Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), a potential 2016 GOP presidential candidate, said he’d be happy to work with the front-runner for the Democratic nomination, Hillary Clinton, on criminal justice reform.
“I have six different bills to reform the criminal justice system and we would welcome Hillary Clinton if she would like to come and help us promote this agenda,” he said in a Thursday interview on CNN. “I’ve been working with Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.), [Senate Majority Leader] Harry Reid (D-Nev.) and other Democrats, and if she wants to join and help to support these bills I’m supporting on criminal justice, we would welcome her.”
Paul generally has few good things to say about Clinton. He refers to U.S. military action in Libya as “Hillary’s war” and has questioned whether her husband, former President Bill Clinton, is a sexual predator.
{mosads}But a grand jury decision on Wednesday to not indict a white police officer in the death of a black New Yorker during an arrest has inflamed racial tensions and has some lawmakers calling for reforms.
In a speech in Boston to the Massachusetts Conference for Women on Thursday, Clinton said it’s time for the nation to address an out-of-balance criminal justice system.
“We have allowed our criminal justice system to get out of balance,” she said. “We can only hope that these tragedies give us the opportunity to come together as a nation to find our balance.”
Paul’s primary criminal justice reform push is to end the war on drugs, but this week he also talked about how politicians incentivize police to harass citizens through burdensome taxes, which can provoke situations like the one that ended in the death of Eric Garner.
Garner was allegedly selling loose cigarettes and the police approached him for circumventing tax laws in the state.
“Some politician put a tax of $5.85 on a pack of cigarettes … then, some politician also had to direct the police to arrest people for selling loose cigarettes,” Paul said on MSNBC on Wednesday. “For someone to die over breaking that law, there really is no excuse for it. But I do blame politicians. We put our police in a difficult situation with bad laws.”
Paul said Thursday it was doubtful Clinton would get on board with his reforms.
“I think she needs to have more concrete proposals, we have quite a few,” he said. “We think the War on Drugs has gone too far. We think many of these things could be addressed as misdemeanors not felonies, but we also think that taxing cigarettes $5.85 criminalizes otherwise law abiding people. So the question is specifically to her, would she try to make the sale of cigarettes not such a burdensome thing that it drives people into the black market? My guess is her notion of the busy-body notion of government is that she wouldn’t support reducing taxes.”