Rand Paul slams GOP ‘hypocrisy’ on spending bill

Sen. Rand Paul says his Republican colleagues who voted to cut taxes but increase spending are hypocrites.

“The people who voted for tax cuts and spending increases, I think there is some hypocrisy there, and I think it shows they’re not serious about the debt,” Mr. Paul said Sunday on the CBS program “Face the Nation.”

President Trump signed a budget deal increasing government spending by $300 billion on Friday, saying the legislation will help the military and create jobs.

Mr. Paul, who filibustered the spending bill into the early hours of Friday morning, said Republicans need to ask themselves whether it’s possible to be “fiscally conservative and for unlimited military spending.”

“There’s sort of this question, ’Is the military budget too small, or maybe is our mission too large around the world?’” the Kentucky Republican said. “And because Republicans are unwilling to confront that, they want more, more, more for military spending. And so to get that they have to give the Democrats what they want, which is more, more, more for domestic spending.”

He said bipartisanship that’s “exploding the deficit” is not “the kind of bipartisanship we need.”

Mr. Paul said President Trump possesses good instincts on keeping America out of military conflicts overseas, calling him the “least interventionist-minded president that we’ve had in a long time.”

“I mean, he criticized George Bush for his intervention in the Iraq War,” Mr. Paul said. “I think he’s not that excited about continuing the Afghan War forever.”

But he said the president has surrounded himself with generals who “don’t want to admit that there isn’t a military solution” to every problem.

After 15 years and more than a trillion dollars, he said it’s time for the people of Afghanistan to “take over their country.”

“Instead of building bridges and schools and roads in Afghanistan or in Pakistan, I think we could do that at home,” he said.