Real Conservative Senators Should Vote For Senator Rand Paul’s Budget

The Senate is expected to vote on four competing budget plans introduced by Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI), Sen. Pat Toomey (R-PA), Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT), and Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) today. Passing an annual budget for the federal government is a fundamental responsibility of Congress. Yet under Harry Reid’s leadership, the Senate has not passed a budget in over three years and no Democrats in the Senate have even offered a budget proposal this year.

All of these proposed budgets would be an improvement from the status quo but Rand Paul’s Platform to Revitalize America shines above the rest. It would repeal ObamaCare, reform the tax code, block grant Medicaid to the states, reform Social Security, and balance the federal budget in just five years without raising taxes.

Most Republicans pay a lot of lip service to cutting spending but their actions rarely live up to their limited government rhetoric. But true fiscal conservatives like Rand Paul actually walk their talk. His budget plan is the only one that will abolish entire departments. The Departments of Education, Energy, Commerce, and Housing and Urban Development would be axed under his plan. Poof! These needless bureaucracies would be gone. That’s what I call a real budget plan. This is the strongest budget plan in a generation and all senators serious about reducing the size and scope of government should stand behind Rand Paul’s budget.

The Rand Paul budget would slow up the regulatory state. The American people are forced to comply with thousands and thousands of outrageous new rules and regulations issued by the executive branch annually. The term “major rule” refers to any rule or regulation that has an annual economic impact of $100 million or more. Regulatory agencies issued 100 major rules in 2010 without any input from our elected representatives in Congress. Anyone who remembers the classic School House Rock! video that shows how a bill becomes a law can testify that unelected bureaucrats in the executive branch aren’t supposed to make the laws.

The executive branch has completely disregarded article 1, section 7 of the Constitution, which outlines the process of creating a new law and clearly gives that power to the legislative branch. Rand Paul’s budget would implement the REINS Act which requires congressional approval for all “major rules” proposed by the executive branch. The REINS Act wouldn’t be necessary if the Constitution was strictly followed in Washington, DC. Congressional representatives are the most accountable to the people and must be allowed to stop harmful regulations that will erode individual liberty and crush job growth.

Under the Paul plan, Americans would no longer fear sexual harassment at the airport since the plan would privatize the TSA. Rand Paul knows a little something about how incompetent and abusive the TSA can be. He was detained at the Nashville airport for hours and ended up missing his speech at the March for Life back in January. The TSA picked the wrong guy to mess with. Now the senator is pursuing his mission to abolish the TSA with a vengeance.

As the budget report card complied by Dean Clancy and Daniel Anderson shows, Rand Paul’s plan earns an A+. The plans introduced by Sens. Mike Lee and Toomey earn an A- and B+, respectively. All three plans would balance the federal budget and save trillions of dollars within the next decade. But as FreedomWorks noted in our key vote notice, we do have serious concerns about the health care reform proposal in the Lee Budget and the Medicare provisions in the Toomey and Lee budgets—proposals that trace their roots to the Heritage Foundation plan that provided the template for RomneyCare and ObamaCare.

Why haven’t more Republicans rallied behind Rand Paul’s plan? Only seven senators had the courage to vote for Rand Paul’s almost identical budget plan last year. Do most Republicans senators want to rearrange the deck chairs on the Titanic? Simply nibbling around the edges of the budget won’t cut it.

Will the real conservative senators please stand up? The time has come to make your actions match your rhetoric.

Click here to tell your senator to vote for Rand Paul’s budget plan.