MLive - Presidential Candidate Rand Paul Talks Tax Reform, Criminal Justice on First Michigan Stop

News Article

By Ian Thibodeau

A small crowd gathered on the front lawn of a home in Highland Park to hear from presidential hopeful and U.S. Senator Rand Paul Friday afternoon.

Appearing with a handful of local elected officials, including Democratic Highland Park Mayor DeAndre Windom, and business leaders, Paul delivered a short outline of his political strategy during his "Unleash the American Dream" event.

The Republican candidate said Friday that one of the problems with Washington, D.C., is that Republicans and Democrats are always fighting.

"We never get the solutions, because we don't have conversation," Paul said. "I came here, really, not to tell the mayor how to do his job, but to learn more about your city. ... The thing I think we all have to acknowledge is we face a lot of problems in our country ... so we need to figure out what works and what doesn't work."

Paul said he came to Highland Park to learn about the community's specific problems.

"I don't think the solutions have to have a party name or a party label on them. We can still figure out solutions regardless of party."

Last year, the state -- for the second time -- determined Highland Park to be in financial emergency. The city, plopped in the middle of Detroit, was home to Ford's first moving assembly line.

It officially became a city in 1917.

Highland Park has about 10,400 residents, a fraction of which live in one of the 25 homes built by the Michigan Housing Authority on a portion of Midland Street.

The new home where Paul spoke from the porch was part of a recent revitalization effort.

When asked how he felt about subsidized housing, Paul said that should be handled on a local level.

Tax money doesn't need to be going straight to Washington, he said.

"While Highland Park might be struggling, Washington, D.C., is not," Paul said. The homes in the nation's capitol keep getting bigger, in fact.

Paul stressed the idea of encouraging people to "move back" through what he called economic freedom zones.

"One of the things that is an encouragement or a discouragement is how high the federal taxes are," he said. "It's hard to cut your state taxes much lower, or your city taxes ... some of your federal money, you have to figure ... maybe we're not always getting back what we really would like."

The economic freedom zones would dramatically lower federal taxes in areas of high poverty and low economic growth to encourage businesses -- and eventually people -- to populate those areas.

"People will move based on incentives," he said, and it's easier to provide those tax breaks at the federal level than the local level.

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