Inaction. Is it within the onstitution . He is frustrated with the gridlock be he misunderstands the checks and balances and separation of power we have in our republic. Our fathers did not say it is going to be really easy to pass that. They said youre going to have to work. When government is divided, it you cannot say if you do not let my policies i will do them anyway. Some of the people that our Founding Fathers referred to wrote about this. They said if the executive attempts to become the legislative branch, you will have a form of tyranny. It will not be checks and balances. With every fire of my being i am opposed to letting him do whatever he wants with his pen and his phone. Im not opposed to him coming to s and talking. I went to the white house through weeks ago to talk about things we could do for poverty. There could be some common ground. He will not get there. Where are the checks when it comes to congress and these executive orders . President had been using executive order to the detriment of the checks and balances. I have objected to both republicans and democrat president s overusing the executive order. Are there reasons to have executive orders . Yes. To execute legislation but not to write legislation. Even president bush but in the habit of signing statements where he was interpreting the legislation. I was not a big fan of that either. These things need to be played out. I am in favor of a stronger congress and more checks and balances, not less. One of the issues that you have been most deeply involved in nsa intelligence gathering reform. Im wondering what your senses of where that process is right now in the Judiciary Committee and how likely there will be meaningful reform. The question is meaningful reform. My fear is that it may be windowdressing. It is like when the president came forward with his speech and talked about how he was concerned with balancing the needs and privacy of americans. He went on to say hes going to keep collecting all of our wreck its. I think they include your phone record. I think they include your text messages. Our emails. I think in all likelihood, theyre probably collecting your credit card statement as well. I do not know all of that. Think about your credit card records. Think about what people can know about you that might be on your visa bill. Where the germane, whether you smoke, whether you gamble. To see a doctor, do you see a psychiatrist . You can tell a lot about a person by their visa bill. That is personal information. Unless youre specifically named in the warrant, nobody should be looking at that. I imagine you would say it is unlikely that there is going to be something that you could support. Do you think that there are options available to you to elevate this . To make it into a larger cause . I think there still is a possibility. E have a good Bipartisan Coalition. Mark udall has supported restraints on the nsa. Blumenthal as well. There is a Bipartisan Coalition that could form on this. I am afraid that some of the people, particularly coming from the hierarchy of the Intelligence Committee, want to say it is not spying anyway. These are metadata. They do not really matter. I am afraid we may not get what we want to read it is also a support system. I am much more encouraged and the court system. The attorneys i have talked to says that this defies the Fourth Amendment. If you are saying a single court order or warts can apply to millions of peoples phone records that it goes against what the Fourth Amendment indicates is our protection. I think that has a really good chance. My attorneys tell me from watching and listening to the Supreme Court justices, they think there are at least five the indicated that the smith versus maryland case does not tell the nsa that they can collect everybodys phone records. I think this there is a very good chance the Supreme Court will expand the purview of the Fourth Amendment as corollary to hat. I wanted to get immigration. Let me follow up on a couple of things you just said. You talked about the Intelligence Committee. There is a split there. The leadership of the Intelligence Committee seems much more devoted to defending the nsa program as opposed to this coalition out there. Why is there that split . What do the intelligence ommittee folks know . I think you have a select group of people that are in the hierarchy of these committees. They feel they are in the programs. They are consulted. They get more information. The rest of us are left often with very little knowledge of these. Many, including congressman sensenbrenner, were surprised with the patriot act. He was a supporter. It is been described as one of the coauthors of the patriot act. He is offended at what they are saying the patriot act means. There needs to be some pushback. It is the fox guarding the hen house. That is why the president cannot really be correct or allowed to do what he is saying. He just goes to hire some more attorneys for the nsa. That is not the way it works. Due process requires and at the serial relationship. That is why my nsa reforms would allow you to repeal a court order. If they say give us all your phone records of they should be able to appeal that to a public court, the Supreme Court. I do not think a secret court should ever be deciding the constitutionality of a Fourth Amendment case in secret. That goes against everything our country was founded upon. That does raise one other issue. A number of the president s and the question of when somebody has standing to be able to challenge a president ial executive order and whether a senator has that standing, are you going to challenge it based on your own communications . You make a good point. What has happened in the past people have said i think theyre spying on me. We have no evidence that they were spying. They said prove it. They would not give us any information. Now with the revelations that come from Edward Snowden, we know theyre spying on us. If you have a verizon or at t phone, you know the government has your records. We have had at least one District Court decision come out of d. C. Were they said you have standing. We think this is unconstitutional. We think we have a great chance on the standing argument. There are other cases, too, that i have met with and understand from Edward Snowdens email provider. His entire company was shut down. He has a grievance that he lost his company because they did not want just his email. They wanted the Encryption Keys and they wanted all of his customers. He was selling a service that was a confidential email service. That is why you subscribed to it. They destroyed his business model. I think he will get into court. They may already be. I think is well also go to the Supreme Court as well. In some circles Edward Snowden is being described as a hero. How would you describe him . It is besides the point. The Fourth Amendment is a big and important issue. How we came to know about this is not as important as the battle over the Fourth Amendment. That being said, i think history will have to decide. There will be a mixture of opinions. Many will say that he was a whistleblower and that he was acting on noble purposes. The other side will say that you cannot just let anybody reveal national secrets. I have two minds on it. I respect the fact he was trying to reveal something he thought was unconstitutional. His residing in china and in russia, countries that do not respect privacy for any of our bill of rights concerns, somewhat tense that history. History ultimately will have to judge him. We cannot have no laws on revealing secrets. I think there are conflicting things he appeared to me what is clear is the information he has revealed to me is the government is acting in an unconstitutional manner. Should he be allowed back into the u. S. And should the Administration Grant him clemency . I do not know what the legal conclusion needs to be. People who are calling for him to be shot or hung were strung up or whatever they are calling for, i do not think the Death Penalty is appropriate. I think he was acting for a higher cause, whether or not we can allow that to happen without punishment i think is a question others will have to determine. My feeling personally is that probably he and James Clappers should share a cell together. I say that somewhat tongueincheek. You cannot be for the letter of the law and throwing the book at snowden without been saying James Clapper committed perjury and we will let him get off scott free and do nothing. We had to consider applying the law equally. Last year you made a big splash and he said congress should do something. They are hard on this a very hopeful that something getting done. You ended up voting against the senate bill last year. I am curious about two things. First, what changed for you in that . We saw the House Republicans balking about going that far . What changed . Republicans need to pass something before the lection . I never really change my position. I propose an amendment that would have allowed for that. Each year there would be a report in congress would get to vote on the report on whether or not the border is becoming more secure. That allows congress to still have input not just one time but repetitively over whether the borders becoming more secure. I would gradually get work visas for those who want them including those who are already here. I do have sympathy for those who are here. I have sympathy for the fact that 40 of them did try to obey the law. When they got here they came to pick crops and nine dollars and hour. They saw a sign that said if you want to work construction we will pay you 14 an hour. They took that job and became illegal. The senate bill still makes it illegal to go from agricultural jobs to construction jobs. Youre setting yourself up or more illegal immigration. The other thing the senate bill did that i did not like is that it limited the number of all who could come here on a work visa. For the first time now, under the senate bill, we would limit agricultural workers, the ones who come to pick crops, 200,000. I won a bill that expands legal immigration. Everything about the senate bill is with the labor unions. They made a bill that will not ork. I cannot go home to kentucky and say i voted for this and i fixed it. They said all you did was perpetuate it. I am for Immigration Reform. I think my proposals would be bored to the liking of epublicans in the house. Nobody came to me with any compromises. I cannot vote for a bill i did ot think would work. There are many inside and outside Republican Party who argue that if nothing is done to address immigration, the Republican Party is going to write off the whole hispanic vote and eventually wither. The other side of the argument is interesting. Republicans who say if we pass comprehensive Immigration Reform we are going to destroy the party. You are going to have a generation of hispanic voters who are indebted to democrats. O they have a point . You can also look at it and say will democrats destroy their affinity of hispanic voters if they are unwilling to compromise . There are many republicans, i think a majority, if you are for expanding work visas to the 11 million that are here, letting them come out of the shadows, normalizing their existence, making it where they do not have to be fearful to be seen in the daylight, get a legitimate job and pay taxes. It stops short of the citizenship question. Democrats are unwilling to compromise. Why werent you at least go halfway to the republicans and tried to get something passed . Will hispanic voters say i do not like republicans because they do not give us everything you want us . There is a division on this. Most are in favor of trying to normalize the existence for the 11 million here. I think you find it a significant percentage of hispanic voters are not so adamant that they would not try to take something that steps in the right direction. Looking back at your home state, there is a pretty contentious primary going on right now where Mitch Mcconnell is going pretty bareknuckle against his opponent. I heard a lot a republicans complain the think he is been too rough. Do you think this kind of rough olitical play is useful . All i can say is what i am in favor of. There are republicans of all different stripes and flavors and ideologies. I like to see the debate as high a level as we can keep it. It is not always work out that way. That is what i am in favor of. May the best man or woman win. If you look at the issue statements, they essentially mirror many of your own points of view. If you look at the voting record of senator mcconnell, you will find that he is pretty conservative as well. Everybody has to make their own ecision. Ive tried to say you guys will decide. Ive made my position. Am supporting senator mcconnell. I think he is helping to corral all republicans together. He corralled and worked to get all the republicans together on aim amendment. We will see where these late. I think each voter will have to ake their own mind up. I wanted to ask you about Mitch Mcconnells part. Yet some very nice things to say about you back in december when he said that he found to somebody that he could work with, somebody he wanted to get things done. I am more curious but your evaluation of working with senator reid in how you see him dealing with amendments on the floor, how you see the senate right now. How is he running the chamber . I like him as a person. We have had many good conversations. I am trying to figure out a way i can do things with senator reed. To me that means we do not agree on every issue. We try to narrow the issues. I said the same thing to president obama. There are some things we do agree on. Lets try to narrow it to those things. I will give you an example. Both parties worry about jobs going overseas. We worry about our economy. We worry about joblessness and unemployment. One of the things we could do is let american profits from American Companies come back at a lower tax rate. I think it would bring in tax revenue that can be used for infrastructure. It is something that president obama actually agrees with me on. I said lets not try to make up part of some enormous bill on tax reform that will include a thousand moving parts, 900 of which we will disagree on. Lessig the few items like this that there is agreement on. Lets take this work together. We can pass that next week. There are 70 or 80 votes. Lets pass it into something good for the economy is that having these stage vote that we do not have agreement on. I think there is room for agreement. Wanted to switch gears quickly to republican politics, and particularly the spending ebate. They are pushing back on what hey saw as overspending. Wind it up with a budget cut. Have republicans turned the orner . Are republicans moving the other direction . A lot of people do not recognize this came out of a pitched battle where the president said he did not want o negotiate. E got the sequester. They said it was inadequate. They downgraded our debt. The disappointment is something that s p considered to be inadequate two years later. Two years later we abandoned nadequate. I jokingly say what are we going to do . Ask to get to the sequester back . We just give up the sequester. Mixing wonder if there is a seriousness to actually fix the problem. We gave up on the one thing that was reducing spending or the rate of growth of spending. Now they expect theres going to be a pitched battle over the debt ceiling . Why . We just gave it up. All that counts is the next two years. Budget deals over 10 years are a fiction. They are not believable. They never happened. The sequester was a 10 year deal, too. Your home state newspaper points out that you are second in a crowded republican primary if you decide to seek the republican nomination. Youre traveling around the country. Have you talked to your father . Has he given you any advice as to how you go thinking about to run. He said be careful, you could win. That is what he said to my senate race. There are consequences to running for office. You could win. It is a joke. Im concerned about my family being in the spotlight, concerned about the scrutiny. Particularly since the internet, there is without any filter. What is like for your family, what it is likely travel requirements. We are discussing it at home. You will probably not make a decision until after the 2014 elections. It will be a little while. Would you have to give up your senate seat . That is debatable. We will know more. You will be the first to know when we come to a conclusion. Jeremy peters. You said libertarian does not mean libertine. That was an interesting acknowledgment. There are many republicans among the conservative base that are uneasy with some libertarian views. Do you think the Republican Party needs to be somewhat less squeamish about the social issues, adopt a slightly more embracing point of view if it is going to hang on to Younger Voters . Probably were going to have to have a party that is bigger and includes people who isagree. One of the beauties of believing in federalism or believing that certain issues should say at the state level, see if we can agree to disagree. The prevailing mood on marriage and other issues in new york state is quite a bit different in alabama. Where we are now, unless the Supreme Court changes things again, they are allowing states to determine some of these rules. They will be a little bit different from state to state. I think that is a better way to look at it. We agree to disagree. We do not have to agree to the same thing. Is it safe to say if you did run for president that you are looking at the possibility of how you could seek reelection in the u. S. Senate . We will look at that. We have not come to a conclusion yet. I wanted to ask you about your 2014 prediction for the senate. Do you believe the republicans will be able to win the six seats necessary . Will you win more . Will you fall short . Increasingly improving with each week. Right now the disaster that is obamacare gets worse with each week. By summertime, the democrats will be begging us to fix it unless must president obama appoints himself king and keeps doing whatever he wants. By summertime, Insurance Companies will be going to their regulators at the state level. They will have to ask for increases in premiums. Those of us who abide interest obamacare have gotten sticker shock. Wait until next summer when they find out that the model is not working, the Young Healthy people are choosing the penalty rather than buying it. I think in premiums go up astronomically for people. To the president is already playing a game by trying to delay that realization until after the election. I think you will find that out late this summer. You will find out that Insurance Companies are seeking giant increases in premiums for everything. We will then maybe discover as a country that there is no such thing as a free lunch. You cannot provide free health care. It will cost somebody. Those who are working and paying will be paying for a considerable amount. The people who cancer you cannot keep their doctors and those with chronic illness who cannot keep their doctor, the people who like their Family Doctor and cannot keep their doctor, there will be a lot of unhappiness. It will change the election. It sounds you are pretty confident. Is there anything that can stop you from getting the seats . Overconfident and articulating a plan of our own on health care and on other things. I have been discussing our plan for poverty and discussing our plans for health care. Our plan for health care is one of competition and lower premiums. More Health Savings accounts. I think this will be appealing to people. On poverty at think we need to have our own plan. 20 Million People are either unemployed or underemployed in our country. I propose Economic Freedom zones. A different approach could bring jobs to people who have been longterm unemployed. E have better ideas. One of your colleagues said that your comments were infuriating. Your reaction . She needs to remember what she said about bill clinton. She would not want her daughter in the same room with them. They cannot have it both ways. The democrats cannot say we are the great defenders of womens ights and we will defend you against some kind of abusive abbas that uses their position of authority to take advantage of a young woman when the leader of the party is bill clinton he was a perpetrator of that kind of sexual harassment. They cannot have it both ways. I really think that anybody that wants to take money from bill clinton or have a fundraiser has a lot of explaining to do. They should give the money back. If they want to take a position on womens rights, by all means do. You cannot use it to take advantage of young women in the workplace. She paid an 800,000 fine for sexual harassment. He admitted to it in one court case and has been convicted in the public place for the other sexual harassment. Finally, four years in the senate. Is it the job you expected . Sometimes. It can be a tiring job with all of the travel. It is exciting to be in the middle of a body that we have had since the beginning of our republic that debates important constitutional questions. I think there needs to be a voice for those of us who believe in privacy and individual liberty. Sometimes a voice has not been there. Ive been excited. Senator rand paul, thank you for being with us. Thank you