Republican Representative (TX-14); former LIbertarian for President
There's payback for guns and butter
There's payback for guns and butter. In the '70s when I was motivated first to run for Congress, I realized it wasn't going to last because that is when the gold standard finally lost its last wing. We ushered in the '70s and they were tough. High
unemployment rates, interest rates of 21%, high inflation rates. But we did pay back. We paid back for all the spending of the Democrats in the '60s...guns and butter. Now we are starting to pay for the guns and butter and we don't even see an end to it.
Source: Speeches to 2008 Conservative Political Action Conference
Feb 7, 2008
Repeal 16th Amendment and get rid of the income tax
It shouldn't be that difficult to figure out what we should be doing, because we have a lot of problems: we have fiscal and monetary policy problems, foreign policy problems, and deficit problems. Where do they come from? It's because we don't follow the
rule of law; we don't follow the Constitution. If we knew and understood and read Article 1, Section 8, believe me this government would be much smaller, we would have a lot less taxes, and we could repeal the 16th amendment and get rid of the income tax
Source: Speeches to 2008 Conservative Political Action Conference
Feb 7, 2008
Great nations and empires end for financial reasons
The Constitution says: no emitting bills of credit, no paper money, only gold and silver can be legal tender. And today we allow big government to grow. Whether it's on the conservative side or the liberal side, if they want something, they usually have
compromise--spend it on both. Then they resort to printing money, and that is where our trouble is coming from, and that's the crisis we're facing. All great nations and great empires end for fiscal, financial reasons. That's how the Soviet system was
defeated. We didn't have to invade them; we didn't have to fight them. Their system collapsed. And that is what's happening today, the middle class is getting wiped out, the middle class is getting poor, endlessly, because they can't keep up with the cos
of living. And the solution isn't printing more money, and spending more money, and allowing the Federal Reserve to pretend they can solve the problem. The answer is found in fiscal conservatism: live within our means, is what we have to do.
Live within our means and start paying down the deficit now
We're told that this war is going to go on for a long, long time. That means that the next generation--the burden is being placed on these young people. That is why the college kids are coming out. Because they're getting ripped off.
We have undermined their liberties, we're giving them a foreign policy where it's their lives on the line, the threat of a draft is coming for men and women as this war is likely to spread--and what are they inheriting? Less freedom and a lot of debt!
Entitlements up to 60 trillion dollars and they can't pay it. A group of young people going into the work force which is smaller than the ones who are in retirement. The baby boomers are retiring and they're going to demand what they put
into the system and it's just not there. What we need to do is not only live within our means, but start paying down the deficit, and offer an opportunity at least for the next generation to get out.
All bets are off if a cataclysmic dollar devaluation occurs
The welfare programs will end overnight if you have a cataclysmic devaluation of the dollar, and all bets are off on what will happen under those conditions, if you look at history. There's no reason why we have to pay for the defense of Japan, Korea, an
Europe--we're going broke! And if we do that, if we do that, we literally can take care of our people and work our way out of this. If we had our freedoms, and we had the responsibility to care for ourselves, and we had sound money, within a year or two
we'd be back on our feet again. But the most important issue is to make sure that we have our liberties. Understanding what private property means, understanding what sound money is all about, and also understanding what national sovereignty means.
Once again we ought to be protecting our borders and not allowing this North American Union to come into effect.
We owe foreigners $2.7 trillion and more printing won't do
We as conservatives have drifted a long way from the positions that we used to hold of limited government. We have to talk about what conservatives stand for and should be doing, because we're going in the wrong direction.
There's not a whole lot of time left. If we continue what we're doing we're going to have a financial crisis, because you can't continue to spend too much. Because there's limit on how much you can tax, and we're taxed to the hilt.
Then there's a limit to how much borrowing we can do, and we're borrowing to the hilt. We're dependent on China, and Saudi Arabia, and all these countries because we are the greatest debtor in the whole world today. This is different than the 1970's when
we had to pay for guns and butter. Today we're paying for guns and butter again, but today our good jobs are overseas, we owe 2.7 trillion dollars, the whole country is in debt and what do we do now when we need more government? We print more money.
Stimulus package means more printing & devaluing the dollar
What is the bailout package all about? Our side of the aisle proposes it and the Democrats want to increase it.$150 billion? No, let's up it $200 billion! Where does it come from?--the government has no money. Well, can we tax people?--no, you can't tax
anymore. What are they gonna do?--they're gonna print the money, devalue the dollar, & that's the problem we have. The dollar is low, prices are high, the people are suffering, the middle class is shrinking. So we offer the same old pabulum, the same old
baloney, and then we turn around and say, "Well, why don't we ask the Federal Reserve to create more money? Nobody seems to have enough money. If we just had more money, maybe it would prop up the stock market." So we go to the Federal Reserve and say we
need more money. So they crank it out. You can't lower interest rates unless you print more money. So they lower interest rates dramatically, like never before. So we're in a bind, we're in a fix, and I'll tell you what: we overspend. Everywhere!
Economic Revitalization Plan: "Prescription for Prosperity"
"Prescription for Prosperity": The Four-Point Plan
Tax Reform: Reduce the tax burden and eliminate taxes that punish investment and savings, including job-killing corporate taxes. Eliminate taxes on dividends and savings.
Repeal the death tax. Cut taxes for working seniors. Eliminate taxes on social security benefits. Accelerate depreciation on investment. Eliminate taxes on capital gains. Eliminate taxes on tips.
Spending Reform: Eliminate
wasteful spending. Reduce overseas commitments. Freeze all non-defense, non-entitlement spending at current levels.
Monetary Policy Reform: Expand openness at the Federal Reserve and require the Fed to televise its meetings.
Return value to our money.
Regulatory Reform: Repeal Sarbanes/Oxley regulations that push companies to seek capital outside of US markets. Stop restricting community banks from fostering local economic growth.
Source: Campaign website, www.RonPaul2008.com, "Plan"
Feb 3, 2008
We're worse off than in 2000, due to Bush & Congress
Q: Are we better off than we were eight years ago?
A: No, no, we're not better off. We're worse off, but it's partially this administration's fault and it's the Congress. But it also involves an economic system that we've had for a long time and a
monetary system that we've had and a foreign policy that's coming to an end and we have to admit this. The Republicans were elected in 1994 to change direction of the country, because people sensed there was something wrong, we were going the wrong
direction, but we didn't do anything. We were elected in the year 2000 to have a humble foreign policy and not police the world, and yet what are we doing now? We're bogged down in another war. We're bankrupting our country and we have an empire that
we're trying to defend which costs us $1 trillion a year. And the standard of living is going down today. It's going down and the middle class is hurting because of the monetary policy. When you destroy a currency, the middle class gets wiped out.
The people, not government, are supposed to run the economy
The Constitution is very clear that the president is commander in chief of the military, but the president is not the commander in chief of the economy or of the people. When we get reflection of conventional wisdom, but of a lot of lack of understanding
of how the economy works. The president is not supposed to manage and run the economy. The people are supposed to do this. The government is supposed to give them sound money, low taxes, less regulation. The people are supposed to run it.
Source: 2008 Republican debate at Reagan Library in Simi Valley
Jan 30, 2008
Reagan was very sympathetic to the gold standard
Q: Would Reagan endorse you? And if so, why?
A: I supported Reagan in 1976, and there were only four members of Congress that did. And also in 1980. Reagan came and campaigned for me in 1978.
I'm not sure exactly what he would do right now, but I do know that he was very sympathetic to the gold standard, and he told me personally that no great nation that went off the gold standard ever remained great. And he was very, very serious about that
So he had a sound understanding about monetary policy. And for that reason, I would say look to Reagan's ideas on money because he, too, was concerned about runaway inflation and what it does to a country when you ruin the currency.
That's what's happening today. The dollar is going down and our country is going to be on the ropes if we don't reverse that trend.
Federal Reserve creates money and prints it out of thin air
Q: Does the federal government have a role in stimulating the economy?
A: Yes, by lower taxes and less regulation. They could do a whole lot by having sound money, where we don't print the money out of thin air. That causes the business cycle.
That causes your bubbles. We're always dealing with the symptoms of the disease & never saying, "how did this come about?" It comes about because we have a Federal Reserve that creates money & prints it out of thin air. There is a lot of malinvestment.
That's the most important thing to understand about the inflation of the monetary system, is the malinvestment. Then, later on, people suffer. You wipe out the middle class. But the evil of it all is the vehicle for financing wars
that we shouldn't be in and a welfare state that we shouldn't be doing. So, yes, we have a role to play, but it's a negative role. We want the people to be free. We don't want to manage the people and tell them how to live.
Economic stimulus ok, but not via spending & printing money
Q: The president's economic stimulus plan would send out 116 million checks to American homes. Should government have any role at all in stimulating the economy like this?
A: Well, sure, indirectly. They shouldn't stimulate it by interfering in the
market rate of interest. That's where our basic problem comes from. And when you do that, you get into these problems, and then everybody wants to solve the problem by printing more money and spending more money and asking the
Federal Reserve to, you know, lower interest rates. And that just makes the problem that much worse. The government does have a responsibility: to lower taxes, get rid of regulations, and devise a monetary policy that makes some sense.
But to continue to say that we just appropriate more money, which is more deficit, and then expect us either to borrow it or expect the Federal Reserve to monetize it, it makes our problems worse.
Dollar crashing due to trillions spent on maintaining empire
Look at what's happening today. The dollar is crashing. [Our debate moderator] suggests that we think of the economy, but not in foreign policy. You can't do that. They're one and the same. That's where all the money's going. We're spending nearly a
trillion dollars a year overseas maintaining this empire.
And then there's never been a war fought without inflation and destruction and devaluation of a currency. And this is what we're doing today to ourselves, is we're literally spending
ourselves into oblivion.
But nobody here is willing to even suggest that we cut something overseas. But we have to. We don't need to cut anything here at home. I'd like to see things frozen. I'd like to see massive tax cuts. But we need deregulation.
So this is the kind of thing we need. We need the government out of the way, but it should have sound money, low taxes, less regulations, and a sensible policy where we're not wasting our money overseas.
I was waving a flag the whole time saying, slow up, slow up; this isn't going well. And here we are. We're at the verge of bankruptcy. We're moving into a new era, believe it or not. With the dollar and our economy and the world economy, this is
a new era.
Source: 2008 GOP debate in Boca Raton Florida
Jan 24, 2008
Lower interest rates CAUSED housing bubble & can't solve it
The housing market's already in depression and a lot of people are hurt and the standing of living in this country is going down. Look at what's happening to the dollar.
And what is being offered? Lower interest rates. Well, lower interest rates is the
problem. Artificially low interest rates is the artificial stimulus which causes the bubble, which allows the inevitable recession to come.
We need to deal with monetary policy and not pretend that artificial stimulus by more spending is going to help.
Source: 2008 GOP debate in S.C. sponsored by Fox News
Jan 10, 2008
The longer the Fed delays recession, the worse the recession
I believe we're in a recession. I think it's going to get a lot worse if we continue to do the wrong things that we've done in the past. You have to understand that over-stimulation in an economy by artificially low interest rates by the Federal
Reserve is the source of the recession.
The recession has been predictable. We just don't know exactly when it will come. If you do the wrong thing, it's going to last for a long time. The boom period comes when they just pour out easy credit
and it teaches people to do the wrong things. There's a lot of malinvestment, debt that goes in the wrong direction, consumers who do the wrong things, and businessmen who do the wrong thing.
So we have to attack this and understand the importance of
Austrian theory of the business cycle. If you don't, we're going to continue to do this and the longer you delay the recession, the worse the recession is, and we've delayed a serious recession for a long time.
Give up American empire; that reduces debt without sacrifice
Q: What sacrifices would you ask Americans to make to lower the country's debt?
A: I think it's absolutely unnecessary to sacrifice. It's unnecessary. We can cut by looking at our foreign policy. We maintain an empire which we can't afford.
We have 700 bases overseas. We are in 130 countries. We cut there, and then we have a better defense of this country, and the people get that money and they get to spend it here at home. There's no need to sacrifice.
Source: 2007 Des Moines Register Republican debate
Dec 12, 2007
We spend too much, tax too much, & print too much money
Q: Does our country's financial situation creates a security risk?
A: It's absolutely a threat to our national security because we've spent too much, we tax too much, we borrow too much, and we print too much.
When a country spends way beyond its means, eventually it will destroy the currency, and we're in the midst of a currency crisis. Our dollar is going down rapidly as we speak.
It's because we have lived beyond our means. We can't afford the foreign policy that we have. We have to cut back. We have to live within our means.
If we're going to spend money, we ought to spend it at home, and that is why we have to change this foreign policy. We can't afford it to do what we're doing today because it will destroy our dollar.
Restore GOP by returning to less gov't & fiscal conservatism
Q: What are you going to do to recover the lost ground for the Republican Party, especially with Hispanics?
A: You know, if anybody votes for the Republican Party, they're voting for conservative values. They're voting for less government, not more
government. In the last seven years, we've gotten a lot more government. You know, in the year 2000, we ran on a pro-peace policy. We were condemning Clinton for warmongering, for nation-building and policing the world. And we did exactly the opposite.
Now we're mired down in the Middle East. America should be pro-peace, not pro-war. The war has created so much expenditures. We're spending our money overseas instead of here. We're neglecting our needs here. We're bombing and building bridges
overseas and we're neglecting our bridges here at home. We're supposed to be the fiscal conservatives. We're not. This is why we lost the election last year, is because we didn't stand by our principles of pro-peace and pro-liberty and pro-America.
Weak economy is source of resentment against immigrants
Q: Four out of five Hispanics are either legal residents or American citizens. Many of them feel affected by the negative tone of the immigration debate. What would you do to curb this anti-Hispanic sentiment?
A: We have to realize where the resentment
comes from. I believe it's related to our economy. When the economy is weakening and there's resentment because of our welfare system; jobs are going overseas; pay is going down.
There's a lot of resentments because the welfare system is based on mandates from the federal government to put pressure on states like Florida and Texas to provide services which the local taxpayers resent. Some of our hospitals are closing.
So it's an economic issue, too. If we deal with the welfare state and a healthy economy and sound money and all this wasteful spending overseas, we would have a healthy economy; I think this problem would be greatly reduced.
Maintain the value of the dollar, unlike Federal Reserve
If you're really serious about protecting people's incomes, you've got to consider how you're going to protect the dollar. If you don't have the dollar maintaining its value, no matter where you put the money you're not going to have any value.
That's where the crisis [in Social Security] is coming. You're going to go up with all these cost of living increases but you'll never keep up with the cost of living because the dollar's going down, the cost of living is going up.
Our dollar today is worth 4 cents compared to the dollar of 1913, when the Federal Reserve took charge of it. And if you don't deal with the dollar there will be no retirement for anybody. We're going to have chaos.
And that is why you have to cut spending. That's why we need a new foreign policy. We need to tie it to people over here in this country. That's the only way we can solve the problem.
Q: Is there any downside to this amazing bonanza in the hedge fund & the private equity firms?
A: Yes. I think this is not a consequence of free markets. What's happening is there's transfer of wealth from the poor and the middle class to the wealthy.
This comes about because of the monetary system that we have. When you inflate a currency or destroy a currency, the middle class gets wiped out, so the money gravitates to the banks and to Wall Street. See, that's why you have more billionaires than
ever before. Today this country is in the middle of a recession for a lot of people. Poor people know about it. The middle class knows about it. Wall Street doesn't know about it. Washington, D.C., doesn't know about it. We're depending on the
creation of money out of thin air, which is nothing more than debasement of the currency. It's counterfeit. And it is a natural, predictable consequence that you're going to have people benefit from it and other people suffer.
Can't legislate economic fairness; so make government small
You can't legislate economic fairness, like so many want to do. Freedom means freedom. It means the government should be very small.
So, we need to decide what we're gonna do. Are we going to live within the law, or are we going to pretend the
government can take care of everything possible? We are now nine trillion dollars in debt, we have a dollar that's crashing, and we keep financing this by taxing, borrowing, and then, what do we resort to? We resort to printing the money!
We should look to the Constitution. We should make sure that we get rid of our central bank, the Federal Reserve, and have only gold and silver as legal tender.
This is the reason our government gets so big, because we give them license to steal, license to inflate, license to tax, and license to borrow, and politicians will always do it.
Prioritize spending based on Constitution--and lower it too
Real conservatives have always supported low taxes and low spending. But today, too many politicians and lobbyists are spending America into ruin. We are nine trillion dollars in debt as a nation. Our mounting government debt endangers the financial
future of our children and grandchildren. If we don't cut spending now, higher taxes and economic disaster will be in their future--and yours.
In addition, the Federal Reserve, our central bank, fosters runaway debt by increasing the money supply--
making each dollar in your pocket worth less. The Fed is a private bank run by unelected officials who are not required to be open or accountable to "we the people."
We cannot continue to allow private banks, wasteful agencies, lobbyists, corporations
on welfare, and governments collecting foreign aid to dictate the size of our ballooning budget. We need a new method to prioritize our spending. It's called the Constitution of the United States.
The reform of monetary policy is absolutely necessary for freedom and prosperity. Many economic distortions and political imbalances result from a world filled with paper money, where
governments maintain the monopoly right to counterfeit at will. Just as our interventionist foreign policy will end out of necessity, so too will the fiat dollar system.
Source: A Foreign Policy of Freedom, by Ron Paul, p.370
Jun 15, 2007
Government out of regulating economy & out of our bedrooms
The government should be out of regulating the economy. I think the monetary issue is important. I don't believe government should be able to print money out of thin air to pay their bills because that causes a lot of problems. The government should be
out of our bedrooms. I don't think they should be regulating any personal behavior if it's non-violent. That means we have to tolerate people who do things that sometimes are dumb and sometimes are irritating, but in a free society you tolerate that.
Source: Jill Morrison on KUHF, Houston Public Radio
Jan 17, 2007
Oil prices rise in part because of the weak dollar
If you look at the price of oil in the last 10 years, if you look at it in terms of dollars, it went up 350 percent. If you look at it in euros, it went up about 200 percent. If you look at it in the price of gold, it stayed flat.
It's the inflation, it's the printing of money, it's the destruction of the value of the dollar. Added on to this, the notion that we go to protect our oil. Oil was $27 when we went over there to get the oil and protect the oil and take the oil from Iraq
There's less than about half the production now in Iraq right now. And we're threatening Iran. And that pushes prices up. It pushes up the concept of supply and demand. But you can't deal with the price of oil without dealing with the supply and demand
of dollars. When you devalue the dollar--and the dollar is going down every day. The further the dollar goes down, the higher the prices of oil are going up. We have to understand that.
We're fighting a trillion-dollar war and we shouldn't be doing it. Those resources should be spent back here at home. There is an inflationary factor. We can't afford it. We do have good medical care, but the costs are so high now that our people in this
country are actually going to India & getting their heart surgery done. They pay the plane ticket, the hospital and the hotel and they get it for half-price. So it's inflation, but if you don't understand how inflation comes, we can't solve this problem.
It comes from deficit financing with this war-mongering foreign policy we have. We run up the deficits. We tax. We borrow from the Chinese. We can't borrow enough. Then what do we do? We print the money, and then you wonder where the inflation comes.
The value of the dollar is down and the prices go up, where the government gets involved in things like housing or medical care or education, prices are skyrocketing. You have to deal with the monetary issue to solve the problem of the medical issue.
The day is approaching when we no longer will be able to afford the burden of foreign intervention. For now governments are willing to loan us the money needed to finance the cost of worldwide military operations. It may seem possible because we have bee
afforded the historically unique privilege of printing the world's reserve currency. Economic law eventually will limit our ability to live off others by credit creation. Eventually trust in the dollar will be diminished, if not destroyed.
Those who hold these trillion plus dollars can hold us hostage if it's ever in their interest.
That's when the true wealth of the country will become self-evident and we will no longer be able to afford the extravagant expense of pursuing an
American empire. No nation has ever been able to finance excessive foreign entanglements and domestic entitlements through printing press money and borrowing from abroad.
We've come to accept debt, wealth confiscation, & big gov't
We have been conditioned to accept debt as part of every aspect of our lives. The short-term benefit of government borrowing is a political expediency that, in spite of the rhetoric of the balanced budget, is growing ever more popular.
Sadly, we rarely hear serious proposals for limiting the role of government to that of protecting liberty.
In the 20th century we have come to accept demands and needs as rights at the expense of someone else's rights. Responsibility for our own acts
and livelihood has been replaced by lawsuits demanding unrealistic settlements.
Government has come to mean something entirely different than what was intended by the writers of the Constitution. It is an entity capable of confiscating and distributing
wealth ad infinitum. Government no longer serves the people by guaranteeing equal rights to all. Government is now expected to provide profits, medical care, jobs, homes, and food whenever the people demand these benefits as a right.
A major reform of our monetary system must come. There are four reasons why governments reject gold's discipline and promote paper money.
20th century economists have taught three generations that gold is a relic of the past.
A gold standard limits government deficit funding and both liberals and conservatives need a central bank to monetize debt.
The knowledgeable elite who are in charge of the affairs of state use control of the money to control the wealth of the nation.
Ignorance of what money is and how the Federal Reserve operates prompts many citizens and members of Congress to avoid getting involved in the issue.
For 50 years now, essentially all economists teaching at our major universities justified
economic intervention, credit creation, and deficit financing. The result is what we have today: a Congress filled with members who know little else, staffers who spout their professor's clich‚s, and a press that regurgitates the same nonsense.
Friedman monetarist policy is better, but still inflationary
malinvestment as those getting the new money put it to uses that only later recessions show to have been unproductive. The Friedman approach may produce milder booms and recessions, but it nevertheless is inflationary and a product of the old discredited
idea that government, rather than the market, should be planning the economy.
The politicians and many bankers, union leaders, businessmen, and bureaucrats who profit from inflation are glad, of course, to have the intellectuals justify their fraud.
Source: Gold, Peace, and Prosperity, by Ron Paul, p. 37-38&43
Dec 31, 1981
Depreciating currency is greatest threat to middle class
The greatest threat facing middle and working class Americans is our depreciating paper currency.
All aspects of the interventionist system threaten freedom and social peace, but money is the major issue, since it is the life-blood of all economic
transitions. If we are to reverse the trends of the past six or seven decades, honest money and monetary debasement must become top concerns of ordinary Americans.
Fifty years of systematic monetary destruction now threaten the existence of our
constitutional republic. The American people are frightened by what they see, and they are demanding that the inflation stop. More citizens are realizing that Congress and the Federal Reserve have generated a flood of paper money with no intrinsic value.
It is rare to find anyone today who believes that wealth can come out of a printing press. The corporate bailouts, guaranteed loans, government contracts, and welfare gimmicks all have failed, and the people can no longer be duped.
During most of the 19th century, we had a functioning gold standard. Combined with classic liberal economic policies and limited government, this set the stage for the greatest economic growth in history.
Although many Americans today see sound money
as the exception, and paper as the rule, the opposite is true. Even the American dollar had a connection with gold up until 1971. Since the severing of that tie, the debasement of the dollar has accelerated, with the money supply doubling.
Prices have more than doubled in the last ten years, not to mention the economic distortions that accompanied this inflation.
There is no law of economics stating that only gold can be used as money in a free society.
But gold has served as the principal medium of exchange throughout history because its value does not depend on a government fulfilling its promises, especially in times of crisis.
The gold coin standard, although imperfectly adhered to, permitted startling economic growth combined with falling prices in the 19th Century.
In the 67 years since the abolition of the gold standard, the Consumer Price Index has gone up 625%. In the previous 67 years, under an imperfect gold coin standard, the CPI increased 10%.
In his 1848 Communist Manifesto, Karl Marx urged: "Centralization of credit in the hands of the state, by means of a national bank with state capital and an exclusive monopoly."
Sixty-five years later, the United States followed his advice, and passed the Federal Reserve Act of 1913.
When Nixon declared that foreign holders of dollars could no longer exchange them for gold, the gold exchange standard came to a miserable end. It had made possible the inflation which financed the Vietnam War and the
Great Society, as well as massive business malinvestments. But the worst was yet to come.
The dollar died on
August 15, 1971; after that date, it had no independent value for anyone. The new rules, with the dollar now simply a managed fiat currency, ushered in even greater inflation, economic turmoil, and set the stage for total loss of confidence in the dollar
This will happen eventually, and perhaps in the near future, though no one knows exactly when.
Vote to pass the bill that would require debtors who are able to pay back $10,000 or 25 percent of their debts over five years to file under Chapter 13, rather then seeking to discharge their debts under Chapter 7. Chapter 13, calls for a reorganization of debts under a repayment plan. A Debtor would be restricted, in this bill, to a total exemption of $125,000 in home equity for residences bought within 40 months of a bankruptcy filing. The bill also would establish permanent and retroactive Chapter 12 bankruptcy relief for farmers.
Reference: Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act;
Bill S 1920
; vote number 2004-10
on Jan 28, 2004
Allow $3 on 1040 form to pay off National Debt.
Paul co-sponsored allowing $3 on 1040 form to pay off National Debt
OFFICIAL CONGRESSIONAL SUMMARY: Amends the Internal Revenue Code to permit an individual to designate three dollars on his or her income tax return (six dollars on a joint return) to be used to reduce the public debt of the United States.
SPONSOR'S INTRODUCTORY STATEMENT: Pres. Eisenhower apparently once said that he believed that there could be no surplus as long as our Nation was in debt. I come from that school of thought, and yet that is not exactly where we are right now in Washington.
Where we are right now is debating whether or not 90 percent or 50 percent, or some number in between, of these projected future surpluses should be allocated to the debt. What struck me is the fact that really more than just the Congress should be involved in that debate. It is for that reason that I introduce today the Taxpayers' Choice Debt Reduction Act.
What this bill would do would be to simply take the 1040, the tax return as we now know it. And right now, we can send $3 to the
presidential campaign. This would create another box wherein we could send 3 bucks to debt reduction. That is not enough money to change our national debt, but it is enough money to make a small step in an important debate that we all ought to be a part of.
LEGISLATIVE OUTCOME: Referred to the House Committee on Ways and Means; never called for a House vote.
Paul adopted the Republican Liberty Caucus Position Statement:
The Republican Liberty Caucus endorses the following [among its] principles:
There should be an amendment to the US Constitution to require a balanced budget, provided it includes a supermajority requirement to raise taxes and provided it does not empower the judiciary to unilaterally raise taxes.
Honest accounting dictates that all federal expenditures should be on budget.
Each budget should be derived based upon the justification for and needs of each program, with no program being either budgeted for or increased automatically.
Source: Republican Liberty Caucus Position Statement 00-RLC8 on Dec 8, 2000
Maintain public information about M3 money supply.
Paul sponsored maintaining public information about M3 money supply
Requires the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System to continue, after March 22, 2006, to compile and publish on a weekly basis the measure of the M3 monetary aggregate and components of the M3 that are not included in the measure of the M2 monetary aggregate.
Introductory statement by Sponsor:
Rep. PAUL: The monetary measure known as M3 consists of M1 (currency in circulation plus travelers' checks, demand deposits, and similar interest-earning checking account balances) plus M2 (M1 plus household holdings of savings deposits, small time deposits, and retail money market mutual funds balances except for balances held in IRA and Keogh accounts) plus institutional money market mutual fund balances and managed liabilities of deposits consisting of large time deposits, repurchase agreements, and Eurodollars.
The Federal Reserve Board has recently announced it will stop reporting M3, thus depriving
Congress and the American people of the most comprehensive measure of the money supply. The cessation of Federal Reserve's weekly M3 report will make it more difficult for policymakers, economists, investors, and the general public to learn the true rate of inflation.
The Federal Reserve Board has claimed neither policymakers nor the Federal Reserve staff closely track M3. Even if M3 is not used by Federal Reserve Board economists or legislators, many financial services professionals whose livelihoods depend on their ability to obtain accurate information about the money supply rely on M3.
Knowledge of the money supply is one of the keys to understanding the state of the economy. The least the American people should expect from the Federal Reserve Board is complete and accurate information regarding the money supply. I urge my colleagues to ensure that the American people can obtain that information.
Source: Sunshine in Monetary Policy Act (H.R.4892 ) 07-HR4892 on Mar 7, 2006
