What is Rand Paul's favorite way to destroy the tax code?
Of all the ways he destroyed the U.S. tax code in a recent video, Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul said Wednesday, "I think my favorite had to be the chainsaw."
"You know, we have a 70,000-page tax code, and I think it's chasing American jobs overseas, chasing American companies overseas," he said in an interview with CBSN. "So yeah, I think a lot of people would like to kill the tax code."
Paul explained the motivation behind the video, which his campaign released Tuesday. "You know how it is -- a lot of young people don't watch the news anymore," he said. "We wanted to give them something with a little bit of entertainment value so maybe they'd spread it around to their friends."
Paul, a GOP presidential candidate who has occasionally feuded with his party's national security hawks, also discussed why he opposes the recent nuclear agreement with Iran.
"I've always been in favor of negotiations as opposed to war, if those are our choices. I think negotiation is better," he said. "I did vote for the sanctions against Iran. And I was glad that we brought them to the negotiating table. But I think that we need to negotiate from a position of strength. And I think that Iran's history of duplicity, Iran's history of not adhering to international agreements, and their history of gamesmanship when it comes to international agreements should have allowed us to know that maybe we should have released the sanctions in a gradual fashion or a stepwise fashion and shown consistent compliance over a longer period of time."
"Now we're going to show initial compliance, but then the wording of the agreement says that we will simultaneously then release the vast majority of the sanctions," Paul continued. "President Obama says we could snap them back on, but there's also some concern that any deals that are made during the time period in which the sanctions are not in place cannot have sanctions placed on them. ... Replacing sanctions if Iran is not compliant will be very difficult difficult. So for that constellation of reasons I end up saying, you know what, I would have continued the interim agreement, but I would have tried to get a better deal than what we ended up getting."
Paul was asked about recent polls that show him in the middle of the crowded GOP primary pack, but he suggested he isn't concerned, noting the polls that have shown him in a strong general election position against Hillary Clinton, the Democratic frontrunner.
He also predicted the GOP primary "could go on longer than many people have seen in the past," and he argued former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, despite his formidable fundraising, has not been able to attain an air of inevitability.
Paul suggested his own fundraising, powered largely by online small dollar donations, will allow him to go the long haul when others might falter.