Ron Paul on the Mike Church Show

Show: Mike Church Show
Host: Mike Church
Date: 12/9/2009

Transcript

Mike Church: And just as I promised, we have Congressman Ron Paul on the line with us, and we have him for enough time to ask certain questions about what’s going on today here today. Do you have a question for the congressman? 1-866-95-PATRIOT or just send me an email.

Alright. So let me get right to it because time is short here, and I know Congressman Paul is in heavy demand here today. Hello, Ron. How are you?

Ron Paul: I’m doing fine. Nice to be with you again.

Mike Church: And it is again. This is number six for you and I together.

Ron Paul: Well, I didn’t know there were that many.

Mike Church: It’s been a fast two years. Let me start off by congratulating you on becoming mainstream. Did you ever think that was going to happen?

Ron Paul: No, it sort of scares me. What’s happening? Yeah, I wonder – am I selling out, or are we making progress? I hope it’s the latter.

Mike Church: No, no, no. You haven’t sold out. They still call you Dr. No, don’t they?

Ron Paul: Yeah, that’s right.

Mike Church: Well, let me ask you, if you would, explain to the listeners and the people that are going to watch this on some of your message forums and what have you, explain, just give a progress report on the Investigate the Fed bill, I believe it’s number HR 1207? Do I have that right?

Ron Paul: That’s right.

Mike Church: What is – where does that stand now? I know you have 300 and some cosponsors. Is it going to come to a full vote? And when do you think that will happen?

Ron Paul: Well, we’ve had one key vote, and that was in the Financial Services Committee. We have 317 cosponsors, which is rather remarkable. It’s three-fourths of the Congress. Even with that vote, there was never any intention by the leadership to allow it to come to the floor and just have an up or down vote. But Barney Frank, Chairman of Financial Services Committee, always expressed some sympathy, although not enthusiastic, and he did not get on the bill. But he did not keep me from bringing it up and offering it as an amendment to a financial reform package, which is, as a matter of fact, going to be debated on the House floor today.

Mike Church: Okay.

Ron Paul: And that bill doesn’t have probably anything in it other than my amendment that I would support. But the amendment came up, I had 15 members of the banking committee support it. We won it rather easily, 43 to 26, which was a major victory. So a very good piece of legislation is placed on a very bad piece of legislation. It will be brought to the House floor. And it probably will get passed. But there’s still tremendous resistance to this. I mean, the closer we get to bringing it about, the harder the establishment comes down on us, everything from the Federal Reserve buying ads in movie theaters and hiring a lobbyist…

Mike Church: I know.

Ron Paul: …and Bernanke writing major editorials. I mean, they are on the defensive. The American people now, I think the last poll showed that 80 percent of the American people think it’s a good idea to audit the Fed. So we have a lot of momentum with this. And I think it had to do with a lot of talk shows like yours and others that have talked about it and got the people knowledgeable about it.

Mike Church: Now, isn’t that a – you were talking about whether or not you sold out or not. But isn’t that a sign of progress that the Federal Reserve is now the subject of kitchen table conversations, water cooler conversations?

Ron Paul: I think that’s the best part of all this. And we don’t know what the final outcome will be because I’m sure, even if we do get it passed, there’ll be lawsuits and resistance and destructions of paper. I understand the Fed’s already been involved in eliminating some of the records. So that is very, very important. But the biggest issue is the American people are looking at something very, very important, that is, the nature of money and the Federal Reserve, and not thinking the Federal Reserve always takes care of us, but maybe the Federal Reserve has caused a lot of mischief, and maybe they’re up to no good. Maybe they do exactly as we have argued, and that is they create the bubbles, and they create the recessions…

Mike Church: Right.

Ron Paul: …and they bring a lot of harm and hardship and our inflation. And also they’re involved in taking care of their friends. I don’t think they can reverse that. I think that information is out. I expect our economic crisis to get worse. I think we’re going to have a dollar crisis. And I think the most important thing that we have done is direct the attention to the most important factor on why we’re in such a mess.

Mike Church: Okay. Congressman Ron Paul is with us. I have a question that I want to ask you about a former colleague of yours, Gary North. You know Gary; right?

Ron Paul: Gary, yeah, sure.

Mike Church: Yeah, well, Gary North has been writing some really interesting and provocative stuff lately. Yesterday he had a piece out, and I think he worked for you…

Ron Paul: Right.

Mike Church: …back in the 1970s. He had a piece out yesterday where he said, Congressman, he said that Social Security will go bust next year.

Ron Paul: Well, he…

Mike Church: That they’re using fake, phony accounting methods to say that it’s not bust. But he showed the statistics that it’s going to be bust next year. Your comments on that.

Ron Paul: Shocked. I am shocked. Of course it’s insolvent. Of course he also made a pun about that all. He says it’s for the third time in his lifetime that it’s gone bust. And they always come up with a rescue package, more taxes and cuts and benefits. And something will come up. Yeah, it will be insolvent. I believe his numbers are right, and he did a thorough study of this. But, you know, it’s not to build fear into the people who receive checks from Social Security. Those checks will always come. So they will do something, even if they have to just print more money, which they will. But the biggest problem is how this puts more pressure on the dollar, and that eventually these checks that people get from the government won’t buy anything. And that’s where the real crisis will come. But Gary did a very good article on that, and he explains it in great detail. I don’t question his numbers. But technically it looks like the Social Security system would have to be going to the Treasury, which the Treasury would tide them over. But it also will put more pressure on Obama and others to do what they always do, and that is either run up more deficit or print more money.

Mike Church: And they seem to be really adept and have no fear of doing so, the way I see it.

Ron Paul: No, I mean, they live in outer space, I mean, when they think – just think of what kind of expenditures are involved in expanding the war in the Middle East.

Mike Church: Right.

Ron Paul: At the same time, on the very same day, they’ll talk about a trillion dollar medical care program. And the other day there was a vote in the Senate, and they said, well, we don’t think you should finance by taking 500 billion – billion – dollars out of Social Security. Now, there’s a government system that probably should have never been brought into existence. But, you know, people are using it. And they’re depending on it, on the Medicare, I mean. And yet they’re going to take the money out of Medicare in order to say that it won’t cost anything to run this new program that they’re designing. And they do this with a straight face. But I think the American people are becoming more aware and are much more cynical and know what’s happening more so than before. It was always just trust. Today I don’t think they trust the system, but they’re always hoping and praying that they can get a little bit more from the government before the whole thing comes down.

Mike Church: And that may be what’s driving a lot of this. “Wait a minute, now, you promised me this, Obama, and I haven’t gotten my check in the mail, and I’ve been waiting by the mailbox.” Let me move on to something else here because time is short.

Congressman Ron Paul is with us this morning. Afghanistan, now, you just kind of touched on this. My question to you is, Congressman, and you are the only person in Congress that I believe has this steadfast point of view, and people knock you for it as being a pacifist – “Oh, Ron Paul, oh, it’s all about the blowback with him and, nah, we shouldn’t do this, and we shouldn’t do this.” And I have come around to your way of thinking. And my question to you is, would you explain to the people that say that you and people like you and myself, that we’re pacifists, and that we would allow an invasion force to come in here and just mow us down, that there are constitutional ways to wage war and to protect and defend this republic, are there not?

Rep. Ron Paul: Absolutely. And if you go to war, it should be declared. What they’re confusing is, if you want to give up on the notion of aggression, you’re not a pacifist. You’re trying to avoid war, of course, but you don’t want to ever start wars. If you have to go to war, you should declare it. But I just think that everything that we do actually undermines our national security. And besides, it contributes to our bankruptcy. Some of our enemies in the Middle East said, “We want to drag you in here. We want to drain you. We want to bankrupt your country like we did to the Soviets.” So it’s not like this is all an accident. But we have fallen into the trap. So I think it’s so dangerous.

But no, there’s very few things the federal government should be doing. One is national defense. But that doesn’t mean that we have to be the policeman of the world. We were advised strongly we shouldn’t be involved in the internal affairs of other nations; and we shouldn’t be this involved to the point where it undermines everything that we’re doing. But, no, it’s a far cry from pacifism.

But I am very, very annoyed with what has happened over many decades because we have been involved secretly all the way back to overthrowing the government in the 1950s of Iran, which we’re still suffering from. But now, since the last administration, they put it in concrete and said that preventive war is okay, morally okay, which means aggression. We’re now allowed to attack countries whether or not they’ve done any harm to us because they might do us harm someday, and we can’t anticipate that. So we need to go in. And Obama is endorsing that same view because he’s very much involved in spreading the war into Pakistan.

Mike Church: And he’s going to have to spread it into Pakistan. If you read the editorial in Investors Business Daily today, apparently that’s where Taliban recruits are coming from.

Ron Paul: Sure. They just move around. And I think 90-some percent of the Pakistani people don’t like us. They’re sick and tired of us dropping these bombs over there. You know, we go after one so-called Taliban leader, and we kill a lot of civilians. And you wonder why they get annoyed with us? I mean, this is an act of war. So if people say that we shouldn’t bomb Pakistan, that we’re pacifist, I think they are awfully confused.

Mike Church: Congressman Ron Paul, spending some time with us here this morning on the Mike Church Show on Sirius Satellite Radio and XM Satellite Radio. You’re nationwide today, Ron.

Ron Paul: Wow, wonderful.

Mike Church: Staying on that same subject, some constitutional scholars and friends of mine, namely Dr. Kevin Gutzman and Dr. Thomas Woods, who I know you’re familiar with both of them…

Ron Paul: Right.

Mike Church: …think it’s high time that Congress took back the foreign policy-making power that it was granted under the Constitution. What do you think about that?

Ron Paul: Well, that would help a whole lot. But history is against us because Congress too often is derelict in assuming their responsibilities. And I went through this when we were getting ready to go into Iraq. And I heard it said, and I believe it is true, that members of Congress didn’t really want to take the responsibility of declaring and making the decision about going to war. Democrats were still arguing, well, if it goes badly, then we can blame the Republicans for it.

Mike Church: Right, right, right.

Ron Paul: So they don’t like to assume this responsibility, and they always find an excuse. Oh, well, they know more than we do, and we have to do what they tell us. But no, I think their argument is absolutely right. When you look at – of course the word “foreign policy,” the term doesn’t exist in the Constitution. But if you look at the responsibilities of the Congress about raising armies and declaring war and on and on, the President is the Commander in Chief after we instruct him to go to war. That’s it.

Mike Church: Right. And that’s the key point here. Now, some questions that I don’t hear a lot of folks get a chance to ask you, and I’d like to ask these three questions in succession. Number one, your thoughts on the following three things: one, nullification.

Ron Paul: I think it’s a great idea. It was never really successful in our history. But I think it’s going to grow in importance. And I think it’s going to grow because the federal government will be seen as inept and ineffective. And I think it’ll almost be de facto in the sense that the states will eventually just ignore some of the mandates.

Mike Church: An Article V convention, as Dr. Gutzman has suggested, to repair and to clarify the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, to repair and to clarify the Commerce Clause, and there’s one other that he has in there. But those are the two main things that he thinks an Article V convention ought to be called or convened by the states to address. What do you think?

Ron Paul: Yeah, and there’s other places. I mean, people argue that you could make it very emphatic so they couldn’t distort the Second Amendment. I think that’s all good and would be probably worthwhile. But where I would become not overly optimistic about it is that, if we wanted to, and if we fully understood our history and knew original intent, and we had the courts and the executive branch and the Congress already obeying what is very, very clear, we wouldn’t be this bad off. I mean, it’s still pretty clear about the monetary position in the Congress. So changing it and making the language slightly better, if you don’t have a moral people and a moral representation in Washington, it doesn’t matter. And the Constitution in the Soviet system wasn’t the worst thing in the world. It pretended to protect individual rights. But it was the people that was involved. So I would say the moral character of the people and our representation is even more important than changing the words, which I would support anyway.

Mike Church: Then the final one on those three is there are people that have the “s” word on their tongues these days, too, and that is the “secession” word. Is that historically legal, in your estimation?

Ron Paul: Well, it’s been proven illegal because they fought and killed 600,000 people trying to prove it. The Founders believed it was an option that was available. They just assumed it. Too bad they didn’t write that into the Constitution. That would be…

Mike Church: Right.

Ron Paul: That would have been worthwhile. But I think secession probably isn’t going to happen. I think the talk is very positive. But I think it’s going to be close to nullification, that we won’t be seceding. But if governments – let’s say Gary North is right, and they can’t put it back together, and Social Security doesn’t work at all, people are just going to take it upon themselves to totally ignore the federal government. So we might be more loosely knit a nation. And maybe these conditions will force us to bring our troops home. So it can’t be all bad. But I don’t anticipate that all of a sudden we in Texas will secede from the Union and get away with it [laughing].

Mike Church: [Laughing] All right. Our time is just about up. Let me ask you a final, two final questions. Number one, you just mentioned the state of Texas. Your thoughts on the states using the constitutional authority that was not prevented or taken from them, that they did not grant, which is when the dollar goes belly up, issuing their own silver and gold coins.

Ron Paul: Well, you know, they can’t – the Constitution says that the states can only use silver and gold as legal tender.

Mike Church: Right.

Ron Paul: So that does not write a prohibition against a state issuing gold coins. But they did not want the states – they were very explicit. They did not want the states to print their own money.

Mike Church: Right.

Ron Paul: So that would be the prohibition. But for states to issue gold and silver coins, that’s fine. But I tell you, we already have availability of gold and silver coins. And something I’m working on right now is we want to repeal the laws that prevent people from working and using an alternative currency like gold and silver. So I want to get rid of the legal tender laws and get rid of taxes on gold and silver. Then the states would be able to issue their own coins, if they want, or just use the ones that are available.

Mike Church: Okay, fantastic. And final question of the day of Congressman Ron Paul: Can we send you a copy of our movie about the Constitution, “The Spirit of ‘76″?

Ron Paul: I’d be delighted to see that.

Mike Church: We will take you inside of Independence Hall when Madison and Hamilton and Dickinson and Franklin were actually debating the Constitution, and then to the Virginia Ratification Convention. It would be the honor and thrill of my life if you’d watch that movie, Congressman.

Ron Paul: That would be wonderful. I’ll be glad to take a look at that.

Mike Church: Well, listen. Always a pleasure. Merry Christmas to you and to Carol and your entire family. And we’re going to have Rand on here soon to talk about what’s going on in Kentucky. And it’s always a pleasure, Ron. Thank you so much. I appreciate it.

Ron Paul: Thanks a lot. Talk to you later.

Mike Church: All right. Anytime. There you go. Congressman Ron Paul for you there today, ladies and gentlemen. He answers all the questions, doesn’t he.

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