Rand Paul facts for kids

Quick facts for kids Rand Paul
Official portrait, 2022
United States Senator from Kentucky
Incumbent
Assumed office January 3, 2011 Serving with Mitch McConnell
Preceded by	Jim Bunning
Ranking Member of the Senate Homeland Security Committee
Incumbent
Assumed office January 3, 2023
Preceded by	Rob Portman
Ranking Member of the Senate Small Business Committee
In office February 3, 2021 – January 3, 2023
Preceded by	Ben Cardin
Succeeded by	Joni Ernst
Personal details
Born	Randal Howard Paul (1963-01-07) January 7, 1963 (age 61) Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, U.S.
Political party	Republican
Spouse	Kelley Ashby ​ (m. 1990)​
Children	3
Relatives	Ron Paul (father)
Education	Baylor University Duke University (MD)
Signature

Randal Howard Paul (born January 7, 1963) is an American politician serving as the junior United States senator from Kentucky since 2011. A member of the Republican Party, he is a son of former three-time presidential candidate and 12-term U.S. representative from Texas, Ron Paul. Paul describes himself as a constitutional conservative and supporter of the Tea Party movement.

Early life

Randal Howard Paul was born on January 7, 1963, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, to Carol (née Wells) and Ron Paul, who is also a politician and physician. The middle child of five, his siblings are Ronald "Ronnie" Paul Jr., Lori Paul Pyeatt, Robert Paul, and Joy Paul LeBlanc.

Paul was baptized in the Episcopal Church and identified as a practicing Christian as a teenager.

Despite his father's libertarian views and strong support for individual rights, the novelist Ayn Rand was not the inspiration for his first name. Growing up, he went by "Randy", but his wife shortened it to "Rand."

The Paul family moved to Lake Jackson, Texas in 1968, where he was reared and where his father began a medical practice and for a period of time was the only obstetrician in Brazoria County.

When Rand was 13, his father Ron Paul was elected to the United States House of Representatives. That same year, Paul attended the 1976 Republican National Convention, where his father headed Ronald Reagan's Texas delegation. The younger Paul spent several summer vacations interning in his father's congressional office. In his teenage years, Paul studied the Austrian economists that his father respected, as well as the writings of Objectivist philosopher Ayn Rand. Paul went to Brazoswood High School and was on the swimming team and played defensive back on the football team.

Paul attended Baylor University from fall 1981 to summer 1984 and was enrolled in the honors program. During the time he spent at Baylor, he completed his pre-med requirements in two and a half years, was involved in the swim team and the Young Conservatives of Texas and was a member of a tongue-in-cheek secret organization, the NoZe Brotherhood, known for its irreverent humor. He regularly contributed to The Baylor Lariat student newspaper. Paul left Baylor without completing his baccalaureate degree, when he was accepted into his father's alma mater, the Duke University School of Medicine, which, at the time, did not require an undergraduate degree for admission to its graduate school. He earned an M.D. degree in 1988 and completed his residency in 1993.

Medical career

After completing his residency in ophthalmology, Paul moved to Bowling Green, Kentucky, where he has been an "active, licensed physician" since 1993. He worked for Downing McPeak Vision Centers for five years. In 1998, he joined a private medical group practice, the Graves Gilbert Clinic, in Bowling Green, for 10 years. In 2008, Paul formed his own private practice across the street from John Downing, his former employer at Downing McPeak. After his election to the U.S. Senate, he merged his practice with Downing's medical practice.

His medical work has been praised by Downing and he has medical privileges at two Bowling Green hospitals. In April 2020, after recovering from COVID-19, Paul began volunteering at a hospital in Bowling Green, assisting them in their response to the COVID-19 pandemic in Kentucky.

Paul specializes in cataract and glaucoma surgeries, LASIK procedures, and corneal transplants. As a member of the Bowling Green Noon Lions Club, Paul founded the Southern Kentucky Lions Eye Clinic in 2009 to help provide eye surgery and exams for those who cannot afford to pay. Paul won the Melvin Jones Fellow Award for Dedicated Humanitarian Services from the Lions Club International Foundation for his work establishing the Southern Kentucky Lions Eye Clinic.

National Board of Ophthalmology

In 1995, Paul was certified to practice by the American Board of Ophthalmology (ABO). Three years earlier, the ABO had changed its certification program, which previously awarded lifetime certifications, and required ophthalmologists to recertify every 10 years, while those who had already been given lifetime certification were not required to recertify. Paul felt this was unfair and campaigned to have all ophthalmologists recertify every ten years.

In 1999, he incorporated the National Board of Ophthalmology (NBO) to offer an alternative certification system, at a cost substantially lower than that of the ABO. Board members were Paul, his wife, and his father-in-law. His father-in-law, the board's secretary, stated "I never did go to any meetings ... There was really nothing involved. It was more just a title than anything else, for me". By Paul's estimate, about 50 or 60 doctors were certified by the NBO. The NBO was not accepted as an accrediting entity by organizations such as the American Board of Medical Specialties, and its certification was considered invalid by many hospitals and insurance companies. Paul did not file the required paperwork with the Kentucky Secretary of State's office for the NBO's renewal to operate in 2000. He recreated the board in 2005, but it was again dissolved in 2011.

Paul maintained his own ABO certification from 1995 to 2005. Specialty certification does not affect physician licensure, and Paul's medical license has been valid continuously, with no board actions, since June 1993.

Political activism

Paul was head of the local chapter of the Young Conservatives of Texas during his time at Baylor University. In 1984, Paul took a semester off to aid his father's campaign in the 1984 United States Senate election in Texas, which was eventually lost to fellow Representative Phil Gramm.

While attending Duke University School of Medicine, Paul volunteered for his father's 1988 Libertarian presidential campaign.

In response to the breaking of President Bush's promise not to raise taxes, Paul founded the North Carolina Taxpayers Union in 1991. In 1994, Paul founded the anti-tax organization Kentucky Taxpayers United (KTU), and was chair of the organization from its inception. He has often cited his involvement with KTU as the foundation of his involvement with state politics. The group examined Kentucky legislators' records on taxation and spending and encouraged politicians to publicly pledge to vote uniformly against tax increases.

Paul managed his father's successful 1996 congressional campaign, in which the elder Paul returned to the House after a twelve-year absence. The elder Paul defeated incumbent Democrat-turned-Republican Greg Laughlin in the Republican primary, despite Laughlin's support from the NRCC and Republican leaders such as Newt Gingrich and George W. Bush.

Paul is co-author of a book entitled The Tea Party Goes to Washington (2011) and also the author of Government Bullies: How Everyday Americans Are Being Harassed, Abused, and Imprisoned by the Feds (2012). Paul was included in Time magazine's world's 100 most influential people, for 2013 and 2014. He is also a contributor to Time magazine.

Election to U.S. Senate

Paul was elected to the Senate in 2010. He was re-elected to a second term in 2016, and won a third term in 2022.

Committee assignments

• Committee on Foreign Relations
  • Subcommittee on Near East, South Asia, Central Asia and Counterterrorism
  • Subcommittee on Europe and Regional Security Cooperation
  • Subcommittee on Multilateral International Development, Multilateral Institutions, and International Economic, Energy and Environmental Policy
  • Subcommittee on State Department and USAID Management, International Operations and Bilateral International Development
• Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions
  • Subcommittee on Children and Families (chairman)
  • Subcommittee on Employment and Workplace Safety
• Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs
  • Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations
  • Subcommittee on Emergency Management, Intergovernmental Relations, and the District of Columbia (chairman)
• Committee on Small Business and Entrepreneurship (Ranking Member)

On February 3, 2021, Paul was named a ranking member of the Small Business and Entrepreneurship Committee.

Caucuses

• Senate Republican Conference

2016 presidential campaign

Background

Paul speaking at the 2013 Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in National Harbor, Maryland, on March 14, 2013

Paul speaking at a campaign rally in Des Moines, Iowa, October 2015

Paul was considered a potential candidate for the Republican nomination for the presidency of the United States since at least January 2013. He delivered the Tea Party response to President Barack Obama's State of the Union address on February 13, 2013, while Marco Rubio gave the official Republican response. This prompted some pundits to call that date the start of the 2016 Republican primaries. That year, he spoke at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington D.C., where he won the 2016 presidential straw poll. Paul went on to win the straw poll for the next two years as well, leading to some considering Paul to be a front runner for the nomination, although CPAC attendees are typically considered younger and more libertarian-minded than average Republican voters.

In a speech at the GOP Freedom Summit in April 2014, Paul insisted that the GOP has to broaden its appeal in order to grow as a party. To do so, he said it cannot be the party of "fat cats, rich people and Wall Street" and that the conservative movement has never been about rich people or privilege, "we are the middle class", he said. Paul also said that conservatives must present a message of justice and concern for the unemployed and be against government surveillance to attract new people to the movement, including the young, Hispanics, and black voters.

During the 2014 election, Paul launched a social media campaign titled "Hillary's Losers" which was meant to highlight many of the Democratic candidates that lost their bids for the U.S. Senate despite endorsements from Hillary Clinton. Clinton was also a candidate for President and eventually won the Democratic Party's nomination, going on to lose to Donald Trump in the general election.

Paul began to assemble his campaign team, setting up campaign offices and hiring his campaign manager in the beginning of 2015, fueling speculation that he was preparing to enter the presidential race. Paul officially announced his presidential candidacy on April 7, 2015. Within a day of his announcement, Paul raised $1 million.

Senate re-election

In April 2011, Paul filed to run for re-election to his Senate seat in 2016. Had he become the Republican presidential (or vice-presidential) nominee, state law would prohibit him from simultaneously running for re-election. In March 2014, the Republican-controlled Kentucky Senate passed a bill that would allow Paul to run for both offices, but the Democratic-controlled Kentucky House of Representatives declined to take it up.

Paul spent his own campaign money in the 2014 legislative elections, helping Republican candidates for the State House in the hopes of flipping the chamber, thus allowing the legislature to pass the bill (Democratic Governor Steve Beshear's veto can be overridden with a simple majority). However, the Democrats retained their 54–46 majority in the State House. Paul has since given his support to the idea that the Kentucky Republican Party could decide to hold a caucus rather than a primary, potentially giving Paul more time to decide whether he should run for U.S. Senator or continue a potential bid for president.

Exit from presidential campaign

Paul announced the suspension of his presidential campaign on February 3, 2016, shortly after the Iowa caucus, where he finished in fifth place.

Political positions

Immigration

On September 5, 2017, the Trump administration announced the intended rescission of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program. In tweets responding to the act, Paul stated the executive order that created DACA was illegal and congressional bipartisanship was needed to solve or fix the program.

Paul was one of 11 Republicans in 2019 to vote against Trump's demand for "emergency border funding".

LGBTQ+

Prior to the Supreme Court's 2015 decision in Obergefell v. Hodges legalizing same-sex marriage across the United States, Paul held the view that the decision to ban same-sex marriage should be in the hands of states. Following the Court's decision, Paul said in 2015, "While I disagree with Supreme Court's redefinition of marriage, I believe that all Americans have the right to contract. The Constitution is silent on the question of marriage because marriage has always been a local issue. Our founding fathers went to the local courthouse to be married, not to Washington, D.C. I've often said I don't want my guns or my marriage registered in Washington."

Government surveillance

Paul in New Hampshire, August 13, 2015

Paul being interviewed by Jerry Doyle at Liberty Political Action Conference (LPAC) 2011 in Reno, Nevada, September 16, 2011

As a critic of warrantless surveillance of Americans, Paul says "the Fourth Amendment is equally as important as the Second Amendment" and has called for conservatives to more strongly defend Fourth Amendment rights. In 2015 Paul spoke for ten and a half hours on the Senate floor against renewing provisions of the PATRIOT Act that he said were unconstitutional. Paul has called Edward Snowden a "whistleblower" and called for Director of National Intelligence James Clapper to resign for "lying" about the phone metadata program that Snowden exposed. He also filed a class action lawsuit against the Obama administration seeking to end the program. Paul gave a speech at the University of California, Berkeley in 2014 titled "The N.S.A. vs. Your Privacy".

Climate change

Paul has not definitively accepted the scientific consensus on climate change, which has found that global warming is real, progressing, and primarily caused by humans. Paul has said pollution emissions are subject to "onerous regulation." In 2018, Paul called for an investigation of a National Science Foundation grant that went towards educating meteorologists about the science of climate change. Paul said the grant was "not science" but "propagandizing". In a January 2020 tweet, Paul wrote, "Despite climate alarmist predictions, humans will likely survive for hundreds of millions of years into the future. In the meantime, we should begin creating atmospheres on suitable moons or planets."

Animal rights

In 2021, Paul and Senator Cory Booker co-sponsored the FDA Modernization Act 2.0 which eliminated the requirement that drugs in development must use animal testing before commencing human trials. In support of this bill, Paul stated this change would "help end the needless suffering and death of animal test subjects" and will "get safer, more effective drugs to market more quickly by cutting red tape that is not supported by current science." It was signed into law in December 2022.

Disease control

In 2009, Paul was interviewed by conspiracy theorist Alex Jones and suggested mandatory vaccination would be akin to martial law. On February 2, 2015, he told conservative radio host Laura Ingraham regarding vaccinations, that "most of them ought be voluntary".

Paul has spread false claims about the safety and efficacy of the COVID-19 vaccine and other vaccines, once saying, "I've heard of many tragic cases of walking, talking, normal children who wound up with profound mental disorders after vaccines." On February 3, he posted a photograph to Twitter of himself being vaccinated.

On October 10, 2023, Paul published Deception: The Great Covid Cover-Up with publisher Regnery Publishing.

Health care

Paul supports repealing the Affordable Care Act and opposes universal health care, having once equated it to slavery. Paul says he instead favors expanding health savings accounts and providing a $5000 tax credit, allowing health insurance to be sold across state lines, and allowing individuals and small businesses to pool together to purchase insurance. His plan would provide a two-year window during which people with pre-existing conditions could not be denied coverage.

Term limits

In November 2019, Paul signed a pledge to support a constitutional amendment to limit senators to two terms. In 2022, he was elected for his third term in the U.S. Senate; in announcing his run for reelection he said: "I am a fan of term limits. It would take a constitutional amendment, and the term limits would then be for everyone. But I'm not in favor of term limits for some and not others, so I'm not in favor of people self-imposing term limits. I'm a co-sponsor of the constitutional amendment, but I will run again in 2022."

Economic issues

Paul supports a balanced budget amendment to the U.S. constitution which would require Congress to balance the budget annually. He has introduced legislation called the Penny Plan which would reduce federal spending by 1% each year, seeking to balance the budget in 5 years. Paul has opposed efforts to raise the debt ceiling without significant spending cuts.

While running for president in 2016, Paul proposed the "Fair and Flat Tax" plan which he said would "repeal the entire IRS tax code ... and replace it with a low, broad-based tax of 14.5 [percent] on individuals and businesses".

Paul has introduced legislation to audit the Federal Reserve, saying that "We must take a critical look at the Fed's monetary policy decisions, discount window operations, and a host of other things, with a real audit—and not just pay lip-service to the idea of an audit."

Personal life

Paul with his family on the Capitol steps

Paul and his father Ron Paul at an event hosted in their honor at CPAC 2011 in Washington, D.C.

Paul is married to Kelley Paul (née Ashby), a freelance writer. They were married on October 20, 1990, and have three sons, William (born 1992), Duncan, and Robert. William and Duncan attended the University of Kentucky, while Robert attended a private school in the Washington, D.C. area. They reside in Bowling Green, Kentucky. They were previously active members of the Presbyterian church, although more recently have attended a United Methodist church.

Electoral history

Primary elections

See also

In Spanish: Rand Paul para niños

• List of politicians affiliated with the Tea Party movement
• List of United States Congress members killed or wounded in office
• Physicians in the United States Congress
• Republican Party presidential candidates, 2016

Images for kids

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  Paul speaking at a Tea Party rally in Hawesville, Kentucky, on November 21, 2009

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  Paul greeting supporters at Bowman Field in Louisville, Kentucky, on November 1, 2010

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  Paul being sworn in as a senator by Vice President Joe Biden, along with his family, in the Old Senate Chamber in the U.S. Capitol, January 2011

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  Paul speaking during filibuster on the Senate floor on March 6, 2013

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  Paul at the 2019 Turning Point USA Winter Gala at Mar-a-Lago

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  Paul speaking at a Turning Point USA event in 2020

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  Paul speaking with former U.S. congressman Allen West