Rand Paul Quotes - Page 15

We should offer the American public less expensive insurance.

I have a great deal of concern for any president and the amount of power they accumulate versus congress. I'm a stickler about the idea of separation of powers.

I was very, very concerned about President Obama and how much executive order and how much executive power he tried to exert. But I think I want to be, and I think congress will be, a check on any executive, Republican or Democrat, that tries to grasp too much power. And really, a lot of the fault is not only presidents trying to take too much power, it's Congress giving up too much power.

I think it's a mistake to downgrade and say surveillance is no big deal. It is a huge deal that we are collecting millions of Americans phone calls and that someone can go to a keyboard and put your name in and search it without a warrant.

We are more polarized. And some of that comes from the people and some of that comes from the media.

The separation of powers is about legislative powers. It isn't about discussion or words.

If someone tries to put limits on the press, I'll be the first one standing up for the right of press, left and right, to continue saying and being part of the discussion and forwarding the discussion.

The idea of foreign policy realism, I think, fits more neatly with President Trump. And with John McCain, the neoconservative label of let's make the world safe for democracy and we're going to topple every regime hasn't worked.

Our intervention to destabilize the Assad regime has really made the chaos worse in Syria. And if you were to get rid of Assad today, I would actually worry about the 2 million Christians that are protected by Assad.

America does not need to continue to have regime change throughout the world, nation-building.

Overall do I believe exchange with other cultures is good, people going back and forth is good, trade is good. Yes, all of these things are good. But I think you have to make sure the system's working. We need to know, virtually 100 percent of the time, when you come and when you leave. It's called entry and exit.

I think that there is a bipartisan consensus that's incorrect that we should have the whole world be in NATO. For example, if we had Ukraine and Georgia in NATO - and this is something McCain and the other neocons have advocated for - we would be at war now because Russia has invaded both of them.

John McCain is the guy that has advocated for war everywhere. He would bankrupt the nation.

Actually we're very lucky John McCain is not in charge because I think we would be in perpetual war.

I think the problem with John Bolton is he disagrees with President Trump's foreign policy. He would be closer to John McCain's foreign policy. John Bolton still believes the Iraq war was a good idea. He still believes that regime change is a good idea. He still believes that nation-building is a good idea.

The other thing I said is the great irony is you will be back fighting against your own weapons. Had [Bashar] Assad been bombed when he used chemical weapons two years ago, ISIS would be in charge of all of Syria now.

This is an ongoing threat from a variety of sources around the world. And actually I think it works both ways. I'm not privy to it, but I think all of the various country that have the ability are invading each other's computers all the time. But we have to protect our data. It's very important.

, I'm going to reserve judgment on [Rex] Tillerson. But I'll ask him the same question I've asked the others: do you understand the historic lesson that the Iraq war was a failure, a strategic mistake, that's what Donald Trump says.

The question's whether or not there's an American interest in the Civil War [in Syria]. The question is whether or not a military strike on [Bashar] Assad will cause him to be encouraged to use more weapons or discouraged. It's easy enough to say - and the president [Barack Obama] says though this will teach him a lesson - but his military strike is intended not to target him individually, not to bring about regime change.

I don't know about [Rex] Tillerson, but I do know that John Bolton doesn't get it. He still believes in regime change. He's still a big cheerleader for the Iraq war. He's promoted a nuclear attack by Israel on Iran. He wants to do regime change in Iran. So, I think John Bolton is so far out of it and has such a naive understanding of the world. If he were to be the assistant or the undersecretary for Tillerson, I'm an out automatic no on Bolton.

[John] Bolton was an advocate for regime change in Libya, so was Hillary Clinton actually. And Donald Trump said it was a mistake. I agree it was a mistake to do regime change in Libya. We became more endangered and actually worse people took over afterwards.

I also think regime change in Syria is a bad idea. And that's an ongoing question. It's one of the things I like about Donald Trump, one of the reasons I endorsed him is he thinks regime change is a mistake. But John Bolton thinks completely the opposite. They are diametric opposites.

The current budget that the Republicans are looking at never balances. How can that be fiscally responsible? And how can we look at the public with a straight face and say yes we ran on balanced budgets.

We're for the balanced budget amendment and yet the budget we're going to introduce, that we're going to repeal Obamacare with never balances.

I think when people voted for Donald Trump, they realized he owned a lot of stuff with his name on it. I think the concern over conflict of interest seems to be higher in the media than the public. People saying, oh, he has to sell all of his stuff.