at annual freedom fest conference. one of the speakers here is senator rand paul, senator from kentucky and the author of this book that he party goes to washington. senator, this came out when you were first elected in 2010. it came out in 2011. how would you assess the tea party today and kids influence in washington? ..

>> host: were you even thinking about running for office at that point? >> guest: no. and, in fact, i went to maybe the very first tea party in 2007, december 16, 2007, in boston. they called it a reenactment of the boston tea party. it was also at the time my dad's campaign was just starting to hit national waves x. then it kind of grew, and i went to some other tea parties. the first i went to in kentucky was in 2009, and senator bunning was talking about not running, or other people were talking about him not running. so i showed up, i was at my son's little league baseball game, and i said, i'll take 20 minutes after, -- off, and there were nearly a thousand people there, and that's where i knew something big was going on. >> host: and at that point did you start thinking about elected office? >> guest: no. i was sort of toying with the fact that they were talking about senator bunning not running, and we started talking to reporters say, well, if he

doesn't run, i might. showing up and seeing that big rally to me showed there were enough people like myself, i'd watch the tv news, get unhappy, curse and go about my daily business. but everybody else was doing this, you know? and everybody was becoming unhappy. and the debt was exploding, and the republicans weren't doing the right thing east. either. >> host: a lot of this book, "the tea party goes to washington," is about the 2010 campaign and some of the misrepresentations of who you are. what were some of those examples that you like to point out in here? >>ing well, you know, the tea party, for one, a lot of people characterizes as some rich guys in new york who are funding the tea party. i never met any rich guys from new york when i was part of the tea party. i never -- really the tea party was so decentralized, it was city by city. there's sometimes two tea parties in many one town, and

they don't communicate with each other. so there really is no sort of top-down. this really was a adopt-up movement and a human that really chastised both parties. a lot of us were very unhappy with republicans. when president bush said, oh, to save the free market i had to give up on capitalism, that disturbed a lot of us, you know? and so we were unhappy with republicans and democrats and really felt like we needed something different. >> host: now, you write in here that in addition to being called a tea partier or a constitutional conservative, i've also been called a goldwater conservative by supporters and critics. it is both accurate and an honor to be described as such. >> guest: when i got started, i reread "the conscious of the conservative," and, interestingly, it was first published in shepherdsville, kentucky, which is right outside ofhouseville. the publisher gave me an original copy, and i reread it. and i've always been that mated

by goldwater. >> host: and when you think of barry goldwater and you think of conservatives and libertarians, is there a difference between a conservative and a libertarian, and where do you see yourself? >> guest: yeah. and in some ways the word conservative has been watered down enough that people aren't sure what it means because, you know, george w. bush ran as a conservative, but he doubled the debt, and he was very much, too many of us, a profligate spender himself, and we were upset with president obama making it worse, but we really weren't happy with the republican years under george bush. so i think many people call themselves libertarian sort of to designate themselves more a constitutional conservative with the real, true belief in limited government. >> host: you wrote this during, before you spent any time in the u.s. senate. now after a couple of years of being in the u.s. senate, what would you change in here, if anything, and has your mind, your thinking changed at all? >> guest: i would say that going up there i feel that i

understand more now how much there is an impasse, how we're having trouble getting things done. what i don't still understand even though i am in washington is i've tried to take ideas that many democrats have put forward and say we have to do, but i can't get any democrats to talk to me. the media narrative is, oh, we won't talk to them. i've had appointments with several democrat senators trying to get them to work on social security reform. social security can be saved for 70, 75 years or really in perpetuity if we raise the age and means test the benefits, but i can't get democrats to really discuss the possibility of entitlement reform. >> host: what about your own party, the republican party? >> guest: half and half. some don't want to talk about it either, and i'm equally critical in my party in that all 47 senators on the republican side are for a balanced budget, but we lose fife or ten republicans who have got sugar in their state. we tried to cut one penny from

the sugar subsidy and compare that to our annual deficit. if you want to cut seven million at a time, that's 140,000 seven million cuts. and we can't do it once. that discourages me, and that's part of the problem in washington is we can't cut pennies, much less the billions that would have to be cut. >> host: you have a new book coming out, what is it? >> guest: it's called "government bullies." we're not talking about murder, rape, stealing, we're not talking about violent crime, we're talking about people who put dirt on their own property. these are wetlands violations. some of these came out of the first george bush, unfortunately. and really we think that you shouldn't be putting people in jail for regulatory crime. in the old days when you put people in jail, there was a difference between criminal law and tort law. in criminal law you were supposed to have what was called mens rea or intent. if you accidentally hit someone

on your bicycle, that wasn't murder the same as murder. but we're not putting people in regulatory crime, there's a man in jail from southern mississippi for ten years without parole for putting clean fill dirt on a low area of his land. sometimes it's from moving dirt from one part of your land to another part of your land. we've gone crazy on this stuff. and some of it was well intended in the beginning. the clean water act says you can't dump pollutants in the navigable waters of the u.s. i agree with that. no chemical company should be allowed the to dump chemicals in the ohio river, but putting dirt on your land is not the same as dumping chemicals into the ohio river. >> host: are these some of the issues you've dealt with in the senate in the past couple years? >> guest: yeah. i brought the sackett family from idaho, they were being assessed a $70,000 a day fine and told they couldn't build on their land, and there's never any rain water on their land. they're told it's a wetland. so government says, well, look at our web site.

they did, and it's not on the web site. they said, well, our web site's not perfect. we brought a family raising bunnies, they were fined $90,000 for raising bunnies with the wrong license. they had a license, but it was the wrong license. they said, well, you can pay us within 30 days with your credit card. $90,000. this is a middle class family. if you don't pay within 30 days, your fine will be $3.1 million. these are the kind of stories that i think should make americans mad and say no more. this is a big government that's run amok. >> host: what's your biggest frustration in the u.s. senate right now? >> guest: that people haven't come to grips with the debt problem. you know, the debt's unsustainable, we're borrowing $50,000 a second. we have to cut spending. and there's so much waste. and it's not just domestic welfare spending, it's in the military as well. and i tell conservatives that the real compromise is conservatives, like myself, who believe in a strong national defense will have to compromise with the ore side and say, you know what?

we've got waste in the military as well as waste domestically. the pentagon says that they are too big to be audited. that's an insult. too big to be audited. they spend $700 billion a year. they need to be audited, and we need to figure out how we can save money in the military as well as domestically. there's $124 billion in the budget unaccounted for. we've got to do something about that. >> host: what, how do you foresee the debt ceiling and the sequestration debate? >> guest: well, i didn't want vote for the last debt ceiling raise. i will vote to raise the debt ceiling, but only if we have a balanced budget amendment. people say, oh, that's too hard core, we'll never raise the debt ceiling. well, you need to be hard core because last year we added statutory caps. we've exceeded those a dozen times. they bring a bill to the floor that exceeds the caps that say you're not supposed to spend more than x dollars, and we raise a point of recorder. you know what they do? they just deem it to be okay. 80 out of 100 of them will say

we don't care what the rules are, so they routinely ignore their own rules. we have a rule in the senate that says you have to have a bill online for 48 hours. 48 hours is not enough to read most of these bills. just last week they put it up for 12 hours. they said, so what? we don't care what our rules are. we don't even obey our own rules. >> host: we are talking with senator rand paul on c-span2, talking about his first book, "the tea party goes to washington." he has a new one coming out in august of 2012, "government bullies," correct? >> guest: yes. >> host: senate, one of the side issues you address in this book is where the name rand came from. we're here at this libertarian conference. are you named after ayn rand? >> guest: no, but i still get that question, kind of. no, my wife, actually, shortened my name. i was randy growing up, my formal name is randall. although i'm a big fan.

i read all her novels when i was 17 and some of her nonfiction. my dad's a fan. he actually gave me the books for christmas when i was 17, i believe, or for my birthday. so big fan. and i never thought i'd get so many questions about it. but when my wife said you need to be rand and not just randy or randall anymore, i really wasn't running for office, so i didn't really know it would be such a big deal. but the first reporter i talked to asked me that, and i've had the question quite often. >> host: you are an ophthalmologist. where'd you go to medical school? >> guest: i went to duke medical school, did a year of surgery in atlanta and then came back to duke. >> guest: and do you practice at all anymore? >> guest: the senate won't let me do it for money, so i do some charitable surgery. it's one of those crazy rules. if you're a hundred millionaire, if you're worth $100 million and you're a u.s. senate, no limit to what passive income you can make, but you can make zero earned income.

so i'm not allowed to do any work outside of the senate. but i still do some charity work, and i do miss medicine. i thought when i ran, actually, that the rules were different because in the house of representatives, my dad's a physician, they did let him practice some. there were some limits, but in the senate i'm not allowed to practice at all, and i've asked them to change the rules, but they're not too interested in helping me. >> host: who's on the back cover of this book? >> guest: that's my wife. sort of an animated pose, and, you know, my wife being there. we did it as a joint project. she helped with the book but also helped quite a bit, you know, with allowing me to do the campaign and to run for office. >> host: and what does she think about being a senator's wife? >> guest: well, she wasn't too excited about the whole process of me running, and it was difficult at times. there are times when the, you know, you're attacked by your opponent, your character assassination, and during the campaign one of the things we talk about, it was on our anniversary, october 20th, right before the election, and they'd accused me of something about my

religion or something about college or this and that, and she hadn't made any comments the whole campaign, but she came out on our anniversary and said don't mess with my man and, you know, the rest is history. >> host: what's your enthusiasm level for the mitt romney campaign? >> guest: well, aye endorsed him, and i will -- i've endorsed him. i've said all along i would endorse the republican nominee. it doesn't mean i'll sit passively and not be critical if i agree. not everybody agrees. i don't agree everything with my father or every republican. i try to be polite about it. but a week or two after my endorsement i was concerned he he had said he could go to war with iran without congressional authority. i think the issue of war is really important. it separates me a little bit from other republicans, but i don't think we should go to war with one person's authority. the constitution intended that that power be separated, and madison said very specifically we vested that power in the legislature because executives are so prone to war that we

wanted to divide that power up. and so i am very concerned about beginning a new war. we've just been through a decade of two different wars, and i will do whatever possible to make sure that there is a debate in the u.s. senate and in congress should that be something that people want to do again. >> host: did your endorsement of mitt romney cause any familial strife? [laughter] >> guest: no. my dad and i have always got along. he was well informed that it was coming, and we waited until their campaign acknowledged that they didn't have the delegates. there's still some people who love my dad so much who still want him to win, and i wanted him to win, but the numbers are done. some of his supporters really aren't ready to admit that the numbers are sufficient. >> host: your father's political philosophy is well known. what percentage would you say you share with him? >> guest: you know, overall we both believe in very limited government, we believe in a very original interpretation of the constitution. but there will be issues that even when you think you're coming from the same basis and

same foundation that you'll disagree on. so we do disagree on occasion. but always very polite lay. they still let me come home for thanksgiving, and i get to sit at the adult table most of the time, you know, so -- >> host: and finally, what's your standing in the republican party in washington? >> guest: you know, i think i do okay. i try very much not to insult people. i try to work really with both sides of the aisle, but also both sides of the republican party or the many different sides of the republican party. and there are times that you'll agree with people and times you'll disagree with people. and i think even in the senate i've worked with many people from the democrat side on issues of internet freedom. ron widen, i think, is an open minded person. on civil libertarian issues, he and i see eye to eye. on issues of trying to win the war in afghanistan, mike lee and i are the two republicans who have signed letters encouraging the president to end the war in afghanistan, and i think the public's coming around.

i'd say 60, 70% of the public is ready for the war to be over. even in republicans. we've been through ten years of this. we won the war, we killed bin laden, we disrupted the terrorist base, but we just don't have enough money to keep trying to create nations. >> host: okay. one more question. what do you think about the fact that sometimes democrats use you as the evil bogeyman in the campaigns? >> guest: i think that means you're being effective in the sense that you're a loud enough voice that they make a target for you. but i think i'm not easily identifiable as just being a partisan. i don't really believe in empty partisanship. i've ridden on air force one with the president to try to find money for building bridges, suggested we bring home some foreign aid and some of that money that foreign welfare we're sending overseas could be used for bridges here. i've suggested a bill to repatriate corporate capital from overseas, let it come home at a reduced tax rate, and i've

tried to work with democrats on that. i worked with a pipeline regulation bill where they were going to exempt the old pipelines, and i made 'em take out that clause because the old pipelines were the ones that were exploding. i think i'm not as easily pigeon-holeable as a partisan republican. i'm proud of the fact that i actually do work with the other side not in a way where i give up my principles, but where i find like-minded people who just happen to be democrats. >> host: this is booktv on c-span2, and we are talking with senator rand paul, the author of "the tea party goes to washington." he has a new book coming out, and it is called -- >> guest: "government bullies." >> host: this is c-span2. >> 2012 libertarian party presidential nominee gary johnson joined booktv at freedom fest in las vegas to talk about his new book, "seven principles of good government." this is about 15 minutes.

>> host: and on your screen now is the cover of a new book that's coming out in august 2012, "seven principles of good government: liberty, people and politics." it's written by former new mexico governor gary johnson. and he is also the libertarian party nominee for president in 2012. governor johnson, when and why did can you leave the republican party and become libertarian? >> guest: well, you know, i've probably been a libertarian my entire life. [laughter] so this is kind of coming out of the closet. and i don't think i'm unlike most americans. i think there are a lot more americans in this country that declare themselves libertarian as opposed to voting libertarian. so, you know, the pitch that i'm trying to make right now is vote libertarian with me just this one time. give me a shot at changing things. and if it doesn't work out, you can always return to tyranny, and i'm going to argue that that's what we have right now.

>> host: what are those seven principles of good government that you write about? >> guest: well, one is being reality based, just find out what's what, base your decisions and actions on that, make sure everybody that knows, that should know what you're doing knows what you're doing, so communicate. don't hesitate to deliver bad news. there's always time to fix things. if you don't have a job you love enough to do what it takes to get your job done, then quit and get one that you do love. acknowledge mistakes immediately. there's always time to fix things. um, i know there's a couple more in there, but very common sense, and i did live -- i continue to live my life by these principles. >> host: are these principles that you had and used when you were governor of new mexico? >> guest: always. always. and i actually delivered one of my state of the state addresses using the seven principles. look, here's what -- here's how we need to conduct ourselves,

and anyway, just very common senseical. >> host: so if you would, your philosophy and the libertarian party's philosophy of the right role of government, the right size of government. >> guest: well, so libertarian philosophy if you were to just with a broad brush stroke, the notion that most of us in this country are socially accepting and that we're fiscally responsible. that's a broad brush stroke. a broad brush stroke is wearing a pin, a lapel pin that says i'm pro-choice regarding everything. well, pro-choice regarding everything means that, actually, if your choices involve putting other people in harm's way or your choices end up defrauding or harming another human being, um, then that's when the

government, that's where the government does have a role. to protect us against individuals, gups, corporations that would do us harm. >> host: as governor did you shrink the size of the state government? you used your veto pen quite a bit, but were you able to shrink the size of the -- >> guest: when it came to dollars, i was able to cut the rate of growth in half, and that was the historical rate of growth. i always pointed at state government employees. over an eight year period, there were 1200 fewer state employees starting with 12,000, ending with 10,800. it was a 10% reduction. in state government employees. which i always pointed out. unquestionably said that, hey, we were doing things more efficiently because we were doing things with fewer state employees, and we were doing more things. i'd like to point out that the real driver of state budgets state to state is medicaid.

and that, of course, is a federal entitlement, and you really -- it's open-ended. and that's what has us in the predicament that we have, are the entitlements, medicaid, medicare, social security to a lesser degree, but we have to address the entitlements. we have to address the entitlements. >> host: and what is the libertarian policy on that? >> guest: well, i am promising to submit a budge in the -- budget in the year 2013. that's promising to submit a budget to congress in the year 2013 believing that if we don't reduce government expenditures by $1.4 trillion, that we're going to find ourselves in the midst of a monetary collapse and a monetary collapse very simply is when the dollars we have aren't worth anything. and that's going to be the consequence of us continuing to borrow and print money to the tune of 43 cents out of every

dollar. >> host: governor gary johnson is the author of this book, "seven principles of good government." he is also the libertarian candidate for president. what other issues are, do you write about in this? >> guest: well, this being kind of a background on my history, i've been an entrepreneur my entire life. i started a one-man handyman business in albuquerque in 1974 and grew that business to employ over a thousand people using those same principles, you know, showing up on time. just doing what you say you'll do for people. it's amazing how far that will go. it talks about my running -- i have been completely outside of politics my entire life. the only two other political offices that i've run for governor of new mexico and re-election of governor, as governor of new mexico. and i may have made a name for myself. i did make a name for myself.

arguably, vetoing more legislation than the other 49 governors in the country combined. i vetoed 750 bills. i took line item veto to a new art form. thousands of line item vetoes. i said no to billions of dollars worth of government spending, and i said no to legislation that i think would have just added time and money for us to have to comply with those laws, but that it wasn't going to make us any safer, wasn't going to make -- wasn't going to improve our lives in any way, and it was going to add money that we were going to have to spend on it and time to have to be able to comply with it. >> host: you also funded your own campaigns, essentially, didn't you? >> guest: well, my first campaign i funded it out of a $550,000 primary, 510 of that was mine, and 30 of the remaining actually came with just a few days to go in the primary because it appeared as though i might actually win.

and i'd like to point out that new mexico is a state that's two to one democrat, so getting elected, vowing to be a penny pincher, spending my first time proving that i was a penny pincher beyond reproach and then getting reelected by a bigger margin the second time than the first time, i think that appreciates the fact that people really appreciate good stewardship of tax dollars. >> host: the libertarian party is up associated with changing the -- is often associate with the changing the drug laws, and you've advocated for that as well. >> guest: changing the -- >> host: drug laws. >> guest: yes. since 1989. i think we're at a tipping point with regard to marijuana and legalizing it. i think that colorado is going to do that. it's on the ballot in colorado this november, regulate

marijuana like alcohol. i think it's going to pass. when it passes and if it doesn't pass in colorado, it's going to pass. 50% of americans now are saying they support the notion. it's a growing number, it's a growing number because people are talking about the issue more than they ever have before, recognizing 90% of the drug problem is prohibition-related, not use-related. that's not to discount the problems with use and abuse, but that should be the focus. i think when we legalize marijuana, i think we're going to take giant steps forward regarding all other drugs, and that's going to be starting with looking at the drug issue first as a health issue rather than a criminal justice issue. let's get the police out on the streets enforcing real crime, let's free up the courts, and let's empty the prisons of the 2.3 million people that we have in them, the majority category

of those being drug-related. and, of course, we're not going to -- we're not going to release anybody from jail that has committed other crime in lieu of drug crime. but those that are in jail, victimless, nonviolent drug crime, there needs to be, um, there needs to be commutation of those sentences, and there needs to be pardons for 30 million americans that but for our drug laws and have served out their sentences, but for our drug laws would otherwise be tax-paying, law-abiding citizens. >> host: governor johnson, what do you see the intersection between republican policies and libertarian policies? >> guest: on the right when you talk about a balanced budget. when you talk about a balanced budget and we need to balance the budget immediately, we need to cut federal spending. strong u.s. dollar, monetary policy. that's the intersection. if i can jump ahead, the intersection when it comes to democrats is civil liberties.

look, let's repeal the patriot act. i would have never signed the national defense authorization act allowing for you and i to be arrested and detained without the u.s. government. let's bring about marriage equality, let's get out of afghanistan tomorrow, bring the troops home. let's end the drug wars. look, these are democrat issues, historically democrat issues that they aren't going anywhere on today just like republicans historically, their issues have been about dollars and cents. and neither, neither one of the parties do well in the areas that they're supposed to do well. they're horrible in the areas that they don't do well in, meaning romney is horrible on civil liberties, and obama is horrible when it comes to dollars and cents. >> host: as a libertarian now, is it a little tougher to get media attention away from the two-party system and especially as the campaign goes on this fall? >> guest: well, speaking for myself personally, actually, there's probably been about a

30% pickup in attention given, making the switch, so, no. i hi just the op -- i think just the opposite, that it has picked up. and i'm believing that when people come to recognize that there are going to be three candidates on the ballot in all 50 states -- me being one of those three -- that that's going to go a long way toward garnering just a little bit of who is that person along with ron paul's campaign coming to an end. and by his own admission, he says it's coming to an end. i think that ron paul supporters would not be compromising their vote with a vote for the libertarian ticket, myself and judge jim gray. >> host: who we also talked to here on booktv. gary johnson 2012 is the web site, dot.com, i should say, and here is the cover of governor johnson's new book, "seven