KENTUCKY — Lawmakers in Congress are back in our nation’s capital after a short recess in April and now the race is on to get the budget blueprint translated into law.
The self-imposed Memorial Day deadline means that Republican lawmakers will spend their time keeping busy with committee markups on the sweeping budget bill that will include sweeping provisions on energy, tax and the border.
U.S. Senator Rand Paul, R-Ky., joins this week’s “In Focus Kentucky,” for a wide ranging and extensive interview.
During this segment, Sen. Paul said overall he is very pleased with President Donald Trump’s first 100 days in office and proposals to eliminate the department of education, keeping his campaign promises and keeping the tax cuts from 2017 and adding to them. But, Kentucky’s junior senator adds that he remains firmly against President Trump’s tariffs, and instead is advocating for congressional control over trade policy.
“One of the most important thing our founding fathers gave us was checks and balances. They made specific rules for what Congress could do and what the President can do is regard to taxes. They said the taxes have to originate in the House of Representatives. Tariffs are a tax. So if you want to have tariffs, they really need to originate in the House of Representatives, come to the Senate and then be signed by the president into law. Now he’s declared an emergency. So by declaring an emergency, we’re no longer operating under the constitutional checks and balances. I think that’s a mistake. So I did have a bipartisan resolution two weeks ago. We won that resolution in the Senate, 51-47. Yesterday, we had two absences of our supporters, and we tied 49-49, but the debate is helping. The President has backed away from the tariffs. The automobile manufacturers in Kentucky don’t like the tariffs, and I think partly because of my opposition and others, we’ve gotten the president to give a 15% rebate on the automobile tax. So the tax was 25%. He’s giving 15 of that back. So the tariffs just went from 25 to 10 for automobiles, because of complaints coming from myself and others. He put the other tariffs on a 90-day pause. So the complaints are working. The President is backing away. Also, I think he’s seen the stock market. We lost $6.6 trillion worth of value in the stock market two weeks ago. The stock market is very, very skittish, very very worried and look from the average,” said Sen. Paul.
You can watch the full In Focus Kentucky segment in the player above.
