Rand Paul calls out federal program that pays for foreign students to go to Huntsville’s Space Camp

HUNTSVILLE, Ala. — U.S. Senator and GOP Presidential candidate Rand Paul (R-KY) went after the State Department Monday for paying for Pakistani teens to come to Huntsville for Space Camp as part of an English-language immersion program.

In his Waste Report, where Paul chronicles the rampant waste, fraud, and abuse of federal money on his blog, the Senator wrote “If you were a kid in the ’80s, you probably dreamed of going to Space Camp, especially if you saw the movie. Well, if you have about $1,000 and can get yourself to Huntsville, Alabama, you too can go to Space Camp. That is unless you are a kid in Pakistan, because if you are, Uncle Sam will send you to Space Camp on the taxpayer’s dime, to the tune of $250,000.”

The grant slammed by Paul is offered by the State Department to “non-elite” Pakistani kids between the age of 13 and 18 enrolled in an English-language program to come to the United States for a two-week trip. The trip involves visiting NASA’s Space Camp, traveling to Washington, D.C., and even a taxpayer-funded trip to Dollywood in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee.

Paul believes that $250,000 in funding the program receives is ludicrous.

The State Department, which brought the children to Huntsville this week, believes that it is wisely spending a quarter-million taxpayer dollars. In a news release, the agency stated that the program “promotes the development of English language, social, and analytical skills of the participants, through first-hand experiences in science and technology.”

But Paul fired back. “And while NASA’s FY 2016 Budget request includes $94 million for education, there is no mention of using that money to send American kids to Space Camp, which itself is not federally financed,” he wrote. “In fact, Space Camp is a luxury even for kids in Huntsville, where the Elks Club takes up the effort to annually send a different fifth grade class to the camp. Perhaps if kids in Alabama were learning Japanese, the State Department would send them to Space Camp-Japan, maybe with a stop off at Tokyo-Disneyland.”

Back in February, Rand Paul sat down with Yellowhammer’s Cliff Sims to discuss his presidential goals. The libertarian-leaning Senator has consistently labeled himself as “a different kind of republican” that despises the Washington tax-and-spend culture so much that he made a video of himself chainsawing the federal tax code.