One of Kentucky’s two United States Senators made a stop in Albany last Thursday afternoon to speak briefly to local officials, business leaders, educators and general public constituents.

About 50 individuals, including the 20 or so who were chosen to sit at the discussion table, were on hand Thursday to listen to what U.S. Senator Rand Paul had to report on the state of our country as he sees in during his first term in office.

“He’ll be the first to admit that he doesn’t have all of the answers, but at least he is up there asking the questions, and that hasn’t been done for a long time,” local Republican leader and attorney David Cross told those attending about Sen. Paul during his introduction of the Senator prior to the discussion session.

The session lasted for about an hour and included panel members from a wide cross-section of Albany and Clinton County.

Those addressing the senator during the meeting represented local agriculture, health care, manufacturing, banking, education and local government.

Paul, a republican from Bowling Green who won the seat previously held by republican Jim Bunning, began with opening remarks that stressed the economic problems America is facing with the huge national deficit.

“I’d like to report to you that we’ve fixed all of the problems in the country and you can rest easy and that the economy is going to recover and everything is going to be okay, before adding that it just simply isn’t true,” Paul said. “We’re borrowing $40,000 a second, every minute we borrow $ 2 million.”

Paul said he was not having much luck in getting bills supported that he felt offered potential “fixes” to the problems our country faces, but he added he was intent on continuing to try.

“We expect the roads to be paved, the bridges to be repaired, to have schools and to have a national defense , but we just can’t keep borrowing $40,000 a second,” Paul said.

Agriculture related issues took up a considerable amount of discussion early on in Thursday’s session, including the production of ethanol as an alternative fuel source, and the affect of the corn growing subsidy program had in regards to Clinton County’s largest employer, Keystone Foods, LLC.

Dr. Robert Williams, General Manager of Keystone Foods, a poultry processing plant in Clinton County that employs nearly 1,500, told Paul that soaring corn prices that were a result of the corn growing ethanol subsidy program, combined with the fact that the ethanol program was consuming about 40 percent of all available corn, was making it difficult for the food processing industry to continue to compete.

“What we need is to put the ethanol industry into the same competition level and that is to not pay them to get into that business – don’t subsidize them,” Williams said.

While Paul wasn’t able to give Williams a firm answer on what he thought the actual solution to the problem was, he agreed that Williams’ assessment was correct, adding “I’m on the same side as you on this issue.”

Greg Abston, a local agriculture figure, pointed out to the senator that he felt a considerable amount of the tobacco buyout funds had been somewhat mis-used and he would like to see those funds used more for their originally intended purpose of helping farms find ways to diversify better and replace the funds that were in place when tobacco was being raised.

Health care was also discussed at length among Paul and the panels, with Clinton County Hospital Administrator J.D. Mullins asking Paul what he thought the future held for small, rural health care facilities in light of the passage of the national health care reform.

Paul told the group that he felt much of the problems surrounding the health care issues of our nation, were directly related to rising costs of health care, and in particular, medicare costs and the potentially increasing numbers on the medicare rolls.

“Medicare is growing by leaps and bounds,” Paul said. “Much of the problems with the current system -especially in what is driving up the cost on the local and state level, is the rapid growth of the medicare enrollment numbers.”

He favors higher co-pays for medicare, comparing it to private insurance policies and saying that when higher deductibles are chosen with a policy, the cost of insurance goes down, and likewise, he feels that, coupled with allowing more competition inside the price of medical services, instead of allowing the government to set all prices of services, would likely drive down the prices of medical care, and the medicare capos would loosen the medicare cost issues.

“It makes you a more responsible consumer when you have to pay out of pocket,” Paul said.

As for the problems surrounding Social Security, Paul said the system needed to be repaired, and would have to be repaired if it were expected to continue to be in place for the future.

Gradually increasing the eligibility age, until it reaches age 70 would be included in his recipe for fixing the social security system, in conjunction with adjusting the deduction system to cause what he termed as the “rich people” to absorb more of the reduction.

The senator said that many of the problems in not being able to get measures in place to begin the repair process, was due to President Obama’s current re-election calendar.

“The president has decided he is going to run against the rich people and the Republican caucus for not doing anything, but we can’t do anything because he won’t work with us on it … we do have plans to fix social security, medicare and to make the tax code more reasonable with less loopholes,” Paul said. “He won’t work with us because he’s running against us right now and that’s his campaign strategy.”

Paul also heard questions, comments and concerns from local bankers, members of the private business community, educators and public officials, including local prosecutors and law enforcement.