Paul, Tea Party Slam 'Robin Hood'

Rand Paul called for more "Adam Smith" and less "Robin Hood" as he gave the Tea Party's response to President Obama's State of the Union. "Government is the problem," the Kentucky senator said, calling for drastic spending cuts. Sequestration's automatic cuts aren't enough, he said: "Few people understand that the sequester doesn’t even cut any spending. It just slows the rate of growth ... Only in Washington could an increase of $7 trillion in spending over a decade be called a cut."

He called for an amendment requiring a balanced budget, and said that if lawmakers "won't listen ... we should limit their terms," Politico reports. In the speech, which he called an "extra" to Marco Rubio's GOP response, he also discussed gun control—"we will not let the liberals tread on the Second Amendment"—and drone attacks on US citizens. "We cannot and will not allow any president to act as if he were a king," he said. As to immigration: "We are the party that embraces hard work and ingenuity," he said. "Therefore we must be the party that embraces the immigrant who wants to come to America for a better future." (More Rand Paul stories.)