All Episodes
Previous Next
Sept. 6, 2021 - Ron Paul Liberty Report
10:14
Ron Paul Classic: 'Freedom Is a Young Idea and We're Throwing It Away'

In 2011, Ron Paul sat down for a short interview with Judy Woodruff of PBSNewsHour. Enjoy!

|

Time Text
Could Reform Federal Programs? 00:08:21
Congressman Ron Paul, thank you for talking with us.
Good to be with you today.
You're running against a long list of Republicans seeking the presidential, the Republican presidential nomination, many of them very conservative.
One in particular, Michelle Bachman, appealing to the Tea Party.
Why are you more qualified than any of them?
I see them as defending the status quo much more so than I do because, you know, if you look at my foreign policy, nobody's coming close, although they're getting more sympathetic.
I want to bring all the troops home when it comes to personal liberties and what's going on at our airports.
I don't like the Patriot Act, and they tend to support the Patriot Act.
When it comes to monetary policy, they try to avoid it.
Yet, money is one half of all our transactions.
We're in a mess, so I concentrate a whole lot on the Federal Reserve and monetary policy.
And, of course, the spending is a big issue with me, but it's been that way for a long time.
Well, speaking of spending, Washington is in the grips right now of this huge divide split over what to do about the debt limit, what to do about the deficit.
You have said you've never voted to raise the debt limit, which pits you against not only the president and the Democrats, but the Republican leadership, both houses of Congress, most of the business community.
Are they wrong when they say this would lead to an economic calamity?
Are they just not telling the truth?
I think you're misled.
I think they believe what they're saying, but I think they don't understand economic policy because they're afraid of a default and they've been frightened.
But this is the way so often government works.
They try to frighten the people, such as frighten people about being attacked by nuclear weapons that don't exist, so we go to war needlessly.
But the bailout frighten the people, so you bail out everybody and forget about the people who are losing their houses.
So yes, there's a lot of that.
But my point is, is it's serious.
The debt is too big.
You can't solve the problem of debt by raising the debt limit, and that's what they were trying to do.
But you've had this position for years and years, for the decades you've served in the Congress.
You haven't been able to win folks over to your point of view.
What makes you think you could win a majority over if you were president?
Well, I think there's a big shift because I can compare what's happening now to four years ago.
It's dramatically different.
But even last year, we noticed a big difference, say, on the monetary issue.
So maybe I don't have as much influence in direct legislation here, but the people, I believe I am closer to the people because the people are scared and they're sick and tired of it and they want smaller government.
Well, on this question of spending and cutting, you've said you would bring the government's budget into balance the first year in office you were president.
We're talking, what, over a trillion-dollar deficit.
What would you cut?
Okay, I would start with military operations overseas.
They hurt us and they hurt our national defense.
And we can save hundreds of billions of dollars when you add up all the militarism and all the foreign aid and all the mischief we create.
Why do we have troops in Korea and Japan, all these things?
So you could save a lot.
That wouldn't be enough.
Then you have to start cutting spending on the programs that aren't essential, like the Department of Education.
We spend a lot of money.
It doesn't improve education.
Department of Energy, we don't need Department of Energy.
All those subsidies and Department of Agriculture, we don't need that.
We don't need the intervention of the Department of Commerce.
You can go on and on.
But you don't have to go and cut health care or medical care or Social Security in order to start getting our house in order.
But you have talked about dramatically scaling down or reforming Medicare and Social Security.
And so what would those programs look like if you could wave a magic wand and make it the way you like it?
I haven't talked a whole lot about that.
Most of the time I talk about is if we had acted responsibly, we wouldn't be facing this crisis.
I would like to offer young people going into the workforce the chance to opt out, opt out of Social Security.
But that won't work unless you do these cuts I'm talking about.
The militarism, as well as all these departments that make no sense at all.
You could do that, but politically it's difficult because the other day when we were voting on this resolution for the budget debt increase, I said there's two groups.
One group wants to cut a nickel out of the military, and the others won't cut a nickel out of the entitlement system.
And that's why we're at this point.
You've also spoken of big changes in Medicare, structural changes.
How would you change Medicare?
Well, once again, I haven't emphasized that at all, but I would want people to opt out of the system.
I would want people to have medical savings accounts.
Young people should be able to opt out and build up a medical savings account and take care of their own programs.
But that won't work unless you're willing to cut spending.
And I think the most popular place to cut is all the spending overseas and the corporate welfare in this country.
Because most of the money that we spend here supposed to help the poor really helps the large corporations, say the housing bubble.
Who could help?
See, the rich got bailed out.
They got bailed out both by the Congress and the Federal Reserve.
And they were making all the profits.
So it's corporatism that is so bad.
Whether it's medicine or even in education or the military-industrial complex, it's corporatism.
That is the welfare that is huge compared to the welfare of food stamps.
But without some government regulation, which I know you are against, what's to keep corporations from running, doing whatever they want?
Well, because I talk about a lot less regulation.
I don't like the regulatory agencies, but that doesn't mean the free market doesn't have regulation.
The regulations in the free market are much stricter because if a company gets into trouble and goes bankrupt, the law, the economic law, which should be enforced by government, that company goes bankrupt.
So instead of bailing them out, these companies should have gone bankrupt.
But you have sound money in free markets.
You can't counterfeit money like the Federal Reserve does.
And just to be clear, what would the Federal Reserve look like under a Ron Paul presidency?
Well, there's two different things.
My goal would be there's no need for the Federal Reserve.
Under a presidency, you don't get rid of the Federal Reserve overnight.
Even in my book, In the Fed, I don't say we should close the door and walk away.
I ask for competition.
Let's go to some of the international issues you touched on very quickly.
You want to bring troops home.
What should the U.S. footprint be internationally?
What is the U.S. role in the United States?
It should be a footprint of trade and friendship, as we were advised, and as the Constitution permits.
The footprint shouldn't be a military footprint.
It shouldn't be.
The footprint we're leaving now are drone missiles dropping bombs and killing innocent civilians lodged from the United States with computers.
That's not the kind of footprint I want.
Afghanistan, how quickly would you bring the troops home?
As quick as the ships could get there.
It's insane on what we're doing.
And I'll tell you one thing about this business, about the military.
We just had a quarterly report, and they listed all the money that all the candidates got from the military.
I got twice as much as all the other candidates put together on the Republican side, and even more than Obama got, which tells me that those troops want to come home as well because they know exactly what I'm talking about.
Two other quick things internationally.
You said you opposed the U.S. raid into Pakistan that led to the killing of Osama bin Laden.
You also would do away with, in essence, the CIA.
Why did you oppose the raid and what would you put in the place of the government?
The question to me was, I was just saying it could be done differently.
I mean, All this does was raise questions, and I predicted that this would lead to a lot of resentment.
And just think of the chaos in Pakistan and the mess that we have.
We both bomb them and we give them money, and then the people hate their own government because their own government's a puppet of ours.
My frustration with Bin Laden was it took so long.
And the CIA, you would I don't think the CIA should be a military arm of the government dropping bombs secretly.
Age of Ideas 00:01:49
You can't even separate the two.
CIA, you don't even know who is controlling the bombing of this country now.
A couple of questions about your campaign.
You have a son who was elected to the United States Senate, Rand Paul from the state of Kentucky.
This is your third try for president.
There was some talk that he was looking at running for president.
How did you discuss that between the two of you, that it was going to be you and not him who was?
We never talked about it.
Never had a discussion.
Finally, Congressman, you look healthy.
You certainly keep up a vigorous schedule.
You would be 77 years old if you were elected president upon taking office, which is quite a bit older than the oldest president upon taking office, Ronald Reagan.
Is age at all a factor for you in this campaign?
I think it is.
I think age is very important.
And sometimes I meet people when they're 45 and they're very old.
And I think it's the age of the ideas a person is presenting.
And is that person able to present these ideas?
Freedom is a young idea.
It's only been tested for a couple hundred years, and we had a taste of it, and we're throwing it away.
But what I see others are doing, the others, especially many of the other candidates, they have old ideas.
It's totalitarian.
It's a control of government, government policing the world, militarism, telling people how to run their lives, running the economy, telling people what they can put in their mouths and whether or not they can even drink raw milk.
It's just absolutely out of control.
But the idea that individuals are free, that they have a natural right to their life and the liberty and they ought to be able to keep the fruits of their labor, that is a young idea.
So I would say people ought to go with a young idea in somebody that can express them.
And interestingly enough, it's the young people that fully endorsed my campaign.
We are watching that.
Spoken very passionately.
Congressman Ron Paul, we thank you for talking with us.
Export Selection