Rand Paul: “Mr. Chairman, it is correct, I am going to vote no on this bill, for various reasons. I stated some of those earlier on.…”

“Mr. Chairman, it is correct, I am going to vote no on this bill, for various reasons. I stated some of those earlier on. One is constitutional. There is a strong moral argument against a bill like this. But I am going to talk a little bit about the economics. Also, one other reason why I am going to vote against this bill has to do with campaign finance reform. If we vote no against this, I think we would be working in the direction of campaign finance reform. I myself get essentially no business PAC money. I do not have any philosophic reasons not to take it. I would take the money on my conditions, but that sort of excludes me. But not infrequently when I would visit with large corporations they would ask me, what is my position on the Export-Import Bank. And when they would find out, of course they would not give me any money. So I would say that the incentive to get people to do certain things for subsidies gives this incentive for big corporations to subsidize and to donate money to certain politicians. If we did not have so much economic power here, there would not be the incentive for big business to come and buy our influence. Mr. Chairman, I do not happen to believe that campaign finance reform will ever be accomplished by merely taking away the right of an individual or company to spend money the way they see fit.”