Rand Paul: “frequently I am asked, when I am in my district, if Congress is making any progress in solving the problems that this…”

“frequently I am asked, when I am in my district, if Congress is making any progress in solving the problems that this country faces. I wish I could be more optimistic in my answer, yet I am optimistic about the people in the district and the people in the country, because I think they are beginning to see the problems correctly and they are beginning to sense that we should be doing more to solve the problems. Truthfully, I cannot give them an optimistic answer about the progress we are making here within the House of Representatives and in the Senate. For instance, yesterday we had a piece of legislation come up rather quickly. It was the FDA legislation. There was no announcement the day before. There was no announcement last week. It came up suddenly, under suspension, with only minutes to prepare. Actually, I came to the floor hoping that I could at least make a statement, asking for 1 minute, but because it was managed by both majority and minority that supported the bill, there just happened not to be any time available to discuss anything in the FDA legislation. This legislation involved 177 pages. It was not available to me on the Internet. It is a complex piece of legislation, and something that I think is a very important piece of legislation. I had received numerous pieces of correspondence critical of this legislation and urging caution on its passage. The bill was rushed through rather quickly.”