Just as last year and in what amounts to largely just free publicity, Kentucky Senator Rand Paul mocked up one of those big ol’ lottery style checks which he’ll send to the Treasury.
A check for his office’s surplus operating budget.
Last year he returned $500,000, also on a steroid injected check, and this year’s surplus came to $600,000, or 20% of his budget.
I could be wrong, but I assume the Treasury accepts normal sized checks as well.
Can probably just as easily wire the money too.
Or, drop 600,000 $1 bills from a plane flying across Kentucky. Straight to the people, crop duster style.
Whatever brings the most cameras I guess.
According to CNN, he noted at an event, ‘we watch every purchase. We watch what computers we buy, what paper we buy, the ink cartridges. We treat the money like it’s our money, or your money, and we look at every expenditure.”
He added on his website, ‘I ran to stop the reckless spending, and I pledged to the people of Kentucky that I would work to keep their hard-earned money out of the hands of Washington bureaucrats whose irresponsible spending has threatened our country’s economic health.”
Joining him in the practice of political penny pinching was Mick Mulvaney, a Republican Congressman from South Carolina, who returned $160,000, or 12%, of his budget.
In a statement on his little slice of the internet, he said, ‘at a time when Americans are tightening their budgets, I have made an effort to do the same with my Congressional office budget. My office has found ways to save money while continuing to provide necessary services to the constituents of the Fifth District. As requested when I returned over $160,000 last year, I ask that Speaker Boehner use this money to pay down the national debt.’
Leading by example this certainly is.
Is it unique though?
Novel in any way?
Republican$ ju$t $howing them Democrat$ how to cut that da$tardly $pending?
Not really.
Politico reported early last year that all this returning of funds is pretty commonplace, ‘Senate Republicans returned about 11.7 percent of their $269 million in available office funds and Democrats returned about 8.3 percent of their budgeted amount of $390 million over the past two years (2009 and 2010).’
I’m not complaining.
So Rand found a way to get some free media play to further endear himself to his base as well as snag some new fans who probably don’t realize this is actually normal and that Paul isn’t even the best at returning money.
Good on him.
That kind of media driven tomfoolery will suit him well in a potential 2016 presidential bid.
Of course, this ‘leading by example’, in the fiscal sense, doesn’t amount to much considering the country is now over $16.5 trillion in debt and has managed to run a deficit north of a trillion dollars for 4 straight years now.
A hat trick (+1) of sending out a trillion more than is taken in. That’s the ultimate in leading by (awful) example.
More at CNN, CNN Money, The Hill, The Daily Caller and Politico