ABSTRACT
U.S. senator and occasional presidential candidate Rand Paul is a self-proclaimed libertarian and one of the leaders of the new Tea Party movement in American politics, whose primary aim is to reduce taxes and government spending, thereby reducing the role of government programs in individual’s lives. For many Tea Party activists, government programs represent a great threat to individual liberty. The first budget that Paul introduced in 2011 cut all foreign aid to all countries. Subsequent proposed budgets involved significant if not full reductions in foreign aid, from $37 billion annually to $5 billion. (He eventually preserved some foreign assistance after realizing that many people objected to cutting aid to US allies such as Israel, but maintained that over time it would be a good thing to eliminate all such assistance.) For Paul and his supporters, there is no moral duty to support poverty alleviation abroad. Indeed, providing foreign assistance is sometimes argued to be a violation of the moral rights of domestic taxpayers.
