The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a
previous order of the House, the gentleman
from Texas (Mr. PAUL) is recognized
for 5 minutes.
2010 Ron Paul 2:1
Mr. PAUL.
Mr. Speaker, I rise at this
time to talk about a piece of legislation
that I have recently introduced.
That legislation is H.R. 4248. It is
called the Free Competition in Currency
Act. I believe long term this is a
piece of legislation that will play an
important role in the monetary reform
that will be a necessity if we continue
to do what we have been doing with our
economy and our financial system.
2010 Ron Paul 2:2
We are in the middle of a financial
crisis today. Some people think we
have turned a corner, but, quite frankly,
I do not believe that has occurred.
Recently, though, we have just had the
opening bells of an inquiry into what
the cause of the crisis has been. It is
the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission.
It is a take-off of the Pecora Commission
that was established in the
1930s to figure out why the crash occurred
then. Of course, that commission
met and talked to people. They
tried to figure out what was the matter.
And from my viewpoint, they came
down with all of the wrong conclusions.
They said that the Federal Reserve was
involved, that the Federal Reserve
didn’t print enough money fast enough
and they didn’t have a big enough bailout
package and they needed a lot
more regulation.
2010 Ron Paul 2:3
So they did all of those things for the
first time in our history, under the two
administrations, the Hoover and the
Roosevelt administrations, and they
prolonged the Depression. They took a
1-year depression/recession and turned
it into a 15-year depression.
2010 Ron Paul 2:4
So I believe what we are going
through right now is the same old song
and dance. We are doing the same thing
again. We have this new inquiry, and
the members of the commission are
people who didn’t see it coming, didn’t
explain it, and didn’t anticipate it. And
the people who are coming before the
commission, as far as I can see so far,
had no anticipation or are acting surprised
that the crisis came and that
there was a bubble. So I can hardly see
any good results coming from this.
2010 Ron Paul 2:5
My position over the many years has
been that the Federal Reserve is a dangerous
organization because it creates
the bubble. Our country would be better
off with a strong central bank like
the Federal Reserve. I argue from a
moral, economic, and a constitutional
viewpoint that it has no right to exist
and it is very dangerous to us.
2010 Ron Paul 2:6
I am very pleased, though, that one
of the pieces of legislation I introduced,
H.R. 1207, to audit the Federal
Reserve, has met with a large amount
of support. We have 316 cosponsors of
that bill, and I think that is a major
step in the right direction, looking to
the Federal Reserve for the cause of
our problem: the easy money system,
the easy credit, the fixing of interest
rates too low.
2010 Ron Paul 2:7
Now, the reason I am addressing this
is because I believe the correction has
a long way to run and that eventually
we will have to have monetary reform.
Now, in spite of my position being that
we don’t need the Federal Reserve, I
am not in favor of closing the Federal
Reserve down in one day or two. But I
do believe the monetary system will
close down this government and the
monetary system and the Federal Reserve
and a lot of other things if we
continue on our profligate ways of
spending and borrowing and inflating
the currency and regulating the currency,
and this will get much worse
until we have a total collapse of the
system.
2010 Ron Paul 2:8
So my bill, what it does is it introduces
competition, competition in currencies.
The Federal Reserve system
and the dollar standard is run by a cartel,
a monopoly. They don’t allow competition
because they know that they
can’t compete. Just as we have competition
in the post office with FedEx
and UPS, I think that the Federal Reserve
deserves a little competition. The
public school system has competition
with private schools and it has competition
with home schooling. There is
no reason in the world that we can’t
enforce the Constitution, legalize the
Constitution and say that we can have
competitions in currencies, but there
are three major things that we must do
to do that, and the bill does this. We
repeal legal tender laws and remove
the monopoly control of the Federal
Reserve. We legalize private mints so
mints can mint coins, and they will be
controlled by fraud laws and
anticounterfeit laws.
2010 Ron Paul 2:9
Today, our government commits
fraud and counterfeit by printing
money at will. If a private organization
did that, they would be imprisoned for
the fraud they are causing.
2010 Ron Paul 2:10
But the other important reform that
would have to occur for money to circulate
and compete against the monopoly
control of the Federal Reserve
would be to take taxes off money. The
Constitution says only gold and silver
can be money, only that can be legal
tender, so you can’t tax it and allow it
to be competitive.
2010 Ron Paul 2:11
So these things could occur, and if
nobody wanted to use it they wouldn’t
have to and everybody could be happy
with the Federal Reserve. But if the
conditions get so chaotic and the people
are looking for an alternative, they
can go and start operating in another
currency.
2010 Ron Paul 2:12
So this to me could provide a smooth
transition. It would not be chaotic. It
would be legalized in the Constitution.
It would be good, sound economics;
and, eventually, the most important
thing it would do, it would restrain the
spending of this Congress, because as
long as you have a Federal Reserve
over there willing to print up the
money any time we spend more money
that we don’t have and we can’t borrow,
then the Federal Reserve will accommodate
us. Therefore, I argue the
case for competition in currency and
strictly limit it in government.
