Monday, January 6, 2014

Jennifer Rubin: No More Free Passes for Rand Paul

The crazy lady gets this one mostly right:

Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) gets away, rhetorically speaking, with murder in large part because media and political opponents who know better consider him to be a crank. Fact checkers can only call “pants on fire” so many times where the junior senator from Kentucky is concerned without neglecting the rest of the political fabricators. They therefore let a lot of bizarre and downright false utterances go by the wayside. He was at it again on Sunday.

If you recall he previously said that extending unemployment benefits would be a “disservice“ to the unemployed. You can debate that proposition (Does the availability of minimal benefits cause people to slow down their job search?), but it ostensibly was based on the desire to attend to the needs of the jobless. But no more of that, Rand Paul now says. It’s simply a matter of money — taxpayer money. He’s decided that if we “pay for it” (i.e. cut elsewhere) we can extend the benefits. Won’t the jobless then be disserved — or was his previous opposition based on phony sentiments about what is good for the poor?

If he is really concerned about the cost of unemployment benefits (about $25 billion for three months), then he’s fighting over nickels in the couch. The debt is over $17 trillion. (This is akin to his obsession over foreign aid spending, which is about 1 percent of federal spending.) It is hard to know whether Rand Paul is an opportunist, uniformed or both.

6 comments:

  1. No, Rubin gets this one wrong (as usual) because Rand said that he would do this ONLY if something were cut somewhere else and he could get something else out of it to help the economy and the poor like economic freedom zones.



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  2. Yep. Gotta watch out for those uniformed opportunists. JK I doubt, however, that Rand Paul is uninformed. Most politicians are not stupid or ignorant. They know the game they are playing.

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  3. "It is hard to know whether Rand Paul is an opportunist, uniformed or both." Sounds like your average pol.

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  4. Jennifer Rubin needs to worship the Aqua Buddha and be quiet!

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  5. Rand did not vote to extend unemployment benefits.

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