EXCLUSIVE — RAND PAUL SLAMS RUBIO OVER OBAMATRADE: ‘WE SHOULD READ LEGISLATION BEFORE WE VOTE ON IT’
by MATTHEW BOYLE
6 Jun 2015
MERRIMACK, New Hampshire — Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) is opening fire on Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) and everyone else who backed or is backing Obamatrade without reading the text of the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) that Trade Promotion Authority (TPA) would fast track.
In an interview on Saturday morning, when asked about the revelation that Rubio and others in the Republican Party voted to fast-track the TPP in the Senate—and many in the House GOP leadership have been pushing it—without reading the text of the TPP in the secret room inside the Capitol, Paul went ballistic.
“The American people are frustrated by Congress—Congress has about a 10 percent approval rating,” Paul said. “I think part of that is that they don’t think we’re taking the amount of time to do an adequate job to read the legislation. It’s sort of twofold: They don’t give us enough time, and they also make the bills too long. I have a bill called Read The Bills Act, and in it there’s a requirement that you have to wait one day for every 20 pages of legislation. So 800-page legislation [like Obamatrade] would wait 40 days. You’d wait 40 days so we’d have adequate time to read it. Yeah, I’m a believer that we should read legislation before we vote on it.”
Paul’s interview with Breitbart News came inside Joey’s Diner, where several presidential candidates campaign. Paul gave brief remarks to kick off an event with local conservatives, then shook hands, talked with patrons, and took pictures with them.
Paul also said that “absolutely” President Barack Obama should immediately release the TPP text, instead of keeping it hidden from the public.
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