In the 2012 Republican Presidential Primary, Paul cited President Dwight Eisenhower's farewell address warnings about the growing presence and strength of the "military-industrial complex". His 2012 "Plan to Restore America" would eliminate five Cabinet-level departments: Energy, HUD, Commerce, Interior, and Education. He has called for elimination of other federal agencies such as the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, and the Internal Revenue Service, calling them "unnecessary bureaucracies". Paul would severely reduce the role of the Central Intelligence Agency; reducing its functions to intelligence-gathering. He would eliminate operations like overthrowing foreign governments and assassinations. He says this activity is kept secret even from Congress and "leads to trouble". He also commented, "We have every right in the world to know something about intelligence gathering, but we have to have intelligent people interpreting this information." Paul calls for the elimination of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), which is tasked with coordinating preparedness and relief for natural disasters. He regards the argument for FEMA as "symptomatic of a blind belief in big government's ability to do anything and everything for anyone and everyone ... When people are starving, injured and dying they need speed and efficiency, yet FEMA comes along with forms and policies and rubber stamps." He complains that FEMA is a mismanaged and nearly-bankrupt bureaucracy, open to corruption. He also argues that the socialized insurance concept which underlies FEMA is deeply flawed, encouraging risk-taking – such as building beachfront homes in hurricane-prone coastal areas – that would be too expensive to consider if the sole source of disaster insurance were private-sector insurance purchased in the free market. In his view, disaster response management should be coordinated at the state and local level, without any federal involvement, and should be entirely voluntary and based on charitable goodwill. As Hurricane Irene bore down on the country's coast in August 2011, Paul said, "I live on the Gulf Coast. We put up with hurricanes all the time ... In 1900, before FEMA, the local people rebuilt the city, built a seawall, and they survived without FEMA ..." In a speech on June 25, 2003, criticizing giving Prime Minister of the United Kingdom Tony Blair a Congressional Gold Medal of Honor, Paul said, "These medals generally have been proposed to recognize a life of service and leadership, and not for political reasons—as evidenced by the overwhelming bipartisan support for awarding President Reagan,