{"database": "press", "table": "releases", "rows": [["https://www.paul.senate.gov/news-senate-foreign-relations-committee-doesnt-support-nato-members-paying-their-fair-share-votes/", "Senate Foreign Relations Committee Doesn\u2019t Support NATO Members Paying Their Fair Share, Votes Down Paul Amendment", "2019-07-25", "2019", "2019-07", "Republican", "Senate", "KY", "Rand Paul", "P000603", "www.paul.senate.gov", "paul", "https://www.paul.senate.gov/news/", "scraper", "FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:\n\nJuly 25, 2019\n\nContact: Press@paul.senate.gov, 202-224-4343\n\nWASHINGTON, D.C. \u2013 Today, as the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee considered the Protocol on the accession of North Macedonia to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) during a business meeting, U.S. Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) offered an amendment to make the United States\u2019 financial contributions to NATO proportional to the number of members in the alliance.\n\n\u201cOnce again, members of the Senate have shown to be detached from their constituents. Americans believe in all nations paying their fair share, yet members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee today voted down my amendment, which would have set the standard for an equal division of funding among alliance members. The status quo is unacceptable and unsustainable, and I will continue responding to concerned American taxpayers by fighting for change,\u201d said Dr. Paul.\n\nAs the U.S. continues to spend billions in support of NATO, the vast majority of its members have yet to reach the threshold of spending 2% of their GDP on defense, which the alliance agreed to in 2014.\n\nDr. Paul\u2019s amendment, which was not passed by the committee, would have offered a reservation to the Protocol to enact the change.\n\n###", 1, "2026-03-30T01:40:41Z", "2026-06-27T23:32:25Z"]], "columns": ["url", "title", "date", "year", "month", "party", "chamber", "state", "member_name", "bioguide_id", "domain", "scraper", "source", "date_source", "text", "has_text", "collected_at", "updated_at"], "primary_keys": ["url"], "primary_key_values": ["https://www.paul.senate.gov/news-senate-foreign-relations-committee-doesnt-support-nato-members-paying-their-fair-share-votes/"], "units": {}, "query_ms": 0.8731728885322809, "source": "dwillis/congress-press", "source_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press", "license": "MIT", "license_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press/blob/main/LICENSE"}