by Rand Paul
Both Salatin on the right and Kingsolver on the left lament the loss of locally grown markets and the community ties that come with local trade.
While I’m not quite ready to survive on my own garden, Kingsolver did motivate me to dismantle my kids’ old tree fort and turn it into a compost bin.
When I paddle across the pond in my kayak or hike in the bottomland by the river, I think to myself that anyone, or any group, who thinks that the protection of the environment is their provenance alone is narrow-minded and is as dangerous to our world as any polluter.
The GOP I see will take a backseat to no one in defending the environment. The New GOP isn’t going to let the left mischaracterize us. In fact, the case can be made that the New GOP, the GOP that I belong to, cares as much or more about the environment than any professed environmental activist. Instead of heated rhetoric, the New GOP will face the challenge with a cool-headed understanding that to spread environmentalism, to make it sustainable, we must look for ways to make it profitable.
Government-directed environmental subsidies to solar panel companies or electric cars are not sustainable if those enterprises are not profitable, especially when campaign donations are one of the biggest predictors of who gets the cash. Maybe someday they will be. If you’re a company that’s devoting time and money to research and development, then Godspeed. But it’s not the government’s place to fund these endeavors.
Our economy is replete with examples of profitable, environmentally friendly industries. Just look at aluminum recycling. More than 119,000 cans are recycled every minute in the United States. In 2012, recycled aluminum reached $90 billion in sales. The industry employs over a million workers.
Next door to me in Bowling Green, Logan Aluminum employs a thousand people and produces aluminum from recycled cans that are made into new cans for the beverage industry. Aluminum from Logan accounts for 45 percent of beverage cans in America. The energy used to create a new can is reduced by 95 percent with recycled aluminum. From an environmental point of view this is great, but it’s even better because it’s done to maximize profit. When profit is at stake, things tend to move very quickly.9
Or look at Joe Bessler, a friend of mine from northern Kentucky, who makes a living recycling cars and helps the environment one old broken-down heap at a time, so they don’t end up in landfills or rust out in some field or woods. Of course, Joe is only a small part of an industry that recycles this “junk” for a profit of $22 billion a year. The Automotive Recycling Association (ARA) says that recycled vehicles provide enough steel to produce almost 13 million new vehicles, which saves an estimated 85 million barrels of oil a year that would have been used in the manufacturing of new or replacement parts.
The car recycling businesses also employ some 103,108 people, according to the ARA, and it’s important to remember that government didn’t create this industry. Private industry did, because there’s a profit to be had, jobs to be had, and money to be made.
Let me tell you how that happened. In 1969, an estimated 20 million discarded motor vehicles littered America. Adam Ozimek, a business writer for Forbes, called it “an environmental crisis of abandoned cars.” The labor involved in scrapping cars, and the steel industry’s refusal to take the inferior metal that cars then consisted of, took the profit out of auto recycling. Then someone invented the car shredder, and the whole industry changed until, as Ozimek wrote, “the last abandoned cars were finally dragged out of the woods.”
Like a kid with his first Tonka truck, I am fascinated by these giant shredders that can put a car in one side and shred it into thousands of pieces and then automatically sort the pieces.
From Joe Bessler to Big Auto, recycling profits abound. In 2012, Ford generated $225 million by recycling 586,000 tons of scrap metal in North America, according to the New York Times. General Motors sees a profit of $1 billion annually from their recycling and reuse efforts. Meanwhile, automakers are dumping less and less material into our landfills.
In his wonderful book Junkyard Planet: Travels in the Billion-Dollar Trash Trade, Adam Minter writes about the recyclable value of the insides of smartphones, computers, and tablets that Americans throw away “like candy wrappers.” “The global recycling business, no matter how sustainable or green, is 100 percent dependent upon consumers consuming goods made from other goods,” Minter writes.
Let me say it again: having sustainable waste management and recycling requires profitability. To protect the environment we must favor solutions that allow pro-environment companies to thrive. Our concern should be directed to long-term solutions, not quick fixes that require subsidies to persist.
To that end I support state legislation to allow businesses to incorporate as B corps that are not bound by always seeking the lowest-cost item but may take into account the well-being of the environment.
To support alternative fuels like ethanol, methanol, butane, and natural gas, I’ve introduced legislation to remove regulatory hurdles that inhibit the production and sale of fuels that pollute less.
In the New GOP, we will proclaim from the highest mountaintops that Republicans do care about the environment and about jobs. That jobs and the environment aren’t mutually exclusive, but that we cannot blindly keep adding regulations without considering the consequences to the economy and jobs. To give you an example, since President Obama has taken office the EPA has added 2,827 new final regulations, which amount to 24,915 pages in the Federal Register. I’d list the regulations for you, but it would take a couple of more books to do so. One intrepid reporter did a word count on them and came to an approximate total of 24,915,000 words. That’s more words than are contained in the seven Harry Potter books—twenty-two times over.10
To me, it makes absolute sense that the party that extols individual liberty and property rights should steadfastly stand against any entity that attempts to pollute your land or air space.
In the New GOP, you will find a balanced solution to the age-old question of how humans can tame the Earth and still preserve its beauty and treasures. I hope those who love the environment, those who care about our planet, those who treasure nature’s beauty, will look again to the party that led the way on conservation, that led the way in creating our national parks. The New GOP has a place for those who want to preserve and protect and provide for a cleaner, brighter future for our planet.
In the New GOP, it will be okay to watch Jon Stewart or read Barbara Kingsolver, perhaps just not both in the same day. In the New GOP, it will be just as admirable to defend the Fourth Amendment as the Second Amendment.
In the New GOP it is cool to compost, shop at the farmers market, and maybe, just maybe, okay to commit civil disobedience and drink raw milk transported across state lines.
Together in the New GOP we’ll find a way to preserve the glorious heritage that Teddy Roosevelt spoke of, and we’ll be able to pass it along to our children and theirs.
That’s the GOP I hope to lead.
17
A Look Forward
The next president needs to remember those in Middle America. By that, I mean those of us from small towns, who go to small churches and run small businesses. The part of America that doesn’t have all the power, but does so much of the hard work.
At the end of my thirteen-hour filibuster, my legs were weak and my voice was raw. I walked away that night unbowed, proud of the stand I had taken. I was proud to have given voice to an America that struggles to be heard. An America that believes its legislators should work for the people and not against each other, an America that believes our rights precede all government and stem from our Creator.
People have asked me if the overwhelming positive reaction to my filibuster was the impetus for my decision to run for president. Actually, a decision like this doesn’t come in some single flash of inspiration. At least it didn’t for me. I went through a similar experience when I decided to run for the Senate. I have a wonderful wife and three great sons. I was a doctor in a sm
all town, with my own practice. I made a good living, and I lived in a nice neighborhood. I was home for dinner every night unless I was coaching one of my sons’ teams. So why did I run? I tell people that I got tired of throwing things at my television, and that is at least partially true.
Mostly, though, I felt helpless. I had watched as our elected officials bailed out big banks and drove deficits into the trillions of dollars. I watched as they passed a health-care law that took away our most basic freedom—the freedom to choose. I watched as a president marched us to war without even a glance at Congress. I ran for the Senate basically because I had had enough—with even my own party. It was Republicans who doubled the debt then and who bailed out the banks. It was Republicans who doubled the size of the Department of Education.
Now I have a different vantage, and now it’s the Democrats who are tripling the debt. President Obama is on course to add more debt than all the previous presidents in history—combined. It’s the Democrats and their president who now ignore the Constitution and trample those God-given rights I stood for in my filibuster. As a senator I can do more than throw things at the television—and I fight every day against the sellout of America’s principles, solvency, and future.
Still, I believe I can do more. Even the great honor and responsibility of being a U.S. senator has its limits, and that is why I am running for president. I don’t take this lightly, and I run with all humility that I am not the only person who could help right our ship of state. But I do believe I have something to offer, and I believe in the ideas that have brought me to this point in my life. To right the ship of state, it won’t be good enough to just nominate any old Republican. Too often, we settled for Democrat-lite and the inertia of Washington prevents any meaningful change.
I believe in genuine change, not the campaign-button variety.
I believe in making the federal government smaller, balancing the budget, and returning money to the productive sector by dramatically lowering tax rates.
Real change would mean a president who appoints cabinet secretaries who pledge to reduce the size and scope of their departments.
Real change would mean limits on the terms of every single member of Congress.
The next president needs to understand how and where jobs are created. Jobs are created in the private sector. Jobs are created by big and small businesses, but too often the voices of the small mom-and-pop businesses are drowned out by larger voices seeking favors.
The next president needs to remember those in Middle America. By that I mean those of us from small towns, who go to small churches and who run small businesses. The part of America that doesn’t have all the power but does so much of the hard work.
The next president shouldn’t disparage the builders and creators. The next president should recognize that genius needs freedom as Steve Jobs did when he wrote:
“Here’s to the crazy ones, the misfits, the rebels, the troublemakers, the round pegs in the square holes… The ones who see things differently—they’re not fond of rules… They push the human race forward, and while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius, because the ones who are crazy enough to think they can change the world are the ones who do.”
Those of us who are actively pursuing the American Dream simply want one thing: for government to get out of our way.
Pink Floyd understood that genius needs to be left alone. Whether your ideas are politically correct or not, whether you’re a painter or a self-proclaimed prophet, the exhortation is to shine, to not let conformity dim your light: “Shine on, you crazy diamond.”
For the crazy diamonds to shine, government must get out of the way.
The leave-me-alone generation is a generation that believes they can conquer the world, solve any problem, if left free to follow their dreams.
It isn’t about how government will lead us to prosperity. The debate is about getting government out of the way of human ingenuity.
President Obama is leaving office and, as a country, we need to ask ourselves, did we get what was advertised? What direction do we want to see the country move in for the next four years? One big idea is to make sure Washington has less power and less to do.
The next president should not be able to impose his will on us—he should not be allowed to tell us what insurance we can buy, what lightbulbs we can use, and how we generate electricity.
My run for the presidency will be a campaign for people who don’t have power—whether they live in a small town or a big city. I will stand for the people who live in places other politicians take for granted.
As president, I will stand for those who feel separated and distant from the American Dream, those who don’t want to be perpetually talked down to, forgotten, and left in never-ending poverty.
The War on Poverty is fifty years old, and black unemployment is still twice that of white unemployment. Income inequality has worsened under this administration, and Democrats offer more of the same policies—policies that have allowed the poor to get poorer and the rich to get richer.
Pitting one American against another is not a pathway toward prosperity. The current president is intent on redistributing the pie but not growing it. He misunderstands that the bulk of America wants a bigger pie. They want to work, and they don’t want a life of dependency.
Not only do we need new blood in Washington, we need a new way of thinking in Washington.
As a physician, I was taught first to do no harm. To think before you act. To analyze the unintended consequences of your actions.
I think America would be better off if all our politicians took that same approach:
“First, do no harm.”
Get out of the way. Do no harm. If we start there, we solve a lot of our problems.
It is self-evident that the president and Congress are unable to do what every family in America must do—balance the budget. So let’s try a new way: if Congress cannot—or will not—balance the budget, then we should amend the Constitution to make it mandatory.
The debt is out of control. We borrow a million dollars a minute. Our $18 trillion debt has become an anchor. Some economists argue that the burden of debt costs us a million jobs a year.
I fear that this degree of debt is an imminent threat to our national security.
You cannot project power from bankruptcy court. It does not make us appear stronger when we borrow money from China and then send it to countries that burn our flag. The hollowing out of our national defense comes from the advocates for unlimited spending and perpetual military intervention.
Let me reiterate: Secretary Gates got it right when he said that we’ve overmilitarized our foreign policy. Should we be engaged in trying to encourage stability in the world? Absolutely. But we must think before we act. We must remember the maxim “First, do no harm.”
It’s time for a new approach both abroad and here at home.
With our health care, it is a noble aspiration and a moral obligation to make sure our fellow man is provided for, that medical treatment is made available to all.
But compassion cannot be delivered in the form of coercion.
President Obama’s fundamental promise that if you like your doctor you can keep him or her—that was a lie. I promise you this: as a doctor, I will make it my mission to reverse the course on which Obamacare has us.
Obamacare at its core takes away a patient’s right to choose.
Everyone knows our health-care system needed reforming, but it was the wrong prescription to choose more government instead of more consumer choice and competition.
Obamacare restricts freedom and must be repealed. I was asked recently how we would fix our health-care system. I replied, “Let’s try freedom again. It worked for over two hundred years!”
To stimulate the economy, I believe we cut everyone’s taxes, from the richest to the poorest, and we cut spending at the same time.
That’s why I have proposed the largest tax cut in American history, a tax cu
t that will include every single American, from richest to poorest.
My tax plan will include a tax code every American can understand. You will be able to file your taxes on a single sheet of paper, no accountant or lawyer necessary.
It will cut taxes, but it will also make sure everyone plays by the rules and pays their fair share. The days of corporations hiring the best lawyers and lobbyists and paying zero taxes must end.
Some will ask, “But what of the safety net?” I promise you this: we will not cut one penny from the safety net until we’ve cut every penny from corporate welfare!
I will also cut spending. Some so-called conservatives recently voted to borrow $190 billion to fund more defense spending. This proposal is exactly why Republicans and Democrats have created an $18 trillion debt. When I showed these “conservatives” that you could increase defense spending and offset it with cuts to domestic spending, virtually none of them had the courage to vote for the spending cuts. These so-called conservatives are the part of the problem. On the left you have liberals who will borrow for domestic spending but on the right you have a similar problem: conservatives who will continue to borrow money to throw it at the Pentagon.
I propose a third way: all spending must be justified and we must not add more to the debt even for worthwhile expenditures like defense. No other candidate in the presidential race will honestly support this position and that’s why the American people must demand something new, someone who will say to the right and to the left that we must stop digging the hole of debt deeper and deeper.
I will continue to advocate for significant reforms to the way we do business in Washington. In addition to balancing the budget, Congress should be required to read the bills first.
Congressmen and women should also live under the laws they pass. Congress should pass no law that exempts congressmen and women from the requirements of a bill. We have set up a privileged class in Washington, and Americans are sick and tired of it.