KENTUCKY — United States Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) originally moved to the Commonwealth to begin his own ophthalmology practice in the early 1990s, where he performed eye surgery for 18 years.

On this week's In Focus Kentucky program, Sen. Paul chats about some topical items and issues of the day including a January 2022 report that shows inflation’s impact on American families and small businesses.

"Inflation comes from increasing the money supply. We increase the money supply to pay for debt. So it's all related to debt. In the last two years, we have borrowed nearly $6 trillion. This is unprecedented. We have never borrowed this much money in the shortest time. But the bottom line, the moral of this story is to everybody's trying to fill up their gas tank. Everybody's trying to buy meat or groceries and seeing their money evaporate before their very eyes. The moral of the story is there's nothing in life that's free. When government passed out checks to everybody they shut down the economy, they locked us down saying it would stop the slow the spread of the pandemic. I don't think any of that works," explains Sen. Paul.

Last month, President Joe Biden signed H.R. 55 – also known as the Emmett Till Antilynching Act – into law, for the first time making lynching a federal hate crime nearly seven decades after the brutal killing of the bill’s namesake. It won unanimous approval in the Senate before landing on the President’s desk.

"We've been very supportive of trying to make sure that something like this never happens again. When we read the original bill, though, the original bill was worded such that they would there was a danger that things such as lynching with your were are horrific, would be conflated with one something much less so. In the end, they agreed to make the language but it took over a year. And it was a very emotional thing. And people accused and called me all kinds of terrible names because I was willing to read the bill to try to make it better. But in the end, I'm willing to try to make sure that legislation turns out and is appropriate and treats people fairly. In the end. It did and I was supportive of the legislation," explains Sen. Paul.

You can watch the full In Focus segment in the player above.