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Dec. 15, 2022 - Ron Paul Liberty Report
29:25
Congress To Sneak $37 Billion Ukraine Aid Into Must Pass Omnibus Bill

As opposition to Washington's Ukraine blank check mounts, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer has signaled that the next huge check - nearly $38 billion - will be conveniently hidden in a year-end, must-pass omnibus bill. It's a way to keep the gravy train flowing while sparing Members the inconvenience of having to face voters. Also today...White House to send more troops into Ukraine. What could go wrong?

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Time Text
Balancing the Budget for Ukraine 00:15:14
Hello, everybody, and thank you for tuning in to the Liberty Report.
With us today is Daniel McAdams, our co-host.
Daniel, good to see you today.
Good morning, Dr. Paul.
How are you this morning?
Doing well, thank you.
Doing well?
Good.
The people in Washington are very, very worried.
They're trying to get an omnibus bill passed where they let us know everything about what they're doing.
You know, and the American people get to know it.
But, of course, I'm being very facetious because hardly any members, even the ones that are on the inside, don't know what's in the bill because the staffers stuff it up there and everybody contributes.
But the people who contributed, the other people don't know what's in there.
So there's hardly one person that says, you know, I can answer the question.
But anyway, it's a big thing.
It's the end of the year.
It's a predictable event.
And more so because we're getting near the end of the year and there's a lot more pressure that can be put on it.
But, you know, we have pointed out several times now that the American people are maybe getting a little tired of sending all that money and adding to the debt, which requires us to spend more money to pay for the interest, adding more debt by spending money over there.
At the same time, there are a lot of problems here.
Of course, there's a lot of waste here, but some people see the problem that we spend a lot of time worrying about the borders 6,000 miles away and not about our borders.
But that's not the issue as much now.
It's just getting the Congress closed right now.
The Democrats are fretting.
We're not going to lose forever, but we've lost a little bit of power.
And they're trying to grab as much as they can.
And that's why this omnibus bill, the details will be yet to be found out.
It'll take a little while.
But the big thing about the Ukrainian aid, for a while, they'll put that up and let an up and down vote, even on suspension, because the people are so hawkish.
And we wonder whether the people are sick and tired of it and maybe sending a message to their congressmen and their senators that they shouldn't be spending so much overseas in foreign policy.
And that would please us.
But that's all going to go quickly.
Probably, you know, in the next couple of days, they have to resolve it because, you know, there's been a few times in history that they'll be out there voting on Christmas Eve.
And that's when you better really be watching out because there'll only be four people there under suspension of all the rules.
So the thing of it is, and all this mess and all this spending and all these problems we have, there will be no debate, serious debate, except for about 10 people in both houses put together about what should we be dealing with?
Foreign policy?
Maybe we should come home and not be so many places.
Should we have a non-interventionist economic policy?
Maybe we should have a sound currency.
Maybe we should balance our budget.
You know, there's a lot of things they could debate, but that has nothing to do with it.
This is who's going to get the most out of this deal.
And it looks like most of the time, if you're on the inside, one way or another, either party, they get what they want.
And it seems like there's less resistance to spending than there has been in the past.
There's fighting and fuming, but there's no sort of, you know, I don't even think in secret they say, you know, we can't do this much longer.
I think they're actually a condition to it that they believe they can get away with this forever and ever, and that will not happen.
Yeah, that's for sure.
Well, you know this very well, Dr. Paul.
This is one of the oldest tricks in the book.
You dump everything into the end-of-the-year omnibus bill, must-pass, the things that you don't want to have under scrutiny, you dump it in, you dump it in, and it's a must-pass bill.
So if a member, for example, says, you know what, my constituents are telling me that they don't want any more aid to Ukraine, that member can't vote against that bill because he would be obstructing Congress and wouldn't be supporting the troops and the military.
So that's what they do.
And I think that's what they're doing here.
Let's put this first clip up.
This is from our good friend Dave DeCamp, who does a great job over at antiwar.com.
Senator Schumer says Ukraine aid will be included in omnibus bill.
The White House has asked for $37.7 billion.
But of course, Congress will say, hold my beer and add a few more billion to that.
No question about it.
They're going to sneak it into the omnibus bill and hide it away in there.
At least one member doesn't think it's such a great idea.
Let's put this next clip on.
American hero Thomas Massey says this is wrong.
We should have a separate vote on additional Ukraine funding.
Most of my constituents do not wish to have their money sent to Ukraine, especially not without oversight or an audit.
And so you wonder, Dr. Paul, why they're doing this, and we talked about it a little bit before the show.
Why are they slipping in?
Well, it's convenient, you know, throw it all in, you know, a big dog's breakfast, whatever.
But we can speculate, is it maybe because support is slipping?
Is that why they don't want scrutiny?
And I was sort of sniffing around to see if there was a recent poll.
And there actually is one, believe it or not, from just a few days ago.
And it was written about in the Washington Post, if we could put this next clip up.
Support slipping for indefinite U.S. aid to Ukraine poll fines.
And let's put up, this is from that article in the Washington Post from earlier this month.
Well, support among the American public for assistance to Ukraine remains robust.
Republican backing for aid to Ukraine has slipped since the spring, with 55% of Republicans saying they support sending military aid compared with 68 in July and 80% in March.
Half of Republicans favored providing economic assistance last month compared with roughly three quarters in March.
So you're seeing still a half of Republicans supporting this aid.
But when you look at 80% support in March dropping to 50 just a few months later, you're seeing a trajectory of refusal, reluctance to support this.
Maybe that's what they're afraid of.
You know, the opponents are just as strong against the audit as they are for the spending.
You think, well, isn't this extreme?
No, this is very important because that's one of the things about the Federal Reserve, that they will never, what they protect the most is anybody in Congress auditing what's going on with overseas spending by the Fed, distribution.
It's not spending, it's distribution of funds.
But here, there's been standing alone bills and RAN tried to get it passed in the Senate and they won't even do that.
You'd think there'd be maybe a little room there for a slight concession or something.
Oh, okay.
Yeah, you're right.
You guys are right.
Just vote for the bill and we'll vote for your audit.
They don't even do that because the audit is exposure, whether it's auditing the Fed, auditing the Pentagon, or auditing this omnibus bill.
So it's not going to happen because the bigger and the more ornery government gets, the more secrecy there is, and the more people challenge anybody that does.
And if you're overstepping your bounds, you might even get canceled.
You can't bring these things to the front and let people know.
But hopefully more and more people and American citizens are waking up to this.
Yeah, and Massey was joined by Marjorie Taylor Greene, who I think is really distinguishing herself in Congress, maybe had a rocky start.
But if we can put this next one up, as you point out, Dr. Paul, she's the one that sponsored, that joined, that introduced a bill that would require an audit of all the funds the U.S. has authorized for Ukraine.
I think most reasonable people would say, well, an audit?
That doesn't sound like such a bad idea.
The resolution was voted down by the Democrat-led House Foreign Affairs Committee.
But, and this is interesting, it received support from mainstream Republicans.
Now, of course, they may well be just trying to score political points, just drive the knife into Biden a little bit more by doing this.
But nevertheless, we'll take in the wind column when we can get one in the wind column.
So the momentum, I think, slowly, unfortunately, is, I think, moving a little bit in our favor.
And I think that's what they might be a little bit worried about.
You know, and the fact that they're handling this a little differently, the funds for Ukraine, and it's the season where most people are thinking about other things than just getting this bill passed, because they know most members of Congress, I'd say 90% of the Congress, no, it's not going to make any difference.
It is going to pass.
You're not going to get a speech.
There will be no open rule.
You can't amend the bill.
So, you know, the die's been cast that so that people aren't expecting too much.
But eventually, even if we don't wake up enough American people to demand it from their congressmen, it has to come forward because, you know, there's a limitation to even in dictatorships.
Soviet Union went down because of the spending.
Or in a society like ours, maybe especially, you know, where democracy rules the dictatorship of the majority, that is especially bad because people want to hide it.
And this is not transparency month.
This is hide what you can because we're getting out of town.
Things are going to change next year.
But we'll have another scheme.
Already, you read the stories about the Democrats' schemes for next year.
They have to change their tactics.
And since they have, I'm sure, still plenty of social media support, and they still have a lot of ordinary media support, and the propaganda is there.
So, you know, they're not going to say, you know, maybe we ought to back off.
Maybe we ought to at least have an audit and pretend that we do care.
Yeah.
Well, you know, the next story we're following is I think we could really title it the further Vietnamization of Ukraine because that's exactly what's happening.
We can put this next one on.
This is from our friends at Zero Hedge.
U.S. Mulls More Troops Inside Ukraine to Track Arms as leaked cable admits impossible task.
And there are so many things to unpack in this one, Dr. Paul, but I think the first one really is the Vietnamization of Ukraine.
I think the White House, the Pentagon has acknowledged having about a dozen troops in there monitoring those weapons we sent over, making sure that they're not going into the wrong hands.
But they are thinking about sending in more U.S. troops inside Ukraine.
Of course, those U.S. troops are very exposed when they're there.
They are certainly subject to be blown to bits, which of course would make them want to send more and more.
I just think that this is the slippery slope toward a direct conflict between the U.S. and Russia.
And I think that's what a lot of the neocons who really are in the driver's seat in this administration, more than they have been in the past too, I think, that is what they want.
And that is what they're getting with this.
And they're flying in undercover of saying, hey, you guys were right all along, Senator Paul, you were right.
We need to track these weapons, but to do it, we need to send a bunch of troops in.
And it's dangerous.
Yeah, you know, in the bill, they won't let them have a legitimate audit.
But here they come up with another bill that they say, we need a few more troops.
We want to spend a little money and we'll find out, which means there's just more money out there.
They're not going to track.
They spend money that they should.
And then they have to spend more money to track it, which they have no desire to really track it.
So this is just a pretend.
And they think that's going to satisfy the people in this country.
And they say, oh, yeah, you won't count.
You won't really audit what you're doing, but we'll send more troops.
And that is, I think, you know, if that were happening today, if the Chinese and the Russians all of a sudden, oh, well, you know, we all belong to the UN.
We got UN permission.
We're going to send some more troops into your country.
I think we would not like that very much.
But it just goes, send more in and complicate it more, but there'll be more and more spending.
And the American people are not going to be better informed.
Yeah, that's true.
And if you can put that one back up again, because this is a good quote.
Unfortunately, it's an unnamed former U.S. official, but he says, quote unquote, here she says, quote unquote, this is classic mission creep.
Of course it is.
The whole thing has been mission creep.
Emphasis on the second word of that.
But he cited the endless war on terror conflicts turning quagmires such as Iraq, Afghanistan, and Syria.
Yeah, we've had Mission Creek and all those.
In fact, I was looking, this is off-subject, a little at Dr. Paul, but I was looking at in Syria, the U.S. has stolen, I think, 40 truckloads of oil from Syria and transported it to Iraq.
So yeah, it's a creep in more ways than one.
And here's from the next clip, if you can put it on.
This is from the same article, and it cites a politico article talking about a leaked cable, sensitive but unclassified internal cable, where it talks about the difficulty, near impossibility of overseeing the weaponry once it enters Ukraine.
Now they think of it, right?
Well, here's the quote.
The Biden administration also plans to tap a still unnamed U.S. firm by February to implement a special three-year initiative to help the oversight effort, according to the document.
And the cable signed by U.S. Ambassador Bridget Brink is a snapshot in time, but it underscores how crises like the Ukraine war, such as U.S. experiences in Afghanistan and Iraq, inevitably turn into hugely expensive undertakings that are hard to track for Christ because of the chaos on the ground, often in countries with, emphasize this, histories of corruption.
Not long before this conflict, we were talking about Ukraine as the most corrupt country in Europe.
You could read that all throughout the mainstream media.
It was well known.
It was not controversial.
So here's a great idea.
Let's send a hundred billion dollars worth of stuff and money and all kinds of stuff into the most corrupt country in Europe.
And then half a year later or more say, you know, we probably should have had a look at that to see where it goes.
It's just astonishing.
They've learned nothing from Afghanistan, Iraq, or anything else.
And what happens if the theory goes that if you subsidize corruption, you get more, you subsidize immigration, you get more of it.
Sending Money to Corruption 00:13:56
But, you know, as you recall, I'm sure, when he was leading up to the Iraq war, and we were trying to stop that, and we said, well, you know, it could cost you a lot of money.
Oh, but we're going to take their oil.
The oil is going to pay all the bills, and we might even make a little on the side.
Now, here it is, that didn't work out so well.
We still have, we have military control, but we really don't have control of Iraq.
So, what are we doing?
We're in Syria.
I guess it was easier to steal the oil from Syria.
So, what are they going to take the oil dude?
And now, the oil is going to Iraq.
But it's supposed to be the other way.
We're supposed to the Iraqi war.
We stole their oil.
So, we have to steal somebody else's to replace it.
It's sort of like the budget goes, you know, we run up debt and you have to steal from somebody else in order to pay the interest on that debt we already stole from people.
You know, that's why it shouldn't be that difficult.
Every once in a while, people say, How do you know those things are going to happen?
These that won't last.
I don't think it takes fortunately.
I don't have a PhD in economics because that's where people don't really, because they were taught that it's right and it's moral, it's constitutional, at least in their eyes.
Everybody knows better.
Well, you know, Dr. Paul, your TST, your column this week, got a lot of attention.
It was on Zero Hedge, a lot of viewerships, and it was great.
And it was about the coming economic crash.
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Dr. Paul.
Very good.
I'm going to go to another subject, but I got to prepare you because I want you to have an open mind because you might say, ah, that can't be true.
They wouldn't do that because they're the conservative.
But exclusive from Red State.
That gives you a hint.
They might have a little bias here and there.
And an analysis of RNC spending since 2017 shows millions were spent on private jets, limousines, luxury retreats, Broadway shows.
So it's an epidemic.
I wonder if they have a vaccine for this that we can stop it.
First, there's a lot of stealing going on among individuals.
We wreck an economy.
Thefts go up because sometimes they're doing it because they want to eat.
Then there's government theft.
If you can't find enough victims, you hire your congressman, and he steals for you.
And then it becomes legal and moral.
But then, here, so you send a bunch of people up there, and it's probably more bipartisan, even though this article is not bashful about going after some Republican excesses.
So they do this, and it's just a shifting around, but it's an attitude that is spread around.
So I don't think that's by accident.
I think it's a moral attitude that means that they rationalize and they make excuses, they ignore the rules like the Constitution, and the immorality of the whole system goes there, whether it's the individuals, whether it's the corporations, whether it's the government.
And now, lo and behold, there's some shenanigans going on in the political system.
Yeah, and let's put that on if you can, skip over to that red state with Rona McDaniel on the front.
This is an article about how the RNC is spending the money that it raises.
And anyone who is on any mailing list knows that they send a lot of fundraisers.
They do a lot to try to get money.
And I just want to put in two caveats, Dr. Paul, on this story, because while we believe it's newsworthy and worth scrutiny, first of all, in Red State, it was written by a person who works with the woman who's running against Rona McDaniel to head the RNC.
So there's a little bit of a conflict of interest there.
And also, and I speak from some experience, although we don't have limousines and luxury retreats, but obviously you do provide premiums and when you fundraise, it does cost money to fundraise.
So we don't know all the details, but we can say it looks kind of ugly, especially when you're talking about Middle America, you know, Granny writing in that $10 check thinking she's going to elect Republicans, and that may not be the case.
And put on this next one, this is from the article, and it doesn't look good, although, again, caveats.
But law review found that the amount spent during the 21-22 election cycle seem to have been par for the course and possibly even lower than previous portions of McDaniel's tenure.
The RNC spent $3.1 million on private jets, $1.3 million on limousine chauffeur, $17.1 million on donor mementos, three quarters of a million on flowers, and $80,000 in booze.
Again, all of those could be justified depending on the situation.
However, they need to, well, it would have been nice if they would have used all that money in one.
They didn't do a very good job in winning, so that's probably the biggest complaint.
Right.
So, no, it gets messy, and I think campaigns get messy because government is messy.
And if you reduce the size of government to the proper size, and more individuals would get into government that might be wanting to follow the Constitution, the corruption would be much greater reduced, more greatly reduced, because they cause people to want to get influence because that's where the power is, and that's where it's productive.
So you have huge donations, and there's no doubt about it that you can't say that every penny that was spent there, you know, a lot of people even know that,
but sometimes this doesn't deal with where I think the maybe bigger problem is when the corporate giants get in, when somebody in the cryptocurrency business will donate and own a political party, like what's been going on.
Now, that's the kind of thing, that's the big stuff, but the principle is very similar, that everything is up for sale, and it seems like at every level, you know, people can justify it.
But I still think the problem is that people have justified doing something that deep down in their heart they must know isn't right.
If they've understood that, oh, yes, I need this money for my education.
And this is a noble thing because I'm going to be a productive citizen.
But then you look at what happens to that.
It just goes, oh, it's not worth it.
But it's a system, and it's also an acceptance of some moral standards that allows it to exist.
There's no, no, I would say there's not very much sense of guilt about this.
You know, if they spend this money, they think, well, that's the way you do it.
That's the way the system works.
If it didn't work, you don't have the right lobbyists.
You better pay more money to your lobbyists.
So the system is bad, but I would say I would narrow that down to saying government is way too big, and what they're doing is not related to protecting our liberties or promoting peace, and that's where the problem is.
Yeah, for sure.
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Very, very good.
You know, I talked about in the recent article that we got a lot of attention for, emphasizes the bankruptcy that I talk about and why it's dangerous and pointed out that there's a political and economic danger to this.
And one of the biggest dangers is the fact of a maldistribution of wealth under these conditions.
The rich get richer and the poor get poorer.
And when you understand that, this should open up the door to conservatives if they would accept this principle instead of saying, well, you just need more and more money in the military-industrial complex and never question it.
That's what they think they should do.
But the bankruptcy is not reversible in the sense that give us 25 more people in Congress or 100 people into Congress and we'll start voting differently.
We'll start voting against the spending and we'll gradually reduce the deficit and things will move back to where they were.
I don't think there's any chance of that happening in that orderly fashion.
It's just not likely.
Does that mean I don't think that the likelihood or it's easy to return to a status or develop a status even better than anything we've ever had based on personal liberty?
I think that's what we have to aim for, believing it can be possible.
There have been some ups and downs.
I think the American Revolution was a blip in history that showed that you can actually increase the principle of liberty by determining and supporting it.
But what happens when the system breaks down, whether it's the political system or the economic system, the bankruptcy is uncontrollable, and nobody's saying, oh, yeah, we can work our way out of this.
There's always, and we've mentioned this on the show before, there's always an opening there because the system will be seen as not being productive.
The tragedy is the cultural Marxists, that's what they're aiming for.
So, when we look at what's going on in the middle in the inner cities and just decry how horrible this is, why do they do these things?
Well, they do it because they want chaos, because they want a clean slate for building, you know, a Marxist system.
It's been around for hundreds of years, that principle, but they see this as a renewed effort to do it once again because they too know that they're bringing on chaos and that's what they want.
And then the people have to accept something else.
But it also is an opportunity for people to present the case for liberty.
And there's reason to believe that's worthwhile, mainly because if we don't do something, if we don't offer, and we don't wean people off dependency on government, we know exactly what's going to happen.
But I always see signs that there's a lot of people out there.
I think if you had a pure democratic election in the country and they knew exactly what the issues were, and you just eliminate all names and places and philosophies and just say, Well, do you believe that we should go to war?
Do you believe we should just print our money?
That sort of thing.
I think our views would overwhelmingly win in pointing out privacy and limitation of government.
You know, to me, that is so powerful.
And then I say to myself, Well, why aren't we doing better?
Well, I'd like to know that because I work trying to do better all the time and present this case because it should be easy, but it isn't.
People are overly tempted to get something.
It's sort of the free-lunch attitude.
Well, that sounds good, but there's a lot of pain and suffering with that.
But I think you can say when it gets very chaotic, maybe the door will be a little more open rather than closed.
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