Term Paper on "Model Senator on the Issues Portrayal"

Term Paper 6 pages (1897 words) Sources: 4

[EXCERPT] . . . .

Rand Paul on Immigration

As a United States Senator from Kentucky, I, Rand Paul, might be asked how immigration affects my constituents. The fact is that immigration affects us all. But it is important to remember that there are two types of immigration: legal immigration and illegal immigration. While I support legal immigration, which welcomes citizens of other countries into the United States provided they follow and adhere to our laws, I do not support illegal immigration. In this paper, I will discuss why I do not support illegal immigration and what I think we can do to help stop it.

In the past, I have been criticized for attacking immigration in any form. The fact is that these criticisms are unfair. In an article for the New York Times from June of 2011, for instance, Enmarie Huetteman made it seem as though I were against immigrants of all shapes and sizes because they could be "would-be attackers" (Huetteman). This, of course, is a total misrepresentation of my position. The speech to which Huetteman was referring was one I gave at a Senate Homeland Security Committee hearing. The point of the speech was to show that the DHS is completely out of control with its scrutiny of American citizens. The point was that if we would only do our job of having tighter immigration policies, we could get rid of a lot of the departments (like the TSA) that most ordinary Americans find to be intrusive. The point was that stricter policies of immigration could help ensure America's safety a lot better than the Orwellian policies that our government currently prefers to employ.

Huetteman misrepresents my speech to make it seem as if I were a xenophobic right-winger. That is not the case. I am a conservative, who believes in securing this nation's borders, and that by doing so this nation is better protected against enemy attacks. Instead of spending billions and billions of dollars to build foreign bases overseas in countries that are hostile to our presence there, we should be spending money to protect our borders and tighten our immigration policy. One thing that I would like to have done is an underground electric fence between Mexico and the border states. As I have said before, "I would include satellite and increased aerial surveillance, and a boost of funds and training to the border agents" (Paul). The idea that illegal immigrants can pour across our borders and have children here who are thereby automatically made citizens and that both are able to receive the benefits of our system that our taxpayers pay into is preposterous. It is exploitative, expensive, and unsafe and it does nothing to instill a sense of fairness and respect for the rule of law.

I have said before that I support local solutions to the problem of illegal immigration and that is why I support the recent Arizona law. Arizona is a border state that has to deal with illegal immigration in a more direct way than my own state of Kentucky. Should I or any other U.S. Senator be allowed to dictate policy to Arizona? Why? Let Arizona look after itself. But let the Federal government do its part in patrolling the borders as well.

As a U.S. Senator I am willing to vote for "any bill that strengthens border security, including the construction of a physical or electronic fence," (Paul) and I am also in favor of tightening our immigration policy in the sense that rather than have the lives of American citizens disrupted by the prying eyes of Big Brother, those men and women who want to come to our country should be the ones who are scrutinized.

Rand Paul's position on illegal immigration is consistent with his overall conservative position. His beliefs have obviously been misconstrued in the mainstream media, and it is not hard to find his exact position on issues like this. He is adamantly opposed to the bills like the recently passed NDA Act, which strips American citizens of their rights. He wants to stop treating American citizens like suspected terrorists and start looking with more scrutiny at the foreign immigrants trying to get into this country. This makes sense, in a way, since those who are said to have attacked America on 9/11 were all foreigners. Meanwhile, departments like the TSA have done nothing to make America safer -- only more of a police state.

Rather than see the nation became more and more of a police state, Paul supports policing the borders instead. By stopping suspects at the gate, rather than letting everyone through and then trying to sift through everyone before they get on a plane, Paul's proposal would reduce the role of police in the life of the average citizen -- where it is unwanted and unjustifiably intrusive. Paul wants to put police on the borders and protect the country that way. It is not an unintelligent position and is easily understandable.

Paul's policy would also give troops something constructive to do -- rather than destructive things they are doing in the Middle East. Paul sees no point in spending billions overseas, when for a fraction of that sum we could do a better job of making our country safe simply by tightening our borders. Paul is not against immigration -- he just wants there to be a stricter watch. It would be not only cost-effective, it would also help strengthen the country from attacks from within by keeping the criminal element from getting through the gates in the first place.

Works Cited

Huetteman, Enmarie. "To Rand Paul, Legal Immigration is Also a Concern." The New

York Times. 9 June 2011. Web. 3 Apr 2012.

Paul, Rand. "Illegal Immigration." Rand Paul U.S. Senate. 2010. Web. 3 Apr 2012.



Rand Paul on Health Care

Health care reform has been on everyone's mind since the inception of President Obama's health care reform bill. The problem with President Obama's plan is that it does nothing to really promote free or affordable health care. What it does, however, is make everyone a slave to an already monopolized system in which prices are fixed and controlled largely thanks to government intervention. Rather than seen health care proposals that force Americans to buy into a system whether they like it or not, we should be trying instead to create a system that works. As I have stated before, "A much better boost to the economy and consumers would come from health care reform proposals that encourage more coverage at lower prices without massive disruption, taxes, and spending" (Paul). In this paper, I will discuss some of the ways in which true health care reform could help this country and some of the ways in which phony reform, like the President's policy, hurts the country.

True health care reform is not difficult to imagine. It depends upon trusting the free market system and letting it operate as it is designed to. However, instead of letting the free market set prices through competition, government intervenes and fixes the prices and creates laws that hurt citizens by not allowing them to shop around for health care -- laws that play into the hands of regional monopolists. True health care reform would do something else: it "would invigorate and deepen the market for individual insurance, providing consumers with more choice for plans they can keep even with a job loss…[it] would eliminate state and federal policies that limit competition between health insurance companies and among health care providers" (Paul). Let us examine this point.

Today's monopoly on health care cannot be fixed by saying rather absurdly that everyone must buy health care whether he wants it or not. The monopoly must be broken. President Obama's plan simply encourages the monopoly and does nothing to make health care more affordable for those who want to decide for themselves whether to buy it or not. It places an unfair tax on the working class. It demands more and gives less.

Real reform would break the health insurance trust that is strangling this country. Real reform has to break this trust -- and that is as simple as it can be put. I put it this way because I have been criticized in the past for painting phony reform a more brutal way.

In the past I sated that a supposed "right" to health care was like slavery. I stated, "Whether or not you have a right to health care, you have to realize what that implies… I'm a physician, and that means you have a right to come to my house and conscript me. It means you believe in slavery. It means that you are going to enslave not only me but the janitor at my hospital, the person who cleans my office, the assistants who work in my office, the nurses" (Tennant). Some people took offense to these comments -- but they failed to see the implication of what they were demanding.… READ MORE

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