Good on him, and shows our government can do with less tax money and deficit spending. We tend to just throw money at offices and departments and don’t really carefully track how each dollar is spent.
Sen. Rand Paul says he’s fulfilling a campaign promise by giving back $500,000 of operational funds to the U.S. Treasury.
Paul said the U.S. Senators are appropriated $3 million a year for their office budgets and he’s been able to save nearly 15 percent of his annual costs. He hopes to set an example with his frugality, he said.
“We look at all of our office expenses. We look at the coffee pot to the computers bought and we try to buy things as if it were our money we were spending, or your money that we were spending, and our goal is not to spend all of it, our goal is to save some of it,” Paul said.
If Congress offered incentives for lawmakers and staff to cut budgets, Paul estimates the U.S. could save $130 million annually, he said.
Paul will continue finding cost savings but the amount may decrease each year as staff members earn raises, he said.
“We’ve done a lot of things that I have not necessarily won the battle for. This is the one thing I have control over and that’s my office budget and I wanted to show the people of Kentucky that I have been frugal with their money and that I wanted to bring it back. And I’m very happy to have these taxpayers here to receive some of their own money back,” he said.
Over his six year term he could give back over $1 million, he said.
At this point I think his dad is the stalking horse for Rand’s 2016 run for the white house. I like this guy a lot. As much as I like his dad, Rand is more electable.
That was awhile ago. I think Daddy Paul knows his chance to change this nation has mostly passed, and only his son is positioned to pick up the standard to drive on.
One part that I have to disagree with. If you look at his positions Ron Paul is an old school liberal. In fact by being politically orientated as he is he winds up pissing off a lot of the modern conservative republicans. By old school I’m talking 18th century liberal who was committed to personal freedom, not the liberals (aka socialists) of the last 110 or so years.The classical liberal has been christened the Libertarian.
