Rand Paul speaks at the event.
The first official presidential candidate of the 2016 Electoral Campaign visited Burlington on Saturday.
Kentucky Senator Rand Paul stopped by the Comfort Inn and Suites to speak to a capacity crowd of more than 150 supporters as part of a trip across the state. Paul is a fourth-year senator and eye doctor, and hopes to ignite a younger, more Libertarian-tinged group of conservatives with a message of small government and low spending.
“Some of the Liberal Pundits will say ‘You don’t believe in any Government!’, and I say, ‘I believe in $3.3 trillion worth of Government, what’s coming in,'” Paul told the crowd, “I’ll spend what comes in, I just won’t spend what’s not coming in. I don’t think we get stronger as a country when we borrow money from China to send it to Pakistan. It makes absolutely no sense.”
Paul recently made comments criticizing education in the country, calling universities and schools “indoctrination centers” that discourage Conservative thought. He clarified those remarks to KBUR.
“I’d like to see curriculum and education in general is controlled at the local level,” Paul told KBUR in a brief interview after the event, “I don’t know if there is some grand scheme to indoctrinate people, but I think there is the danger of that. I think that if one person is in charge of education , and that one person has bias, the whole country would have to follow that. Whereas, in your local community, if you didn’t like the curriculum locally you could go down and talk to your school board.”
We also asked Paul about a controversial free-trade agreement, the Trans-Pacific Partnership, that’s been criticized due to the secretive nature of the negotiations surrounding it.
“I think the President needs to be less secretive about it. I think the President should release the Trans-Pacific Agreement so the public can look at it,” said Paul, “I’ve been in the secret room and I’ve read it, but it’s 800 pages and my staff isn’t allowed to have a copy of it. It makes me concerned when they make it that secretive, the first question is ‘Well, what do they have to hide to make it this secretive?’ I still don’t know enough to make a decision on it.”
Paul made stops in Fairfield and Des Moines as part of his trip. He was the second Republican candidate to declare for the race.
He’s the son of 2008 and 2012 Presidential Candidate Ron Paul.
