Rand Paul

You restrict my purchases. You don't care about my choices. You don't care about the consumer frankly.

The laws and the statutes that this Committee has championed provide an adequate basis, a fine basis.

What is wrong with swearing off support for and aid for all dictators?

I think a friend bought is not a friend, and I think a friend that is coerced by military power is not a friend and breeds resentment.

We keep supporting Algeria and Morocco and Yemen and all these dictators, and yet we pretend that as soon as it looks like the dictator might fall, oh, we are all for democracy and we are for freedom and we are against these dictators.

A lot of people in this country have come to the conclusion that our policy overall has been inconsistent; that sometimes we support the bad guys and the bad guys become our enemies.

I am hopeful, but not overly optimistic, because of the long-term history of 1,000 years that they don't readily adapt to true liberty.

I would hate to think they were the first ones to warn us. I think they were the last ones to even recognize what was going on.

I appreciate you holding these hearings because the subject of unemployment certainly is one issue on which everybody in the Congress agrees.

I think the Federal Reserve allows Congress to be irresponsible.

Do we need 100,000 fighters to stop 100 people?

We've got to do something. It's going to take dramatic, across the board look at everything in the budget.

Well, some people have pointed out that in the Defense budget, we have about 40 percent overhead. And we require our Defense contractors to only have 15 percent overhead.

That we have to balance the budget and we need to do so by cutting spending. And I think that's the message -- the number one message from the Tea Party.

Earmarks is part of the problem, and we must stop it.

Earmarks are absolutely a problem, and we must end earmarks.

I am philosophically opposed to earmarks.

I see a tremendous amount of transfer of wealth going from the community organizations... back into Wall Street.

I think it is a very dicey, risky position that we are in right now if we do not address my two biggest concerns being liquidity and valuations.

I believe what will happen is that you are effectively tying both hands behind the economy's back because if you do believe that it is the community banks that will provide that source of funding to allow the economy to grow but at the…

I think the answer to that is that if, as we all sit around this table, is that it is clearly the small businesses that are going to jumpstart the economy and supply the funds to be able to build employment and growth.

We will look at each individual program and we will do a stepwise process to this.

My answer to the question is that nothing is off -- off to -- off-limits.

Nothing is off-limits. And we will -- let me finish. The other thing is, is that we will look at each individual program and we will do a step-wise process to this.

I will advocate for Kentucky's interests and submit request for funding through the appropriations process, but he will not request earmarks.