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CHARLESTON, S.C. As Congress races toward its long summer recess, Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) is confident that hell get a vote to bar any taxpayer funds going to Planned Parenthood.

Theres a nationwide movement that weve been leading, Paul said in an interview, after participating in a town hall with military veterans. We will probably send a million emails out on this subject. I think by motivating the grassroots, theres a very good chance well get a vote on this.

Pauls confidence came just a day after a special Sunday session of the Senate seemed to put the lid on any wishlist conservative amendment. July has been a most cruel month for that sort of thing, and especially cruel to Pauls presidential rival Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas). After Cruz accused Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of a flat-out lie to save the Export-Import Bank from phasing out, he watched colleagues line up against him and with the leader.

For Republicans, the politics of abortion are far less fraught than the politics of a New Deal-era investment bank thats backed by the Chamber of Commerce. The release of undercover interviews with Planned Parenthood executives, in which they antiseptically discuss the sale of fetal body parts, has elevated the cause of defunding the group. And Paul has a much better relationship than Cruz with McConnell, his state's senior senator.

Paul said he didn't think his amendment would happen on the highway bill, but that he'd submitted a discharge petition that is a separate request for a new bill. "I think theres a very good chance thats going to happen, he said.

Planned Parenthoods defenders have accused Republicans of misrepresenting what the organization does, pointing out that it is illegal for taxpayer funds to pay for abortion. Paul said it was unclear whether the law was being followed.

I think it should be investigated, he said. The problem here really is not just whether its illegal to buy and sell the organs, but whether the taxpayer dollars should be going to a group that is sort of manipulating and turning the baby around to get access to organs. I think most people were horrified by them.

That raised another question: Whether it should be legal, at all, for the bodies of aborted fetuses to be sold for science. I think that there should not be any financial incentives to get an abortion, said Paul. Now, they would argue that it just covers the cost, but any time money changes hands even if its to a nonprofit group that is a real question. Really, we probably shouldnt be doing research on these babies, because you would hate to think there is any kind of incentive for that to occur.

"Donating tissue when you die is an incredibly noble thing. Ive worked with donated corneas to give people back vision. But this baby really didnt have a choice. Some people are horrified by the idea of having factories where youd grow babies for their body parts. Will technology allow that? Technology probably almost already does allow that. But should a civilized society allow that? I dont think so, he said.

The battle to defund Planned Parenthood has become a major focus of Americas anti-abortion movement. Paul said he did not see the need to go further and challenge Title X funding for family planning.

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Rand Paul says the GOP can defund Planned Parenthood ...

Rand Paul announced his presidential run on April 7, 2015.[1][2] See also: Rand Paul

Rand Paul is a Republican candidate for the office of President of the United States in 2016.

Paul is a Republican member of the U.S. Senate from the state of Kentucky. Prior to being elected to Congress in 2010, Paul worked as an ophthalmologist.[3]

Previously, on December 8, 2013, Paul said that his family would determine whether or not he would run for president, claiming, "The thought has crossed my mind ... I'm not ready to make a decision yet."[5] Former Texas Rep. Ron Paul (R), Rand Paul's father, ran for the presidency three times, including once as a Libertarian in 1988.[6] There have been 16 U.S. senators elected to the presidency, including President Barack Obama (D).[7]

In recent candidate rankings, Crowdpac ranked Paul as a 10+C (C being conservative) on a scale ranging from 10L to 10C, making him the most conservative Republican presidential candidate. Paul received a grade of a "B-/82" from the Leadership Project for America PAC, a right-leaning political action committee.

The following is a list of key staff and advisors for Rand Paul's campaign:

USA FREEDOM Act of 2015 On June 2, 2015, the Senate passed HR 2048 - the Uniting and Strengthening America by Fulfilling Rights and Ensuring Effective Discipline Over Monitoring Act of 2015 or the USA FREEDOM Act of 2015 by a vote of 67-32. The legislation revised HR 3199 - the USA PATRIOT Improvement and Reauthorization Act of 2005 by terminating the bulk collection of metadata under Sec. 215 of the act, increasing transparency of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court and requiring the use of "a specific selection term as the basis for national security letters that request information from wire or electronic communication service providers, financial institutions, or consumer reporting agencies." Paul voted with 29 Republicans, one Democrat and one independent against the legislation. It became law on June 2, 2015.[172][173]

On The Issues conducts a VoteMatch analysis of elected officials based on 20 issue areas. Rather than relying on incumbents to complete the quiz themselves, the VoteMatch analysis is conducted using voting records, statements to the media, debate transcripts or citations from books authored by or about the candidate.[282]

The table below contains the results of analysis compiled by staff at On The Issues.

This section displays the most recent stories in a Google news search for the term Rand + Paul + 2016

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Rand Paul presidential campaign, 2016 - Ballotpedia

Tom Loftus, The (Louisville) Courier-Journal 4:06 p.m. EDT July 22, 2015

Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., speaks during a campaign event on June 29, 2015, in Mesquite, Nev.(Photo: John Locher, AP)

LOUISVILLE Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul resorted to political pyrotechnics this week to attract attention to his White House bid.

"I'm trying to kill the tax code," Paul says, as a video released by his campaign and launched on Fox News shows him destroying the 70,000-page federal tax code with a chain saw and feeding it into a wood chipper.

The display was meant to highlight his plan to simplify and reduce the income tax, which was released last month but soon overshadowed in a crowded primary field currently dominated by the bombastic appeals to anti-government Republicans of real estate billionaire Donald Trump.

The eye-catching video came at a time when some experts suggest that, though still at an early stage, Paul's campaign has drifted, with the man labeled by Time last October as "The Most Interesting Man in American Politics" growing, well, a bit dull.

"Rand Paul is not as prominent as I expected him to be," said Larry Sabato, director of the University of Virginia Center for Politics.

"When he first got in, and even before that, he was very prominent," Sabato said. "Now, much less so. It's still very early, but he needs to get some gas in the tank."

ONPOLITICS

Rand Paul raises $6.9 million for presidential campaign

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Rand Paul looks to revive stagnant campaign

Story highlights Rand Paul has avoided the spotlight on the presidential trail this summer Paul has campaigned in more than 10 states in recent months

Instead of dominating national headlines this summer by picking fights with high-profile competitors or scrambling to secure the best real estate at every Republican Party cattle call, Rand Paul has been working the campaign trail quietly, taking a deliberate approach to national media and choosing his battles carefully.

While Donald Trump has sucked up much of the media's gaze, the Kentucky senator's recent efforts have not stood out like they once did.

It's not because he stopped campaigning. In fact, Paul has spent the summer traveling to California, Nevada, New Hampshire, Iowa, Colorado, Michigan, Texas, Missouri, Maryland, Kentucky and Tennessee. Over the next 10 days, he will hit the big three early voting states of New Hampshire, Iowa and South Carolina.

In that time, Paul has also reacted to major news events: He called for cutting off funds for Planned Parenthood and from cities that harbor undocumented immigrants. He made a renewed push to increased scrutiny on migrants from nations with hotbeds of Islamic militancy. But faced with so much competition from other candidates clamoring for air time, Paul has struggled to break out.

Ted Cruz super PAC plan to win the presidency

Paul's campaign, while conceding that he has been deliberate about what he chooses to discuss and events he attends, says the media is partially to blame.

"Y'all may be too busy covering the newest thing each week to have noticed,but we are running hard, running strong, and running all over the country," Paul strategist Doug Stafford told CNN. "It's a marathon, not a sprint."

The media, as it often can be, is indeed part of the story. National news outlets, including CNN, have poured coverage on Trump at such a rate that lesser candidates have learned they their best chance for getting air time is to attack or challenge him. But Paul has somehow avoided Trump's hot fire.

And that's all the more notable because Paul is traditionally not one to avoid a fight.

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Where is Rand Paul? - CNNPolitics.com

Sen. Rand Paul continued to drive momentum for criminal justice reform Wednesday, saying the greatest barrier to jobs and voting in the U.S. is a criminal record.

If we want to help people work and help people vote, weve got to fix the overcriminalization problem, Paul said before an intimate crowd during the Bipartisan Summit on Fair Justice hosted by the Coalition for Public Safety.

The Republican presidential hopeful advocated following Californias lead in dropping minor nonviolent felonies to misdemeanors so voting and employment opportunities are preserved for those who commit minor crimes.

Paul said the reduction also freed prison space in the states overcrowded system, allowing federal prosecutors to effectively detain violent felons for their entire sentences.

Overcrowding is the result of an explosion in the federal prison population since the 1980s, when politicians dropped a tsunami of harsh sentencing laws on the criminal justice system in a sweeping crime and drug crackdown.

The consequence was an 800 percent increase in the prison population over the past 30 years, with more than 208,000 people locked in federal prisons of which half are serving for nonviolent drug offenses.

Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates said during the event these numbers are driven largely by drug laws encompassing mandatory minimums that are not calibrated to match the crime to the sentence. She said this complicates the ability to distinguish punishment between a cartel leader and a low-level drug offender, eliciting steep human and financial costs.

The U.S. spends $80 billion a year on jails and prisons, a number that consumes one-third of the Department of Justices entire budget. Yates said this swallows funds that could be allocated to state and local law enforcement along with prevention and reentry programs in prisons.

Every dollar we spend on incarcerating the nonviolent, low-level drug offenders is a dollar that we cant spend on investigating and prosecuting the threats that we face today, she said.

Paul noted the emergence of 10 separate bipartisan bills in the Senate seeking reform to the criminal justice system, underscoring a growing movement to push something through the usually gridlocked Congress.

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Rand Paul: 'We've Got to Fix the Overcriminalization Problem'