Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY), like most libertarian-leaning conservatives, love to boast about their strict fidelity to the U.S. Constitution.
But it's never entirely clear that they have actually read the nation's founding document.
Paul vowed Thursday during a radio interview with a pro-slavery Iowa broadcaster that, if elected president, he would consider eliminating the U.S. Postal Service to save taxpayers money, reported Right Wing Watch.
“I think the federal government ought to defend us from foreign attack and have a judiciary and, let’s see, I would say the post office, but they screw up the post office, too, so we really don’t even need them for the post office,” Paul said.
The Constitution, in Article 8, Section 7, grants the U.S. Congress the authority to establish a post office and roads to carry mail, and President George Washington appointed the first postmaster general in 1790.
But the strict constitutionalists in the Republican congressional caucus have been trying, somewhat inexplicably, to kill off the U.S. Postal Service by saddling it with the burden of prepaying employee pensions for the next 75 years.
“So I want a government that’s really small,” Paul said. “I would have a country that defends us from foreign attack, a country that sort of keeps the peace and a country that has a judiciary, a legislative branch, but a country where the federal government didn’t do much."