Now Rand Paul Is In Favor of Big Government

There’s much more. Tom Cotton, the Arkansas senator, voted No on the Sandy package, but pleaded for expeditious federal money a few years later after Arkansas was hit by floods. Four House Republicans from Colorado voted No on the Sandy package, but a pleaded for socialist help a few months later when Colorado was hit by floods. In 2011, the two Republican senators from Oklahoma voted No on the Sandy package and in 2011 they tried to cut the Federal Emergency Management Agency budget – only to pull a miracle switcheroo in 2013 when Oklahoma was hit by tornadoes.

One of those senators, Tom Coburn, told his constituents: “As the ranking member of the committee that oversees FEMA, I can assure Oklahomans that any and all available aid will be delivered without delay.”

So Rand Paul is merely one rotten egg in the basket of deplorables. Nevertheless, he was still a committed scrooge as recently as last month. When Biden’s infrastructure package reached the Senate floor – with its $47 billion outlay to combat climate change; with its $6.8 billion for FEMA – Paul again voted No. How fortunate for his benighted citizens of Kentucky that he was powerless to stop its historic passage.

And how fortunate Kentuckians are that Paul’s hypocrisy has been trumped by Biden’s sense of responsibility. The president has already approved massive federal relief aid with all deliberate speed – without fuming that the state’s red electorate had voted against him, without ranting that the state’s two red senators were horrible people or whatever, without offering to throw paper towels, without telling Kentuckians that maybe the tornadoes would’ve never happened if they’d bothered to rake their forests.

That’s called governing.

Dick Polman, a veteran national political columnist based in Philadelphia and a Writer in Residence at the University of Pennsylvania, writes at DickPolman.net. Email him at dickpolman7@gmail.com