Ron Paul Goes All In! Won’t Seek Reelection to Congress to Focus on Presidential Campaign

Ron Paul: Thank you.

News Anchor: …why give up your House job?

Ron Paul: Well, I didn’t want to run two campaigns at one time, I’ve done it before, it was criticized, I think the criticism is justified and I think I should concentrate on one campaign and that’s what I’m going to do and I thought it was time to leave the Congress anyway and besides, I don’t think it’s legal under the constitution to be the president and also to be a member of Congress.

News Anchor: I’m sure you’re well aware of this little crisis that’s brewing in Washington these days known as the debt crisis. What is your solution here, do you think?

Ron Paul: Well there’s no easy solution ‘cause it took them about 30 or 40 years to get into this mess, the solution is we have to change our whole attitude about what the role of government ought to be and in the last 100 years, we’ve drifted from the original intent of the constitution where government was to be limited and was there to protect our liberty. So we have a foreign policy that needs dramatically change, we can’t be the policeman of the world, we shouldn’t have a government that is dealing with our personal liberties and dealing and treating us the way they do at Airports, we should have a different monetary system and we certainly shouldn’t go into deficits. We shouldn’t be doing central economic planning and willing to spend all this money that we don’t have. So it’s a major change that we need, but the major change is coming because the country technically is in bankruptcy.

News Anchor: And what is your answer though on the debt ceiling, do you think it should be raised?

Ron Paul: No, absolutely not. I’ve not voted for any of the spending so I’m not going to vote to raise the debt limit and that’s only going to encourage them, and the argument for raising it…

News Anchor: What’s the problem with raising it?

Ron Paul: Well they argued that it’s going to be devastating if we don’t and will default. But I think the problems that we face, if we continue to do what we’re doing is much worse. And besides, we’re currently defaulting constantly, we default when we devalue the currency and that is why our prices are going up. Although today Bernanke claimed that inflation is only a couple percentage points, when you look at the free market economists, they claim that inflation is over 9% according to CPI that we used to use. So there’s still a lot of inflation, that means defaulting on the people, because they’re getting paid money that loses its value, they save money, they lose its value and people who owe money get to pay back with cheap money, and that’s also the way governments usually default on their debt. They devalue the currency, very dangerous and eventually ends up very badly with a lot more inflation.

News Anchor: Well your feelings certainly are well known about the Federal Reserve and as I said it was quite entertaining to watch you tangle with Ben Bernanke today. I want to play some of that and then I want to ask you about it, so let’s listen.

Ron Paul: then we also have the Fed to deal with too, and I see the Fed as a problem because I see so much of this other spending wouldn’t have gotten out of hand if we didn’t have a monetary system where the system provides the funds, we don’t have to be responsible because we can always say “Well it’s up to the Fed.” If we didn’t have the Fed buying up our debt, interest rates would rise and everybody would yell and scream, but you know what it would do? It would put pressure on us here in the Congress to do something about it.

Ben Bernanke: You’re mistaken in saying that the Federal Reserve has spent any money, you say 5 trillion, we have lent money, we have purchased securities, that’s not buying, that’s not dissipating the money, we’ve gotten all the money back, as an article over the weekend by Ellen Sloane showed in fact the Fed has been a major profit center for the US government. We’ve turned over profits in the last two years of $125 billion, so we are not costing any money in terms of budget deficits or anything like that.

News Anchor: So I want to give you the last word here Congressman on that little debate there, I mean you have gone so far as to say that we don’t even need the Fed, why is that?

Ron Paul: Well, the Fed creates the financial bubbles and if you have a financial bubble, you have to have a correction, the correction is a recession and a depression and then the price inflation and you have the unemployment. So their purpose is to give us low unemployment and stable prices and we don’t get any of it. So we’re not getting much for it, but for him to say they don’t spend any money, that’s a bit of strain language because he claims if you buy a security that you’re just adding reserves into the system. But where did he get the money? I mean and he brags about the profits, I’ll tell you what, if I had absolute control of the printing press, I bet I could make some profits too, it wouldn’t take a genius to make profit. But to say technically speaking he’s not spending money like we do in the Congress, but he is printing money and he is buying junk. He buys all the securities that nobody else wanted and that’s how he bailed out the banks and he bailed out corporations. So as far as I’m concerned in a practical sense that is spending money, money that he created out of thin air and the people suffer and the point I made during the conference was, in the past three years, the economy has not improved and we’ve ended up with a$5 trillion increase in the national debt.

News Anchor: So Congressman before I let you go, I’m sure you pay attention to the polls, close attention, if you don’t become president, now that you’ve given up your job at the House, what will you do?

Ron Paul: Well, first I’m going to concentrate on the campaign and actually we’re pretty optimistic about that compared to four years ago and one thing that we do know that when we look at our own polls is that the support I have is very solid, they’re not going to go anywhere, the support for other candidates, they jump around. But I’ll continue to do what I’ve been doing in office or out of office, I’ve dedicated myself to defending individual liberty, that’s the most important thing. If we have our liberties, we won’t have to worry about our prosperity, the prosperity will come. But if you give up our liberties as we have been, our prosperity dissipates and that’s what happening. So I’ll keep fighting for that which means sound money, free markets, a sensible foreign policy and balance budget, but to concentrate on the principle that every individual deserves their liberties and free people can take care of themselves much better than anything we can do with the dependency on government and central economic planning.

News Anchor: Well I know that you’ve been working hard to change people’s minds and change the country and we wish you the best of luck with that and when we call you on August 3rd after the debt ceiling deadline, we hope you’ll take the call and come back on the show and talk to us about that.

Ron Paul: Thank you very much.