Senator Rand Paul
of Kentucky represents the kind of bipartisan leadership that this country
needs to break the gridlock grinding our government to a halt. A libertarian
on use of controlled substances,
ready and willing to vote against his party on social and fiscal issues, Rand
Paul is open to compromise without caving on his principles.
Not just with the drugs laws,
Paul has also evinced an
open mind for a pathway to citizenship for illegal
immigrants along with a less confrontational foreign policy. He once staged a
lonely filibuster to end the United States Government's ongoing
billion-dollar handouts to hostile dictators sympathetic to us, yet destructive
and cruel to their own people. The federal government still sends enormous
foreign aid packages to Pakistan, even though the leaders in that country have
jailed and tortured the doctor who helped the CIA track down and kill Osama Bin
Laden.
Rand Paul has crossed the aisle
on a number of issues. His very presence in the Senate is an affront to the GOP
Establishment to begin with, since "make Obama one-term President"
Mitch McConnell backed
Paul's challenger in the 2010 Kentucky Senate primary. Despite the initial
acrimony between the minority leader and the junior senator, the two have
developed a strong working relationship in the Senate.
This month on the US Senate
floor, Paul advanced an immigration
bill which had already passed the House: the STEMS
Job Act (Science, Technology, Engineering, Math). In this
proposed legislation, immigrants who graduate from American universities with
Masters Degrees and PhD's will no longer have to wait in line in order to
receive a green card. Currently, the waits is so grating, that highly-skilled
college graduates leave this country with their quality American education and
work for global competitors. This brain drain is an insane waste of talent for
this country.
From Mort
Zuckerman of US News and World Report to New
York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, the
widespread consensus on this step toward immigration reform should galvanize
both sides to come together and pass this bill.
Rand Paul chided his colleagues
to plea for passage. "Many of us want reform. I want it noted that we can
talk a small step." To allow PhD and Master Degree immigrants to receive
green cards is no unseemly idea. Rand Paul properly indicts the President and
majority party for "wanting everything." Part of the problem in
Washington, then, stems (no pun intended) from both sides wanting everything.
This path to unbrokered argument and empty partisanship is hurting more than
helping.
Rand Paul echoes the growing
sentiment in this country, in which voters lament: "Why is this system
broken?" Why can't Congress get we agree on this bill? Leaders on both
sides of the aisle want a plan of action which guarantees them everything. This
is not what representative Democracy is about. Neither side will ever get all
that it wants. If the Democratic majority wants to stonewall incremental
proposals for the better, they may face the same backlash which motivated
voters to return the same divided government to Congress this past election.
Showing spine as well as
substance, Rand Paul has signaled his willingness to let the Democratic
majority have all the high taxes that they want, and thus let them own the
consequences for the policies. Such a plan may work. California has a
supermajority of Democrats in Sacramento. However, California's Democratic
State Senator Ted Lieu retreated following the state-wide reprisal to his proposal
to triple the state's car tax.
Perhaps Pauls' unorthodox
approach to compromise and governance will be just what it takes for both sides
of the aisle to put the Constitution, the country, and the American citizenry
ahead of their own caucuses. Please contact your Congressman and Senators.
Demand that they put term-by-term politics aside and support an incremental
reform to our nation's broken and bereft immigration policy.
Senator Rand Paul (R-Kentucy) supports the STEMS Job Act, which would expedite foreign nationals from American universities to receive green cards. Democrats need to support this bill.