Rand Paul: “Mr. Speaker, I rise in support of this legislation. It's called the Fair Sentencing Act. I'd like to rename it, though.…”

“Mr. Speaker, I rise in support of this legislation. It's called the Fair Sentencing Act. I'd like to rename it, though. I'd like to call it the Slightly Fairer Resentencing Act, because it really makes an attempt to correct a very, very serious problem in equal justice in our systems, and that effort I think we should all applaud. I would have much preferred H.R. 3245. I was an original cosponsor of that along with Congressman Scott, but I think this is a typical example of trying to fix a problem that we invite upon ourselves. In economics, I adhere to the position that once you want to do some good in the economy, with all the best motivations, we do things and we create new problems and we have to go back. If you get two new problems for every intervention, then you're constantly writing laws. Well, in social policy, I believe the same thing. It was trying to improve social policy with crack cocaine. There was no evidence on this. It was designed to help people, especially the minorities that were using crack cocaine, and they thought this was terrible, and it turned out that its law backfired. It actually hurt minorities, didn't help them. Here we are trying to correct this disparity, and it just, to me, confirms the fact that government management, whether it is the economy or social policy, doesn't make a whole lot of sense.”