Ron Paul Quotes.com 2006 Ron Paul Chapter 6 Ron Paul Quotes.com: 1 March 2006 Home Page   Contents Congressional Record   Cached Not linked on Ron Paul’s Congressional website.

1 March 2006 2006 Ron Paul 6:1 Mr. PAUL. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent to take my Special Order at this time. The SPEAKER pro tempore. Is there objection to the request of the gentleman from Texas? There was no objection. The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the gentleman from Texas (Mr. PAUL) is recognized for 5 minutes. 2006 Ron Paul 6:2 Mr. PAUL. Mr. Speaker, everyone knows our country is deeply in debt. Most Americans decry the rampant growth in government spending. Essentially, however, no one in Washington is concerned enough to do anything about it. 2006 Ron Paul 6:3 Debt is like an addiction: the political pain of withdrawal keeps politicians spending, so they do not offend any special interest groups demanding that government benefits continue. As with all addictions, long-term dependency on a dangerous substance can kill the patient. Dependency on bad policy also can destroy the goose that many believe lays the golden egg. 2006 Ron Paul 6:4 Our ever-increasing government expenditures, which perpetuate a runaway welfare/warfare state, simply are not sustainable. The fallacy comes from the belief that government can provide for our needs and manage a worldwide empire. In truth, government can provide benefits only by first taking resources from productive American citizens or borrowing against the future. Inevitably, government programs exceed the productive capacity of the people or their willingness to finance wasteful spending. 2006 Ron Paul 6:5 The authority to accumulate deficits provides a tremendous incentive to politicians to increase spending. Total spending is the real culprit. The more government taxes, borrows, or inflates, the less chance the people have to spend their resources wisely. The way government spends money also causes great harm. By their very nature, governments are inefficient and typically operate as we recently witnessed with FEMA in Louisiana, Mississippi, and Texas over the last 6 months. Governments are bureaucratic, inefficient, and invite fraud. This is just as true in foreign affairs as it is in domestic affairs. Throughout history, foreign military adventurism has been economically harmful for those nations bent on intervening abroad. Our Nation is no different. 2006 Ron Paul 6:6 Largesse at home and militarism abroad requires excessive spending and taxation, pushing deficits to a point where the whole system collapses. The biggest recent collapse was the fall of the Soviet Empire just 15 years ago. My contention is that we are not immune from a similar crisis. Today, our national debt is $8.257 trillion. Interestingly, the legal debt limit is $8.184 trillion. 2006 Ron Paul 6:7 This means we currently are $73 billion over the legal debt limit. Creative financing Washington-style allows this to happen, but soon Congress will be forced to increase the national debt limit by hundreds of billions of dollars. Congress will raise the limit, quietly if necessary; and the deficit spiral will continue for a while longer. 2006 Ron Paul 6:8 But this official debt figure barely touches the subject. Total obligations of the Federal Government, including Social Security and Medicare and prescription drugs, are now over $50 trillion, a sum younger generations will not be able to pay. This means the standard of living of a lot of Americans who are retired will decline sharply in the near future. 2006 Ron Paul 6:9 Two vehicles are used to fund this wild spending. First, the Federal Reserve creates dollars out of thin air and purchases Treasury bills without limit, a very nice convenience. 2006 Ron Paul 6:10 Second, foreign entities, mostly central banks, own $1.5 trillion of our debt. They purchased over $200 billion in just the last 12 months, increasing their holdings by 15 percent. This is a consequence of our current account deficit and the outsourcing of more and more American manufacturing jobs. Few economists argue that this arrangement can continue much longer. 2006 Ron Paul 6:11 Excessive spending, a rapidly growing national debt, the Federal Reserve inflation machine, and foreign borrowing all put pressure on the dollar. Unless we treat our addiction to debt, it will play havoc with the dollar, undermine our economic well-being, and destroy our liberties. It is time for us to get our house in order.

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