In the most recent debate among Republican hopefuls, Ron Paul inserted quite a lot of jargon, which made him appear superficially smarter than everyone else.
http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/ ... se.02.html
I thought that we should open up a debate specifically to examine his statements more closely. Is he really making sense? Or is he just a quack?
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REP. RON PAUL (R), TEXAS: I am Congressman Ron Paul. I've been elected to the Congress 12 times from Texas. Before I went into the Congress, I delivered babies for a living and delivered 4,000 babies. Now I would like to be known and defend the title that I am the champion of liberty and I defend the Constitution. Thank you.
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Let's continue the conversation. I want to come to Congressman Paul. You're all here saying the president of the United States is making the economy worse. Has he done one thing -- has he done one thing right when it comes to the economy in this country?
PAUL: Boy, that's a tough question.
(LAUGHTER)
No, no, I can't think of anything, but may I answer the question that you alluded to before about whether or not 5 percent is too optimistic? No, there's nothing wrong without -- without setting a goal of 5 percent or 10 percent or 15 percent, if you have a free- market economy.
We're trying to unwind a Keynesian bubble that's been going on for 70 years, and you're not going to touch this problem until you liquidate the bad debt and the mal-investment, go back to work. But you have to have sound money, and you have to recognize how we got in the trouble.
We got in the trouble because we had a financial bubble, and it's caused by the Federal Reserve. If you don't look at monetary policy, we will continue the trend of the last decade. We haven't even -- we haven't developed any new jobs in the last decade. Matter of fact, we've had 30 million new people and no new jobs, and it's because they don't -- the people don't understand monetary policy and central economic planning things.
Free markets will give you 10 percent or 15 percent growth or whatever (ph) and you will not have to turn it off because you think it's going to cause inflation. It doesn't work that way.
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MIKE PATINSKY, DIRECTOR OF TRANSPORTATION, FRANKLIN PIERCE COLLEGE: Well, for the candidates I'd like to know how they plan on returning manufacturing jobs to the United States.
KING: Congressman Paul, why don't you start with that one?
PAUL: Pretty important because everything we've done in the last 20 or 30 years we've exported our jobs. And when you have a reserve currency of the world and you abuse it, you export money. That becomes the main export so it goes with the money.
You have to invite capital. The way you get capital into a country, you have to have a strong currency, not a weak currency. Today it's a deliberate job of the Federal Reserve to weaken the currency. We should invite capital back.
First thing is, we have trillions of dollars, at least over a trillion dollars of U.S. money made overseas, but it stays over there because if you bring it home, they get taxed. If you want to, we need to get the Fed to quit printing the money and if you want capital, you have to entice those individuals to repatriate their money and take the taxes office, set up a financial system, deregulate and de-tax to invite people to go back to work again.
But as long as we run a program of deliberately weakening our currency, our jobs will go overseas, and that is what's happened for a good many years, especially in the last decade.
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PAUL: There shouldn't be any government assistance to private enterprise. It's not morally correct, it's legal, it's bad economics. It's not part of the constitution. If you allow an economy to thrive, they'll decide how R&D works or where they invest their monies.
But when the politicians get in and direct things, you get the malinvestment. They do the dumb things. They might build too many houses. And they might not direct their research to the right places. So no, it's a fallacy to think that government and politicians and bureaucrats are smart enough to manage the economy, so it shouldn't happen.
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Congressman Paul, BlackBerry or iPhone?
PAUL: BlackBerry. KING: BlackBerry it is.
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QUESTION: Yes, sir. As a member of the Baby Boomer generation, I've been contributing to Medicare through payroll taxes for over 30 years. How do you propose to keep Medicare financially solvent for the next 50 years and beyond?
KING: Let's start with Dr. Paul on this one.
PAUL: Well, under these conditions, it's not solvent and won't be solvent. You know, if you're -- if you're an average couple and you paid your entire amount into -- into Medicare, you would have put $140,000 into it. And in your lifetime, you will take out more than three times that much.
So a little bit of arithmetic tells you it's not solvent, so we're up against the wall on that, so it can't be made solvent. It has to change. We have to have more competition in medicine.
And I would think that if we don't want to cut any of the medical benefits for children or the elderly, because we have drawn so many in and got them so dependent on the government, if you want to work a transition, you have to cut a lot of money.
And that's why I argue the case that this money ought to be cut out of foreign welfare, and foreign militarism, and corporate welfare, and the military industrial complex. Then we might have enough money to tide people over.
But some revamping has to occur. What we need is competition. We need to get a chance for the people to opt out of the system. Just -- you talk about opting out of Obamacare? Why can't we opt out of the whole system and take care of ourselves?
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KING: Congressman Paul, does faith have a role in these public issues, the public square, or is it a personal issue at your home and in your church?
PAUL: I think faith has something to do with the character of the people that represent us, and law should have a moral fiber to it and our leaders should. We shouldn't expect us to try to change morality. You can't teach people how to be moral.
But the Constitution addresses this by saying -- literally, it says no theocracy. But it doesn't talk about church and state. The most important thing is the First Amendment. Congress shall write no laws -- which means Congress should never prohibit the expression of your Christian faith in a public place.
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KING: All right, let me ask you another question. The Obama administration is in the process -- and Leon Panetta, who's the new defense secretary, will implement -- essentially, the repeal of "don't ask/don't tell" so gays will be allowed to serve openly in the military. I want to ask each of you -- and, again, if we can be quickly, because then we want to get to the voters question -- if you were president -- if you become president of the United States, now gays are allowed to serve openly in the military, would you leave that policy in place or would you try to change it, go back to "don't ask/don't tell," or something else? ...
PAUL: I would not work to overthrow it. We have to remember, rights don't come in groups. We shouldn't have gay rights. Rights come as individuals. If we would (ph) have this major debate going on, it would be behavior that would count, not the person who belongs to which group.
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QUESTION: As a naturalized American citizen who came here legally, I would like to know how you, as America -- as president, plan to prevent illegal immigrants from using our health care, educational, or welfare systems?
PAUL: Well, first off, we shouldn't have the mandates. We bankrupted the hospitals and the schools in Texas and other states. We shouldn't give them easy citizenship.
We should think about protecting our borders, rather than the borders between Iraq and Afghanistan. That doesn't make any sense to me.
(APPLAUSE)
But on -- on coming in, you know, there was a time when government wasn't -- we didn't depend on government for everything. There was a time when the Catholic Church actually looked after...
KING: But should they get care? Should they get care? Should taxpayers have to pay for that care?
PAUL: No, they should not be forced to, but we wouldn't -- we shouldn't be penalizing the Catholic Church, because they're trying to fulfill a role. And some of the anti-immigrants want to come down hard on the Catholic Church, and that is wrong.
If we believed in our free society -- as a matter of fact, this whole immigration problem is related to the economy. People aren't coming over as much now because it's weak. When we had a healthy economy, some of our people didn't work (ph) and people flowed over here getting jobs. So there is an economic issue here, as well.
But, no, if you have an understanding and -- and you want to believe in freedom, freedom has solved these kind of problems before. You don't have to say, oh, you're not going to have care or there won't be any care and everybody is going to starve to death and -- and die on the streets without medical care. That's the implication of the question. That's just not true, and you shouldn't accept it.
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JOHN BROWN, VOTER: Osama bin Laden is dead. We've been in Afghanistan for ten years. Isn't it time to bring our combat troops home from Afghanistan? ...
PAUL: Not quite. I served five years in the military. I've had a little experience. I've spent a little time over in the Pakistan/Afghanistan area, as well as Iran. But I wouldn't wait for my generals. I'm the commander in chief.
I make the decisions. I tell the generals what to do. I'd bring them home as quickly as possible. And I would get them out of Iraq as well. And I wouldn't start a war in Libya. I'd quit bombing Yemen. And I'd quit bombing Pakistan.
I'd start taking care of people here at home because we could save hundreds of billions of dollars.
Our national security is not enhanced by our presence over there. We have no purpose there. We should learn the lessons of history. The longer we're there, the worse things are and the more danger we're in as well, because our presence there is not making friends let me tell you.
I am most interested in parsing out Ron Paul economic ideas. Ron Paul admirers will probably be spamming us, which is fine, but I would like people to evaluate primarily his economic ideas.
15 Jun 2011, 11:26 am
