others trust their staffs or their party leadership. More often they trust the lobbyists who donate to their campaigns. Sometimes, the bills are so large—many thousands of pages that the members of Congress lose track of all the aspects of the proposed law and only read a few sections in which they may have participated in debate. Often, the only people who read the entire bill are the lobbyists and one or two of committee staff.
The Secret Service was then the only Federal police force. Some members of Congress were protecting constituents who were involved with these crimes and some were themselves owners who were committing the crimes.
Randal Howard Paul is an American physician and politician serving as the junior United States Senator from Kentucky since 2011. He is the son of former three-time presidential candidate and twelve-term U.S. Representative of Texas, Ron Paul.
