Tagged: Ron Paul’s Writings

Ron Paul: Economic Freedom and Diplomacy Lead to Peace & Prosperity

width="500" height="281" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/xK3M_nBf_CU?fs=1&wmode=transparent&%23038;feature=oembed" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen>

by Ron Paul

Many people have the misconception that sanctions are an effective means to encourage a change of behavior in another country without war. However, imposing sanctions and blockades are not only an act of war according to international law, they are most often the first step toward a real war starting with a bombing campaign. Sanctions were the first step in our wars against Iraq and Libya, and now more sanctions planned against Syria and Iran are leading down the same destructive path.

According to the International Atomic Energy Agency’s (IAEA) latest report, just out this month, there is no evidence that Iran has diverted enriched uranium from the peaceful and lawful generation of power toward building a nuclear weapon. According to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, Iran has every right to develop nuclear energy for peaceful purposes. Unfortunately, US foreign policy has boxed Iran into a corner where they may view development of a nuclear weapon as the only way to maintain sovereignty. They are surrounded by unfriendly nuclear powers and history has shown that having a nuclear weapon is the best way to avoid being bombed or invaded. The unintended consequences of our confrontational policies toward Iran may be to actually encourage them to seek nuclear weapons capabilities. We should be using diplomacy rather than threats and hostility.

Fortunately there is another way. Nothing promotes peace better than free trade. Countries that trade with each other generally do not make war on each other, as both countries gain economic benefits they do not want to jeopardize. China is a massive nuclear power yet it does not seek military confrontation with the United States. Trade is much more profitable. Also trade and friendship applies much more effective persuasion to encourage better behavior, as does leading by example. Alarmingly, tough new sanctions are under consideration that would also punish Iran’s trading partners, including China, Russia, and possibly our NATO allies such as Germany.

Conversely, sanctions allow regimes to blame their shortcomings on foreigners, thereby maintaining a hold on power. They rarely even inconvenience elites in the target countries. They simply provide a common enemy to rally the people against and undermine internal dissent. Consider how well the embargo has worked against Cuba. Fidel Castro and his regime may be annoyed by the inability to trade with their neighbors just 90 miles away, but American businessmen also lose out in the bargain. That means less jobs and less freedom at home.

We should be clear about this: sanctions against Iran are definite steps toward a US attack. Already we see US warships approaching the region, moving dangerously close to Syrian waters. The tougher sanctions currently under consideration would disrupt global trade and undermine the US economy, which in turn harms our national security. Foreign companies or foreign subsidiaries of US companies would be severely punished if they did not submit to the US trade embargo on Iran. We must change our foreign policy to one of economic freedom and diplomacy. That is the only way to promote peace and prosperity. This race to war against Iran and Syria is both foolhardy and dangerous.

Related posts:

  1. Ron Paul: Cut Foreign Aid, Unshackle Israel, Leave Iran Alone Transcript News Anchor: Well, the candidates last night did not…
  2. Ron Paul: The Most Pro-Israel Candidate Day after day we receive many questions about Ron Paul’s…
  3. Ron Paul’s Foreign Policy: Peace & Respect – Not Intimidation, Bribes & War Ron Paul: The Soviet Union detonated its first nuclear bomb…

Related Posts:

Ron Paul: Cut Spending Now to Put America Back on the Path to Liberty & Prosperity

width="500" height="281" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/bI976wea00Q?fs=1&wmode=transparent&%23038;feature=oembed" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen>

by href="http://www.ronpaul.com" >Ron Paul

This week marks the deadline for the so-called congressional Super Committee to meet its goal of cutting a laughably small amount of federal spending over the next decade. In fact the Committee merely needs to cut about $120 billion annually from the federal budget over the next 10 years to meet its modest goals, but even this paltry amount has produced hand-wringing and hysteria on Capitol Hill. This is only cutting proposed increases. It has nothing to do with actually cutting anything. This shows how unserious politicians are about our very serious debt problems.

To be fair, however, in one sense members of the Super Committee face an impossible task. They must, in effect, cut government spending without first addressing the role of government in our society. They must continue to insist the federal government can provide Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid benefits in the future as promised, while maintaining our wildly interventionist foreign policy. Yet everyone knows this is a lie.

Keep in mind that the 2011 federal deficit alone was about $1.3 trillion, which means the Super Committee needs to cut that much PER YEAR rather than over a 10 year period. If Congress ever hopes to address its debt problem, it must first stop accumulating any new debt immediately, in href="http://www.ronpaul.com/ronpaul2012/" >2012.

Federal revenue likely will be about $2.3 trillion in fiscal href="http://www.ronpaul.com/ronpaul2012/" >2012. The 2004 federal budget was about $2.3 trillion. So Congress simply needs to adopt the 2004 budget next year and the federal government will balance outlays and revenue. That’s all it would take to produce a balanced budget right now. Was the federal government really too small just 7 years ago, in 2004? Of course not. Only Washington hysteria would have us believe otherwise.

Yet our Republican and Democrat friends on the Super Committee want to take 10 years, or even 30 years, to produce a balanced budget.

Government spending isn’t just wasteful; it is often actively harmful to stated goals. The Super Committee could simply apply 2004 spending levels across the board and a tremendous victory for fiscal sanity would be accomplished.

What seems more likely, however, is a rearrangement of the tax code in an attempt to bring in more revenue. Deductions and credits will be taken away, and the Bush tax cuts will be allowed to expire. As a result, less money will remain in the private sector to create jobs and produce economic growth. The Super Committee has an opportunity to take a small baby step in the right direction. Instead, they no doubt will take this opportunity to raise taxes and make everything worse. But increasing taxes will only diminish freedom and deepen the recession. Instead of looking for ways to hike taxes under the guise of “raising revenue,” the Super Committee should put forth a plan of real spending cuts to put America back on the path to liberty and prosperity.

Related posts:

  1. href='http://www.ronpaul.com/2011-07-19/ron-paul-reduce-spending-reform-government-restore-americas-prosperity/' rel='bookmark' title='Ron Paul: Reduce Spending, Reform Government, Restore America’s Prosperity'>Ron Paul: Reduce Spending, Reform Government, Restore America’s Prosperity Today, 2012 Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul issued a statement…
  2. href='http://www.ronpaul.com/2011-07-20/ron-paul-rein-in-government-spending-to-reduce-the-debt/' rel='bookmark' title='Ron Paul: Rein in Government Spending to Reduce the Debt'>Ron Paul: Rein in Government Spending to Reduce the Debt Transcript Chris Cotter: … but today it’s all about the…
  3. href='http://www.ronpaul.com/2011-05-23/ron-paul-stop-raising-the-debt-ceiling/' rel='bookmark' title='Ron Paul: Stop Raising the Debt Ceiling'>Ron Paul: Stop Raising the Debt Ceiling Date: 05/23/2011 by Ron Paul The federal government once again…

Related Posts:

Ron Paul: Cut Spending Now to Put America Back on the Path to Liberty & Prosperity

width="500" height="281" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/bI976wea00Q?fs=1&wmode=transparent&%23038;feature=oembed" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen>

by href="http://www.ronpaul.com" >Ron Paul

This week marks the deadline for the so-called congressional Super Committee to meet its goal of cutting a laughably small amount of federal spending over the next decade. In fact the Committee merely needs to cut about $120 billion annually from the federal budget over the next 10 years to meet its modest goals, but even this paltry amount has produced hand-wringing and hysteria on Capitol Hill. This is only cutting proposed increases. It has nothing to do with actually cutting anything. This shows how unserious politicians are about our very serious debt problems.

To be fair, however, in one sense members of the Super Committee face an impossible task. They must, in effect, cut government spending without first addressing the role of government in our society. They must continue to insist the federal government can provide Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid benefits in the future as promised, while maintaining our wildly interventionist foreign policy. Yet everyone knows this is a lie.

Keep in mind that the 2011 federal deficit alone was about $1.3 trillion, which means the Super Committee needs to cut that much PER YEAR rather than over a 10 year period. If Congress ever hopes to address its debt problem, it must first stop accumulating any new debt immediately, in href="http://www.ronpaul.com/ronpaul2012/" >2012.

Federal revenue likely will be about $2.3 trillion in fiscal href="http://www.ronpaul.com/ronpaul2012/" >2012. The 2004 federal budget was about $2.3 trillion. So Congress simply needs to adopt the 2004 budget next year and the federal government will balance outlays and revenue. That’s all it would take to produce a balanced budget right now. Was the federal government really too small just 7 years ago, in 2004? Of course not. Only Washington hysteria would have us believe otherwise.

Yet our Republican and Democrat friends on the Super Committee want to take 10 years, or even 30 years, to produce a balanced budget.

Government spending isn’t just wasteful; it is often actively harmful to stated goals. The Super Committee could simply apply 2004 spending levels across the board and a tremendous victory for fiscal sanity would be accomplished.

What seems more likely, however, is a rearrangement of the tax code in an attempt to bring in more revenue. Deductions and credits will be taken away, and the Bush tax cuts will be allowed to expire. As a result, less money will remain in the private sector to create jobs and produce economic growth. The Super Committee has an opportunity to take a small baby step in the right direction. Instead, they no doubt will take this opportunity to raise taxes and make everything worse. But increasing taxes will only diminish freedom and deepen the recession. Instead of looking for ways to hike taxes under the guise of “raising revenue,” the Super Committee should put forth a plan of real spending cuts to put America back on the path to liberty and prosperity.

Related posts:

  1. href='http://www.ronpaul.com/2011-07-19/ron-paul-reduce-spending-reform-government-restore-americas-prosperity/' rel='bookmark' title='Ron Paul: Reduce Spending, Reform Government, Restore America’s Prosperity'>Ron Paul: Reduce Spending, Reform Government, Restore America’s Prosperity Today, 2012 Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul issued a statement…
  2. href='http://www.ronpaul.com/2011-07-20/ron-paul-rein-in-government-spending-to-reduce-the-debt/' rel='bookmark' title='Ron Paul: Rein in Government Spending to Reduce the Debt'>Ron Paul: Rein in Government Spending to Reduce the Debt Transcript Chris Cotter: … but today it’s all about the…
  3. href='http://www.ronpaul.com/2011-05-23/ron-paul-stop-raising-the-debt-ceiling/' rel='bookmark' title='Ron Paul: Stop Raising the Debt Ceiling'>Ron Paul: Stop Raising the Debt Ceiling Date: 05/23/2011 by Ron Paul The federal government once again…

Related Posts:

Ron Paul: Tough Times for the Banks, Liberty for the People?

width="500" height="281" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/G0XuIkqHZwE?fs=1&wmode=transparent&%23038;feature=oembed" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen>

by Ron Paul

The global economic situation is becoming more dire every day. Approximately half of all US banks have significant exposure to the debt crisis in Europe. Much more dangerous for the US taxpayer is the dollar’s status as reserve currency for the world, and the US href="http://www.ronpaul.com/legislation/audit-the-federal-reserve-fed-hr-459-s202/" >Federal Reserve’s status as the lender of last resort. As we’ve learned in recent disclosures, this has not only benefited companies like AIG, the auto industry and various US banks, but multiple foreign central banks as they have run into trouble. Nothing has been solved, however, by offering up the productivity of Americans as a sacrificial lamb. Greece is set to be the first domino to fall in the string of European economies at risk. Rather than learning from Greece’s terrible example of an over-consuming public sector and drowning private sector, what is more likely from our politicians is an eventual bailout of European investors.

The US has a relatively small exposure to overwhelmed Greek banks, but much larger economies in Europe are set to follow and that will have serious implications for US banks. Greece is technically small enough to bail out. Italy is not. Germany is not. France is not. It is estimated that US banks have over a trillion dollars tied up in at-risk German and French banks. Because the urge to paper over the debt with more credit is so strong, the collapse of the Euro is imminent. Will the Fed be held responsible if the Euro brings the US dollar down with it?

The most disingenuous aspect of the narrative about the European sovereign debt crisis is that entire economies will collapse if more resources are not bilked from productive people around the world. This is untrue. Tough times are coming for the banks, to be sure, but free people always find a way back to prosperity if the politicians leave them alone. Communities within Greece are coming together and forming barter systems because they know the Euro is becoming unstable. Greeks are learning how to engage in commerce with each other, without the use of fiat currency controlled by central banks. In other words, they are rediscovering what money really is, and they are trading with each other in ways that cannot be controlled, manipulated, squandered, inflated away and generally ruined by corrupt bankers and the politicians that enable them. Farmers will still grow food, mechanics will still fix cars, people will still make things and exchange them with each other. No banker, no politician can stop that by destroying one medium of exchange. People will find or create another medium of exchange.

Unfortunately when politicians try to monopolize currency with legal tender laws, the people find it harder and harder to survive the href="http://www.ronpaul.com/on-the-issues/fiat-money-inflation-federal-reserve/" >inflation and taxation to which they are subjected. Bankers should take their dreaded haircut rather than making innocent people pay for their mistakes. The losses should be limited and liquidated, rather than perpetuated and rewarded. This is the only way we can recover.

Government debt is often considered rock solid because it is backed by a government’s ability to forcibly extract interest payments out of the public. The public is increasingly unwilling to be bilked to make bankers whole. The riots and the violence in Greece should tell us something about the sustainability of this system.

If we continue to bail out banks and bankers so they can continue to lose money, if we cavalierly put this burden on the taxpayer, it is all too predictable what will happen here.

Related posts:

  1. href='http://www.ronpaul.com/2011-01-09/ron-paul-transparency-and-accountability-for-the-federal-reserve/' rel='bookmark' title='Ron Paul: Transparency and Accountability for the Federal Reserve!'>Ron Paul: Transparency and Accountability for the Federal Reserve! Transparency and Accountability for the Federal Reserve by Ron Paul…
  2. href='http://www.ronpaul.com/2011-06-10/ron-paul-no-bailouts-for-other-countries/' rel='bookmark' title='Ron Paul: No Bailouts for Other Countries!'>Ron Paul: No Bailouts for Other Countries! Today, 2012 GOP presidential candidate Ron Paul, remarked on President…
  3. href='http://www.ronpaul.com/2011-07-11/ron-paul-we-need-free-competition-in-currencies/' rel='bookmark' title='Ron Paul: We Need Free Competition in Currencies!'>Ron Paul: We Need Free Competition in Currencies! by Ron Paul The end of June marked what is…

Related Posts:

Ron Paul: The Modern Presidency Is Dangerously Close to an Elective Dictatorship

width="500" height="281" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/ep6QhUFphQE?fs=1&wmode=transparent&%23038;feature=oembed" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen>

by Ron Paul

These are frustrating times for the President. Having been swept into office with a seemingly strong mandate, he enjoyed a Congress controlled by members of his own party for the first two years of his term. However, midterm elections brought gridlock and a close division of power between the two parties. With a crucial re-election campaign coming up, there is desperation in the president’s desire to “do something” in spite of his severely weakened mandate.

Getting something done is proving to be a monumental task. This may be news to the supposed constitutional scholar who is now our president, but if the political process seems inconvenient to the implementation of his agenda, that is not a flaw in the system. It was designed that way. The drafters of the Constitution intended the default action of government to be inaction. Hopefully, this means actions taken by the government are necessary and proper. If federal laws or executive actions can’t be agreed upon constitutionally- which is to say legally- such laws or actions should be rejected.

The vision of the founders was to set up a government that would remain small and unobtrusive via a system of checks and balances. That it has taken our government so long to get this big speaks well of the original design. The founders also knew the overwhelming nature of governments was to amass power and grow. The Constitution was to serve as the brakes on the freight train of government.

But the Obama administration, like so many administrations in the 20th century, chooses to ignore the Constitution entirely. The increasingly broad use and scope of the Executive Orders is a prime example. Executive Orders are meant to be a way for the president to direct executive agencies on the implementation of congressionally approved legislation. It has become increasingly common for them to be misused in ways that are contradictory to congressional intent, or to bypass Congress altogether in enacting political agendas. The current administration has unabashedly stated that Congress’s unwillingness to pass the president’s jobs bill means that the president will act unilaterally to enact provisions of it piecemeal through Executive Order. Obama explicitly threatens to bypass Congress, thus aggregating the power to make and enforce laws in the executive. This clearly erodes the principles of separation of powers and checks and balances. It brings the modern presidency dangerously close to an elective dictatorship.

Of course, the most dangerous and costly overstepping of executive authority is going to war without a congressional declaration. Congress has been sadly complicit in this usurpation by ceding much of its war-making authority to the executive because it wants to avoid taking responsibility for major war decisions, but that is part of our job in Congress! If the President cannot present to Congress and the people a convincingly strong case for going to war, then perhaps we should keep the nation at peace, rather than risk our men and women’s lives for ill-defined reasons!

This administration certainly was not the first to behave in ways that have defied the Constitution to overstep its bounds. Sadly, previous administrations have set precedents that the current administration is only building upon. It is time for Congress to reassert itself and its constitutional role so that future administrations cannot continue on this dangerous path.

Related posts:

  1. href='http://www.ronpaul.com/2011-11-08/ron-paul-on-obamas-elective-dictatorship/' rel='bookmark' title='Ron Paul on Obama’s “Elective Dictatorship”'>Ron Paul on Obama’s “Elective Dictatorship” Clarification: Ron Paul did not call Obama an “elected dictator”….
  2. href='http://dailycaller.com/2011/06/16/why-im-suing-the-obama-administration-over-libya/' rel='bookmark' title='Ron Paul: Why I’m suing the Obama administration over Libya'>Ron Paul: Why I’m suing the Obama administration over Libya There is no issue more serious than war. Wars result…
  3. href='http://www.ronpaul.com/2011-01-23/ron-paul-understand-respect-follow-and-uphold-the-constitution/' rel='bookmark' title='Ron Paul: Understand, Respect, Follow and Uphold the Constitution'>Ron Paul: Understand, Respect, Follow and Uphold the Constitution Understand, Respect, Follow and Uphold the Constitution by Ron Paul…

Related Posts:

Ron Paul: When I Am President…

style="float:left; margin-right: 20px"> class="browsershot mshot"> href="http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2011/nov/3/one-year-to-go/?page=all#pagebreak" > src="http://s.wordpress.com/mshots/v1/http%3A//www.washingtontimes.com/news/2011/nov/3/one-year-to-go/%3Fpage=all%23pagebreak?w=270" alt="http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2011/nov/3/one-year-to-go/?page=all#pagebreak" width="270" />