Rand Paul: “Let me follow up on the point I made earlier about the good intentions of a program like this to promote free market…”

“Let me follow up on the point I made earlier about the good intentions of a program like this to promote free market changes in certain countries, but, unfortunately, this backfires because once the money gets in the hands of the government we then require them to develop partnerships or alliances with businesses, which is exactly the opposite of free markets. This is closer to crony capitalism or fascism when we combine government money with business interests. At the same time, we know that our corporations will also participate in these programs. So the money once again leaves the people of this country, many times the poor, and goes to these foreign aid programs which subsidize certain governments, solidifying powers of certain politicians, which then allows fungibility of their other funds to do other things and then encourage business partnerships between government and business which is not free markets, which literally is undermining the move that I think is intended and that is to improve the conditions of other countries. If the conditions of a country are amenable to capitalism and investment, there is never a problem of a lack of investors. The fact that we have to do this, that means there are flaws in the system. This will not improve it. It actually makes it worse. Just because you have partnership with businesses does not mean you are moving toward free enterprise.”