Date: 05/23/2011
by Ron Paul
The federal government once again has reached the limit of its legal ability to borrow money, meaning it cannot issue new Treasury debt without action by Congress to increase the debt ceiling limit. As of this month, our “official” national debt- which doesn’t include the staggering future payments promised to Social Security and Medicare beneficiaries- stands at $14.2 trillion.
The debt ceiling law, passed in 1917, enables Congress to place a statutory cap on the total amount of government debt rather than having to approve each individual Treasury bond offering. It also, however, forces Congress into an open and presumably somewhat shameful vote to approve more borrowing. If the new Republican majority in the House of Representatives gives in to establishment pressure by voting to increase the debt ceiling once again, you will know that the status quo has prevailed. You will know that the simple notion of balancing the budget, by limiting federal spending to federal revenue, remains a shallow and laughable campaign platitude.
It is predictable that Congress will once again merely delay the inevitable and raise the debt ceiling, after the usual rhetoric about controlling spending, making cuts, and yes, raising taxes. We have heard endless warnings about how irresponsible it would be to “shut down the government.” The implication is that sober, rational, mature pundits and politicians understand reality, while those who oppose raising the debt ceiling limit are reckless ideologues who will harm the economy just to make a point.
But like any debtor that has to reduce its spending, the federal government simply needs to establish priorities and stop spending money on anything other than those priorities. Interest payments on our federal bond debt likely will amount to about $500 billion for fiscal year 2011, an average of $41 billion per month. Federal tax revenues vary by month, but should total around $2 trillion to $2.5 trillion for FY 2011– an average of perhaps $180 billion per month. So clearly the federal government has sufficient tax revenue to make interest payments to our creditors. For now, those interest payments represent about 12% of the total federal budget.
What nobody wants to admit is this: even if the federal government has only $1.5 trillion remaining to spend in 2011 after interest payments, this is PLENTY to fund the constitutional functions of government. After all, the entire federal budget in 1990 was about $1 trillion. Does anyone seriously believe the federal government was too small or too frugal just 20 years ago? Hardly. So why have we allowed the federal budget to quadruple during those 20 years?
The truth is, in spite of how cataclysmic some might say it would be if we did not pass a new debt ceiling, it is hardly the catastrophe that has been advertised. The debt ceiling is a self-imposed limit on borrowing. The signal congress sends to worldwide markets by raising the debt ceiling is simple: business as usual will continue in Washington; no real spending cuts will be made; and fiscal austerity will remain a pipe dream.
When our creditors finally wise up and cut us off, we will be forced to face economic realities whether we want to or not. It would be easier to deal with the tough choices we face now, on our own terms, rather than wait until we are at the mercy of foreign creditors. However, leaders in Washington have no political will to admit that we cannot afford to continue spending without any meaningful limit. They prefer maintaining the illusion and putting off reality for another day.
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We shouldn’t allow our country go down the drain just to make a point for the political reasons or because of political ideology. And for those who fall in line with the right-wing Tea Party movement I suggest you read an article from Webster G. Tarpley titled “The US Constitution Makes Default Illegal: What a Real President Would Do on August 1, 2011.” We are talking about losing our credit rating around the world and sending the financial markets into the psycho zone. Not even Reagan allowed that to happen what makes Mr. Paul so different? Why would he be so cavalier about our nation going to the brink of financial disaster? The debt ceiling was raised during Reagan and Bush’s administration and every other administration. Why didn’t Ron Paul advocate this policy during the Bush administration instead of focusing on “ending the fed” so much? This is why I see this as a partisan war and I am sick of the wars of ideology at the expense of the American people. Why didn’t he vote against the war? Certainly we could have saved a Trillion! Lets not forget that it was George Bush who spent like a drunken sailor and started this insane path. This is about America, our future generations and a stable world in the end. We can’t take a chance to see our nation fail just to see a Republican in the White House in 2012. Americas should be embarrassed if we default and I am surprise that Mr. Paul is taking this it-could -be-a-good-thing if we fail stance as well as his flat tax ideology, which only benefits the rich. [I consider myself an independent who supported Mr. Paul in the past ]
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Ok this is the kind of stuff that we are going broke from…. Right now, this very minute (as of 12:00 central time), there legislation in the House, specifically H.R. 440 that is being pushed as “our” responsibility. They are trying to create a “special envoy”, essentially a government funded body of people, that WE, me and you will pay for, that will be stewards of religious freedom world wide. The purpose of this group is to ensure religious freedom for Central Asia, Egypt, Afganistan, Iraq (these were named specifically) and other FORIEGN countries. They have cited that it is “OUR” responsibility to protect religious freedom in these countries! This is NOT our job or place to deal with. It is the responsibility of those countries leaders and the people that put them there or refuse to rise up against their own style of government that prohibits those freedoms! It is a sad thing, horrible yes….but NOT OUR RESPONSIBILITY! It is not our job to send representatives and/or money to other countries to strong-arm them into creating, policing, and protecting THEIR CITIZENS rights, in THEIR countries.
The Author of this bill was
Frank Wolf, R-Virginia 10th Dist.;
Supporters are listed as follows as they spoke-
Supporters:
Anna Eshoo – D-California 14th Dist
Christopher Smith – R-New Jersey 4th Dist
Howard Berman – D-California 28th Dist
Jan Schakowsky – D-Illinois 9th Dist
Rober Dold – R-Illinois 10th Dist
Gary Peters – D-Michigan 9th Dist
Joseph Pitts – R-Pennsylvania 16th Dist
Zeo Lofgren – D-California 16th Dist/ She wants to add Veitnam
If these are your congressmen/women…You should know what they are trying to do!
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I agree, we should not fund them. Freedom of religion is one thing, but freedom from religion is a higher priority. 100% of the countries where the religious take over the culture, they ruin the other freedoms that secular folks enjoy in their attempts to live free lives. The United States is milder than some, but the Christians still she be ashamed of themselves for pushing their morality into the arena of victimless crimes. I am glad that Ron Paul does not want to completely shove is bronze-aged religion down our collective throats.
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Anyone who claims that either I am “A” or “B” is another example of irrational thinking, when A and B are not mutually exclusive, nor they come anywhere near to covering the entire possible space of “U”. There is no need to comment any further on those remarks.
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In response to another remark: The idea of ownership of the air we breath goes back a long time. A group action law suit in England, during the industrial revolution resulted in the loss of that property, in favor of dirty industries, for the good of the whole, over the good of the individual. The courts felt that the benefits of the industrial revolution out-weighed individual rights.
Rothbard, Rand and others have globbed onto this in their Objectivist and Libertarianism writings. Rothbard was an agnostic and Rand was a hard-core atheist. There logic was consistent and reason-based as opposed to basing beliefs on faith.
Rand especially understood the importance in the “free will” premise in her theory. That is why she, and others would try to push reductionist science into the same camp as the Marxists. Reductionist materialism, is the reason we have GPS on our iPhones. The hypothesis, is that you can break down any system into its parts, and study the parts to learn about them. It has been the most succesful theory in the history of man. It is the reason we have germ theory. Something always causes something else.
How does this all tie into the Fed? Well, if the entire premise has has a flawed hypothesis, then the entire system collapses. If both libertarianism and the FED are based on false hypothesis, then we should look at a different solution.
There are no natural rights. You simply have to take them, otherwise they should be taken to be priveledges that can be taken away at anytime. We are the 5th ape (I will let you google the other 4). Some of us like our freedom, but there are many alpha-males out there with lots of money and power. Government will continue to grow until it collapses under its own weight.
Live free or die, but stop whining about it.
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Let me clarify a little. Sorry, I just noticed that some people responded to me.
Ron Paul would be okay as a Treasury Secretary.
faith-based thinking example: “Evolution is just a theory.” I don’t think it was the media that put those typical, Tea Party-sounding words in his mouth
he mentioned that abortion is a crime and it is up to the states to decide the punishment, therefore he does not believe in the woman’s ownership of her own body. Google “Rothbard”. Google: Negative Rights
The concept of “Natural Rights” and “Free Will” are just theorys, and they have much weaker legs to stand on than evolution does. Show me a rabbit fossile in the Cambrian. I will pay you as much cash as I can collect on selling my house for it, if you can prove it is real. There are plenty of ways to falsify a good scientific theory like Evolution By Natural Selection. Do I need to google it for Dr. Paul?
You have to be willing to spend time in jail, if you have a true cause, otherwise you are just a whimp. I admire Dr. Paul for his consistent stance against the DEA, the FED and other areas.
What worries me more, is the Tea Party whiners, who are just now starting to whine about Obama, as if freedom hasn’t already been taken away from us by many of their fenatically, religious viewpoints. They believe in reading the even-number rights only, and then only the first sentences, and skim over the documents by Jefferson, because he was not one of them – he was more of a diest – not bad thinking for a guy born well before Charles Darwin.
On all Gore’s science – yes, Al Gore cherry-picks his science just like Tea Party, cherry-pick their books of faith. It has it’s good and it’s bad side. On the bad side, it turns them into hipocrites of the worst sort and enables them to use God as an excuse to take away freedoms from people they don’t like. They send DEA thugs into all the states (not just IRS thugs – that is all they care about).
Yes, I am saying set up a barter system on the web and stop whining about the Federal Reserve Notes. Publisize every DEA agent and every IRS agent who has ever broken one rule. Tie them up in civil courts by sueing them personally. But honestly, the DEA is the worst of these, yet the whining Tea Party folks don’t care about other people’s lives, especially if they are no longer a fetus.
The fact that 80% of American are essentially glorified zombie worshipers, and that the Tea Party members are a big part of the extreme end of that camp, reall worries me. Having someone like that in power is not a good idea. You never know when their faith will overpower their reason. Yes, Al Gore does the same thing. That is what politicians do.
There are articles on climate change that you can read abut in Scientific American. Yes, they support funding for science, but they have really hit the biofuel industry with hard facts. There are several articles on the validity of the Climate Change science.
My thing is this. I had to live under this DEA thug regime all of my life. To be free, I had to follow what I thought was right. Now that the Christian right’s precious Federal Reserve Notes are being threatened. Many of these people are responsible for continuing with the corporate oligarchy too, because many of them are business owners in the Malls and elsewhere. These people get lobbyists at the local, state and Federal level to pass regulations so that a poor guy who knows how to cook a hotdog, can’t put up a stand on the sidewalk in front of the Mall. So many of these people are anti-free-market, pro-corporate group rights when it comes to their own businesses. Profit, not freedom is their ownly motive. Don’t whine to the government about it, if you cannot do the right thing for others yourself. The government was put into place to protect individual rights, but the Tea Party just whines about it, while doing something completely different.
Yes, Ron Paul has been consistent for a long time now. He is kind of old, and I see him listening more and more to the tea party. It’s a mute point anyway, since I live in California. It’s a blue state and Ron Paul will never be on the ticket.
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You belong in an enclosed room, on your own, with no audience. First off please have someone proofread and translate your work on your behalf. Secondly, keep your bigoted mind to yourself. Go peddly your Jew-hate to your dumb radical friends and not on unrelated youTube pages in a shall attempt to find an audience.
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Cut military expenses is a more real stuff. Focus on what Americans own now through innovations, not through Jewish languages of ownership. We don’t have ownership on breathing air, don’t foolishly trying to like those ancient Jewish philosophers. Their sick wishes dug graves for their own population and collapsed their own countries many times already because even Jews themselves can’t survive within their own sick old languages and thoughts.
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Cut military expenses is a more real stuff. Focus on what Americans own now through innovations, not through Jewish languages of ownership. We don’t have ownership on breathing air, don’t foolishly trying to like those ancient Jewish philosophers. Their sick wishes dug graves for their own population and collapsed their own countries many times already because even Jews themselves can’t survive within their own sick old languages and thoughts.
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Debt ceiling is not a real stuff or god. Creating that debt ceiling is a religious of crisis, just like some man-made promises of Jesus’ returns or man-made beliefs of raptures. Childish minds can only create childish gods even you childishly gold plated everything. Ron Paul 2012 should know about blind spots through histories. Stop fooling around with languages like those in GOP old boys club.
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Debt ceiling is not a real stuff or god. Creating that debt ceiling is a religious of crisis, just like some man-made promises of Jesus’ returns or man-made beliefs of raptures. Childish minds can only create childish gods even you childishly gold plated everything. Ron Paul 2012 should know about blind spots through histories. Stop fooling around with languages like those in GOP old boys club.
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What about tax loopholes the rich pay no taxes because of these loopholes , but the republicans don’t want to close the loopholes they want to cut SS and every program for the poor and middle class.. real winners these guys.
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What about tax loopholes the rich pay no taxes because of these loopholes , but the republicans don’t want to close the loopholes they want to cut SS and every program for the poor and middle class.. real winners these guys.
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Paul is a idiot.. so flush the country down the toilet…
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Paul is a idiot.. so flush the country down the toilet…
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this country should break up into smaller countries. into about four parts. Who has dept now????
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listen to this guy next week they are raising the debt ceiling again watch.
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listen to this guy next week they are raising the debt ceiling again watch.
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You will all see that he is right on aug 2 onwards when a loaf of bread will cost $27.You wont believe it now but will wish you had prepared and listened very very soon.Look into it this new world order.And prepare for the worst and hope for the best.You will be able to rely on yourself or a FEMA camp when they take your homes seize your food supplies(3 days worth allowed)pay you no social security benefits.no food stamps.no food.food is your commodity people wake up
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You will all see that he is right on aug 2 onwards when a loaf of bread will cost $27.You wont believe it now but will wish you had prepared and listened very very soon.Look into it this new world order.And prepare for the worst and hope for the best.You will be able to rely on yourself or a FEMA camp when they take your homes seize your food supplies(3 days worth allowed)pay you no social security benefits.no food stamps.no food.food is your commodity people wake up
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You will all see that he is right on aug 2 onwards when a loaf of bread will cost $27.You wont believe it now but will wish you had prepared and listened very very soon.Look into it this new world order.And prepare for the worst and hope for the best.You will be able to rely on yourself or a FEMA camp when they take your homes seize your food supplies(3 days worth allowed)pay you no social security benefits.no food stamps.no food.food is your commodity people wake up
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A default on US bonds is not allowed by the Constitution and would be an impeachable offense. If Obama is not able to negotiate a debt ceiling increase, the Obama Administration effectively goes into default. Congress holds the pursestrings and must abide by Constitutional priorities. Debt must be paid first. A huge cut in federal employees is the only option. I suggest cutting Departments of Education, Labor, Transportation completely with drastic cuts to other depts.
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Ron Paul has exposed the fiat money system for what it is by proposing that we just tear up bonds that the Fed has issued for quantitative easing. Various economists can find no downside to that solution. Many have called it “surprisingly lucid”, including The New Republic. Even liberal economists can find no reason not to, however it is getting no traction on Capitol Hill. It would mean the end of the Federal Reserve and the money power structure as we know it, when we all realize that the national debt is just not real.
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… You’re awfully quiet about it publicly. In fact nobody speaks out against the outrageous defense budget. The Europeans are quiet … and quietly laughing too. They know that as long as America is carrying their water spending $700 billion annually, Europe doesn’t have to carry its loan and help pay for its own defense. Instead, European companies and governments can put that money into domestic technologies and eat our lunch in better automobile and aerospace technologies.
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Some of us are outraged about defense spending.
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… well, one thing that you can ask for … is a brain!! Ron Paul is a flake, and isn’t even a real Republican. And! His toupee wearing racist son Rand is also a flake, and a coward. He’s been silent for months. Must be afraid to put that toupee under too much light. Grow a brain!
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… quit spending huh? The Defense budget was more than doubled during the Bush years … from $300 billion to over $700 billion a year. That’s $1.4 trillion every two years for Defense. China spends only $120 billion a year in Defense, Russia only $86 billion a year. The U.S. spends more on Defense annually than every other country combined. Why do you “quit spending” types never get upset about our biggest money drainer … the Defense budget! That’s who has the money.
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Raising the debt ceiling is no answer. QUIT SPENDING. Thats the answer
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With Ron in the House, Rand in the Senate and God in his heaven, what more can you ask for?
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Einstein and Hitler were Jews. Google “Hitler DNA”
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What our founding fathers envisioned was personal freedom.
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My prayer,along with millions are with you Dr. Paul,God’s speed in 2012
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My prayer,along with millions are with you Dr. Paul,God’s speed in 2012
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As of now, 2 people like to spend beyond their means.
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exactly, but the people in the media demonize ron because of it and it makes me sick because many people are fans of the media people and are convinced by their word and will never listen to ron.
i listen to the radio and that is where i hear this hypocrites saying they want freedom but go against ron paul.
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exactly, but the people in the media demonize ron because of it and it makes me sick because many people are fans of the media people and are convinced by their word and will never listen to ron.
i listen to the radio and that is where i hear this hypocrites saying they want freedom but go against ron paul.
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