Ron Paul Quotes.com 2004 Ron Paul Chapter 60 Ron Paul Quotes.com: Financing Operations, Export Financing, And Related Programs Appropriations Act, 2005 15 July 2004 Home Page   Contents Congressional Record   Cached Not linked on Ron Paul’s Congressional website.

Financing Operations, Export Financing, And Related Programs Appropriations Act, 2005 15 July 2004 The Committee resumed its sitting. Mr. SANDERS. Mr. Chairman, I yield 3 minutes to my friend, the gentleman from Texas (Mr. PAUL). (Mr. PAUL asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.) 2004 Ron Paul 60:1 Mr. PAUL. Mr. Chairman, the author of the amendment, and I am a coauthor of it, mentioned that it has a broad spectrum of individuals supporting it. He mentioned progressives and liberals and conservatives and moderates, but he forgot the libertarians. 2004 Ron Paul 60:2 Libertarians support this as well and for a precise reason. A free market libertarian does not believe in welfare for anybody, let alone the rich, and it is particularly gnawing to see the subsidies go to the very wealthy. 2004 Ron Paul 60:3 I am in strong support of this amendment, but, like the gentleman from California, I do not support this for the purpose of collecting more taxes, but I do think it is a message to us here that if we do not revise our tax system and our regulatory system we will prompt more and more business to leave this country. 2004 Ron Paul 60:4 So there are two issues here, but corporate welfare and subsidies should have no part in this. There is no room for it. It is wrong. 2004 Ron Paul 60:5 Also, the beneficiaries outside the corporations we should not forget either, because the biggest country that benefits from this is China. Why do we subsidize China? People who receive the goods get a benefit as well as the people who get to sell the goods get a benefit? China is on the books right now currently with $5.9 billion in outstanding loans. They receive more than anybody else. So there is something wrong with a system like that. 2004 Ron Paul 60:6 There are two economic points that I want to make on this. When we do this and we allow tax credit and special deals for some corporations, we assume, and we will hear this in the defense of the Ex-Im Bank, and say look at the good that we do. But what they fail to ask is, where did it come from, who was denied the credit? The fact that we do not finance it does not mean it would not happen. It would happen. 2004 Ron Paul 60:7 What it does is it distorts the market and causes people to do the wrong thing, and some individuals do not get the credit is obviously the case, but what we need to do is to have a much more oriented free market. When we direct it this way, even those companies may do more than they ordinarily would, and that participates in the economic bubble that occurs, of course, for other reasons as well. Then there has to be corrections. But if one is in a powerful position in a place where they can qualify, and 80 percent of this goes to the very, very large companies, although there are a lot of companies that receive the big bucks, and big countries like China. 2004 Ron Paul 60:8 This is corporate welfare. It should be defeated; and, ultimately, if we believe in liberty and freedom, we ought to get rid of the Export-Import Bank.

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