Happy Holidays: 4,000+ Page, $2 Trillion, Dog's Breakfast Budget Dropped At Last Minute
The "must pass" omnibus bill ramps spending to the outer limits as Democrats face loss of power in the House in January. Packed full of warfare-welfare state spending, the disgusting mess is symbolic of the decline of the US Congress as a legitimate legislative body. Also today: US missiles striking Russian territory...what could go wrong? Thank you for your tax-deductible, year-end support: http://ronpaulinstitute.org/support/
Hello, everybody, and thank you for tuning in to the Ron Paul Liberty Report.
With us today as co-host is Daniel McAdams.
Daniel, good to see you.
Good morning, Dr. Paul.
How are you?
I'm doing fine.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Got a couple things to talk about today.
But, you know, in Washington, they're thinking a lot about when are we going to get to go home for Christmas?
And I think everybody thinks about Christmas, and everybody talks about the budget, and everybody knows they can't do anything about the budget, and nothing's going to change.
So it's all grandstanding.
Who can get the last word in and the last blurb?
And Democrats have less trouble because they have, did you know that the media tends to lean toward the Democratic side and not, I don't even think they like Trump, a nice guy like that.
They don't even like Trump.
But anyway, in the next couple days, they'll have to do something.
They are pressured now at the end of the year.
But we'll talk about that in a minute.
But I want to talk about the markets today.
The markets are jumping.
You don't see silver going up over a dollar in one day.
That is a high percentage.
And when you think about it, when I first started saving silver, it was $1.29 an ounce.
So it's gone up a little bit.
And it's going to go up a lot more.
But I'm trying to train myself not to talk about the price of gold or silver.
It's not that the people don't need to understand it, but it isn't the price of silver that's going up.
It's the value of the dollar going down.
Because if you talk about the price of silver, then they get into, or any prices, then you get into this challenge.
Well, you know, price gouging, profits are too high, labor costs are too high.
We have to regulate this.
And that's done on purpose.
I used to just think it was careless language.
But no, it's done on purpose to get the attention away from the Federal Reserve and the value of the unit of account.
But anyway, today it was jumping.
Silver was up sharply and gold was up like $30.
But when I looked at things in general, one thing, building permits in November collapsed, and it wasn't many months ago, houses were soaring in price.
They're up and down, which is typical if you don't have a unit of account to work on.
But I think when I look at all this miscellaneous stuff and you can't see the pattern, I think what we're looking at is the adjustment to an inflationary depression, an inflationary recession.
Because that's what the Fed wants.
They think the correction for all this is just raise interest rates as if they don't have to deal with the spending.
This budget, they're not dealing with the spending.
So they're going to do it.
So there's going to be stagflation.
Boy, that was strong, a big deal in the 70s.
And that's a big difference because you can have inflation.
And what they want is they want prices to go up.
They want devaluation of the dollar to liquidate debt in real terms.
And sometimes you get your recession, and that happens.
But sometimes prices keep going up.
And so you have inflationary recessions, inflationary depressions.
And that is what they really don't want.
But they don't have control of it because the markets ultimately are powerful enough to even counteract the Federal Reserve and all the mischief.
And that's why the whole system of Bretton Woods broke down in 1971.
The market was saying, you can't just do this.
Well, I say we just can't keep doing this either.
But I think we're going to have confirmation this weekend that some people are starting to realize it.
But the one thing they have to realize is just having a weak economy, the whole idea that they purposely wanted the prices to go up faster, they needed 2% inflation.
And now what they want is a recession, you know, raise interest rates, and a recession is the solution to an overheated economy.
If you have a lot of economic growth in good times, the last thing you want to do is purposely, well, let's artificially raise the interest rates, and let's cause a crash so the prices go down.
And they look at this very seriously.
So they want people who are good with the computer because the computer is going to tell them what to do.
If you do ABC, then this happens.
But they're taught that.
The silliest part is they have all this mathematical calculation here that you can't do it.
You can't put into the computer a couple numbers and know what human action is going to do.
It's made up of individuals.
So I think that this morning I would take the news in the markets as very, very shaky, signs that we're having stagflation and that the people who are now worrying about whether they're going to get their home for Christmas and who's going to get the last dollar appropriated, they have no control of it ultimately.
But there's a lot of political power struggles there, and we'll talk about that.
I think America will agree with you that the markets are very shaky, but they're definitely not hearing that up on Capitol Hill because they just dropped the omnibus budget spending bill, the stopgap.
We can't shut down the government.
We've got to pass this or you can't come home for Christmas.
I remember this over and over when I worked for you on the Hill, Dr. Paul.
It's a kind of hostage taking for people.
Anyone skeptical?
Let's put this first clip.
This is Politico's take on it.
Lawmakers unveil government spending bill to stave off Friday's shutdown.
The so-called omnibus bill would provide the military with $858 billion well-funding domestic programs, more than $772.
So you get this massive bill on a Tuesday morning.
It must be passed before Friday.
This is a game they play.
Well, Senator Mike Lee has a tweet out today, I think it is, yeah, right when they dropped it, and he makes a very good point.
This monstrous spending bill comes to 4,155 pages.
We deserve proper consideration and the chance to read, debate, and amend, not a backroom deal.
Opposing this isn't radical.
Running our government like this is what's radical.
And then he continues: the Bible is 1,200 pages long.
Could you read it three times before Friday?
Very good point.
Lawmakers were not allowed to see that until this morning.
There's no way, even with all the caffeine in the world, they're going to be able to read it before they vote on it.
Now, things are sort of similar to what they were like a few years back when we were spending some time up there.
But it's the same old story, only I would say it's much worse, you know, because the numbers get worse.
And the bigger the bubble, the longer they can hold this together, the bigger the distortion and the bubble.
And then when it comes down more, people are injured.
And they have deceived themselves into thinking that you can have a soft landing and never have to pay the debt.
The big thing now that they're trying to sort out is who gets punished the most.
And it's a safe thing to say that it's the middle class and the poor who suffer the most from these conditions.
And yet I think libertarians and constitutionalists don't make good use of this because they're not seen as the friends of the middle class.
The Democrats used to co-opt that, but even the Democrats now are so bad that they're even losing any credibility, especially with their approach to civil liberties.
I want to read a quote that Patrick Leigh, he's leaving, but he's leaving it with some advice.
And I think he's been there a couple years.
Yeah, he's a couple of years ago.
A couple decades.
Here he goes.
He says, Senate Appropriations Chair Leigh quotes, it is the product of months of hard work and compromise.
And I want to thank my friend, Vice Chairman Richard Shelby, for their partnership in hard work.
You know, partnership and compromise and hard work.
That's what I mean.
Hard work.
Now, let's say it was hard effort.
Everything they do is detrimental.
You know, you can work real hard at destroying a country.
But it's the opposite.
It's much better that they just sit and not do a darn thing and not pretend a lot of hard work is going to solve this problem.
And then they say, the only thing they do is they have this pretense of compromise.
But, you know, it isn't compromise between liberty and intervention.
It's a bunch of interventionists.
There's not enough Mike Lees and Rand Paul's up there to take another position.
They just go ahead and they think it's, you know, sort of like the Federal Reserve.
Let's just change the chairman of the Federal Reserve.
They have to change the monetary system.
They have to change an attitude in all our universities to cancel out Keynesian interventionist planned economy and fiat currency.
That's what's necessary.
So this is really all nonsense, but very, very dangerous.
And the hard work, I don't feel sorry for him because he's had to work hard because it's exactly the opposite.
We don't want him and others like that to be around because their hard work just makes things worse.
You don't want to talk so much about the process.
And I'm old enough to remember, as I say, when I first started working for you, that we had normal order.
You passed appropriations bills for each branch of government.
You had a debate.
You debated on the floor.
Justin Amos, you remember from the House, libertarian-leaning Republican at the time, he tweeted out something the yesterday.
I didn't bring it up, but I just came to my mind about the process and how horrible it is that for two of Pelosi's terms, the average member did not have the ability to go down to the floor and make an amendment on an appropriations bill.
And you remember that was one of your, as a single member in the House, where there's so many of them, that's one of the few areas where you really have some legislative leverage.
You go down there and you move to strike something out and then you get your five minutes and you can talk about it.
That's all gone.
It's shocking.
Actually, part of that rule originally was there was unlimited debate until the debate was closed.
You could just go on and on.
And there were a few times, but that got canceled out, you know, where you could hold the floor and have real discussion.
But that's not it.
So they don't want that anymore.
I mean, truth is treasonous.
You don't want to, it'll ruin our system.
And then when you go through this bill and find out what's in there, you know, the one amazing thing is, you know, as bad as the president is, did you know that, yes, you knew, he wanted $45 billion less money than the Congress.
So the people's house, which should really be in charge of spending, they're not dealing with the people.
And it's pretty bad when the people's house, the Congress, the House especially, you know, is more fiscally conservative than Biden.
What a mess.
And then they argue over who are the most hawkish.
That's another sin they commit.
I think that's half the reason they act so childish up there, you know, the members of Congress.
They used to actually have to work.
And now they all do is primp and preem and make stupid comments.
Well, let's look a little bit under the hood here.
Now, we can't go too deep because it's 4,000 pages.
We'd be here till next year.
But let's go ahead and put this next one on.
The so-called omnibus, and this is from Politico, again, the same article, would provide the military with $858 billion this fiscal year, a nearly 10% increase over current levels.
That tells you, Dr. Paul, what you always say, this is a gift for the special interests.
This is a gift for Lockheed Martin, not for the American people.
And let's look at the next one.
This is from the same article.
The omnibus includes about $45 billion for Ukraine, exceeding President Joe Biden's request for 37.
Just as you predicted, Dr. Paul, the Congress looked at President Joe Biden's measly $37 billion and said, come on, man, we can do better than that.
Here's $45 billion.
It's just money.
It is going to come to an end.
And then, you know, some, including myself, if the truth comes out, that's good.
We're moving in the right direction.
But you won't even want to be wanting to smile over unless you just need it to survive because it's going to be bad.
You know, sort of like the people who knew what was coming a long time ago, and they saved up gold.
I think gold's going to save us and silver's going to save us.
But then when it comes, it's so bad that they just come and take your gold.
So that's why I argue that the talk should only be about understanding personal liberty and whether or not we should obey the Constitution.
But you know, in the Politico article, there's still a hold up, and I want to talk about one instance of the holdup.
The biggest holdup in releasing the text on Monday came instead from a dispute among Democrats.
Oh, it must be a big issue here.
First reported by Politico related to the location of the FBI's new headquarters.
And all that I've been sitting around worried about.
But then I decided the reason is they don't know whether they're going to keep the FBI.
They heard we were opposing the FBI.
Now they're worried and they're fighting over the position of the FBI, which is less than constitutional.
They don't follow the rule of law and they lie through their teeth.
And here in the location is a big deal because the Democrats are arguing because the Republicans aren't in the debate at the moment because one Democrat wants it here, the other one wants it over here.
Twitter Files Drop Revealed00:04:46
And I think my solution would work fine.
Why don't we just skip this FBI stuff?
They're not exactly friends of liberty.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Hoyer wants it in Maryland.
warner wants it in in virginia you know it's all about but here's one thing that they're not concerned about They're concerned about that kind of fight.
But if you skip that next one and just go to the one after that, because Dr. Paul already covered that, here's what they are not concerned about.
They're concerned about where are we going to get all this boondoggle from UFBI headquarters.
Here's what they're not concerned.
This came out this morning on the Daily Mail, Dr. Paul.
It just came out before we went on.
But we found out this yesterday because there was another Twitter files drop.
The FBI paid Twitter $3.5 million to do its bidding.
Taxpayers' money was used to suppress Hunter Biden laptop story and process the agency's request to silence GOP voices as fury mounts over the secret state censorship of the American people.
In a nutshell, Dr. Paul, and this came out, and you can even put the next one on, because it's the actual tweet from the Twitter files, Michael Schellenberger, who released this part of it.
This is an email to Jim Baker, who was a top guy in the FBI, and then became a top guy in Twitter.
And I'll just put it, I'll just summarize it, Dr. Paul.
The FBI paid Twitter at least $3 million to censor voices that the U.S. government did not think belonged on Twitter.
It is an unbelievable scandal, criminal act that should be prosecuted.
And it raises the question, how much are they paying Facebook?
How much are they paying Google?
How much are they paying LinkedIn?
All the other groups.
It's a massive scandal.
Nobody cares about it.
They only want to know, where's the FBI going to settle next?
Yeah, you know, this is so obvious that you should call the police.
Yeah.
Oh, that's the FBI.
They are the police.
Who do we call now?
And, you know, where are they spending the time?
And if you turn on the average mainstream media, it seems to be shifting a little bit.
But the main thing is, is how many indictments will there be?
Are they going to put Trump in prison because he did ABC?
And yes, an imperfect person.
But you compare his stuff, what he has done, compared to the scandals with the FBI and the media, social media, and on and on.
And the scandals.
You know, the one thing people have to remember is the more charges made by the radical left against somebody who's not the radical left, the more they're doing it.
You know, if they're using the FBI, they'll attack it.
Well, they'll probably, like there's been a lot of complications from the overkill and the lockdown.
So now some of the Democrats are, you know, they're kind of saying, oh, we need to do something about it.
They created the thing.
We need to do something about it.
Jefferson, send us some money, and we'll clean up this mess.
And they created the whole thing.
That means we have a long way to go to get the full truth out there.
Absolutely.
Well, you know, Dr. Paul, I don't know if you saw this.
There was an earthquake in Northern California this morning.
Thousands are without power.
We're facing a blast of cold air.
In fact, when we finish the show, I'm going to go wrap my pipes down here in Texas.
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And things happen all the time.
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Very good.
I want to go over to another item.
Russia Might Close Down00:09:43
It's related to the budget because the military and the defense people get what they want and they get a lot.
And like I already made fun of, that the House and the Senate wants more than the President.
And the President is no piker when it comes to spending.
But they all endorse the same policy, a little bit as grandstanding.
But just recently, the Russian city suffers casualties, 14,000 without power.
And it was not a blockbuster bomb, but some were killed.
A lot of people are out of electricity.
They can't blame a hurricane.
So the big problem is that when this whole issue came up of weapons that might be able to reach Russian border, because that's supposed to be, I don't know whether it's a red line or blue line or what is a red line, you're not supposed to cross this.
And it's an international understanding, and it's been very clearly stated by the Russians that we're fighting, and Russia's saying this more, and I think we should say it's NATO versus Russia.
And they've ganged up, and they have actually, you know, when we gave them some weapons, you know, this whole nonsense about, well, it's their weapons now.
They can say anything they want.
We have no responsibility of it, is the attitude.
But when we provide the HIMAR rocket launch system to Ukraine, the Biden administration said it received assurances that sort of like we would never put our weapons up near the Russian border, that the Ukrainian forces won't use them inside Russian territory.
But the U.S. no longer appears to be concerned about how the weapons are used.
And it looks like we, that's not we, that's a bad word, that NATO forces are getting a little bit too cocky.
And even our administrators who really run NATO are saying, you know, the Russians aren't going to do anything.
They haven't responded.
And we launched this and we've done this.
And so therefore, they think they're home free.
And all I have to say is wait and see.
Yeah, for sure.
And let's put this next one up.
This is from our good friend Dave DeCamp at antiwar.com.
This happened over the weekend.
One killed in Ukrainian shelling of Russia's Belgorod region.
The issue here is obviously this is a war.
Obviously Ukraine is fighting a war as it sees fit.
It is hitting a lot of civilians in Donetsk and across the border in Russia itself.
That really isn't our concern.
Our concern is a future of humankind and the involvement, as you say, of the NATO forces in helping this make this happen.
Let's put the next clip on.
This week's attacks on Belgorod come after the Times reported that the Pentagon has given Ukraine its tacit endorsement of strikes on Russian territory.
And do the next one because what follows from this is this, another anti-war.com from yesterday.
Russian military says U.S.-made missiles were shot down over Western Russia.
The Russian Defense Ministry on Monday said four U.S.-made AGM-88 harm anti-radar missiles were intercepted over Belgorod, an oblast in western Russia that borders Ukraine.
So they're literally shooting down American rockets that were sent into Ukraine and they're shooting down over Russia.
The danger does not need to be overstated because it's there.
When the Russians start seeing American rockets killing Russian people, it doesn't matter what you think about the war.
America is in danger.
You say, well, is it in danger for a vital national security reason?
No, it's not.
It's in danger, an existential danger, because of a border dispute between Russia and Ukraine that has nothing to do with us.
Yes, and I want to follow up on that use of the weapons once we give them away.
National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said last week, he says, when we give them a weapon system, it belongs to them.
Where they use it, how they use it, how much ammunition they use to use the system.
I mean, those are Ukrainian decisions.
And we respect the National Security Council spokesman.
There's so much garbage.
You know, I keep thinking, well, I thought that money belonged to the American taxpayer and the American people.
Did they?
Yes, they indirectly gave permission because they're lackadaisical and let their congressmen and they buy into this fear-mongering that Ukraine is sacred and they're going to stop the monster because Russia's coming, Russia's coming.
So this is, but this whole thing about this, the property issue here, how can they pick this up and all of a sudden have this absolute control of the property?
And what happened to the property that built those things?
You know, that property was all stolen.
And I don't think that's probably too weak a term.
You know, it's taken from the American people and then they wonder why they have to print more money and why we have inflation and all this nonsense.
So I think this is just horrible.
Even in spite of all my complaining and all the points that we're making, we do run into a lot of people who say, go get them because you're on the right track.
And I think if you looked at the number of people, well, take for instance the COVID thing.
There's been a shift and there's better articles now.
I've remected this that you can actually talk about it.
You can actually use it.
Before you'd get canceled and lose your job and lose your livelihood.
So there are good things about it, but it's so painful to watch the stupidity of this.
And that's why we have to do our very best to get people to look for the truth.
You know, it's like Kirby's saying basically, don't blame us.
Once we give it to them, it's theirs.
You mentioned if you handed a kid a gun or something, hey, don't blame me if he's, you know, or handed some alcohol, whatever.
You know, it's just crazy.
It reminds me of the neoconservative that's saying, when we act, we create our own realities.
Okay, that might be true, but the Russians might not share your realities when your bombs start crashing down.
So dumb and dangerous move.
I'm going to close out, Dr. Paul.
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Very good.
And I want to close just by revisiting the issue of whether the budget's going to get passed.
Something's going to get passed.
People worry about the government closing down.
I'm not going to get my Social Security check.
Well, the government has so-called closed down several times.
You know what happens?
You can't go up on the Washington Monument.
It's all grandstanding, but it's still the law and it still carries some weight.
And something will happen.
They might not, somebody's not, somebody that won't get everything they want because they can't do it.
But there will be, I don't think they'll vote on Christmas, but just remember when they passed the Federal Reserve Act on Christmas Eve in 1913.
So they might just pester around and then have a vote, and who knows what they'll do.
But the government is not going to close down.
Matter of fact, it is going to close down, but that's when the money quits working.
That's when the money just is totally destroyed.
And you have runaway inflation.
And now we have runaway judicial systems.
When you think about what the FBI has been doing and the CIA has done before, you know, my big eye-opener where I realized that our government was being changed and there was a coup out there was actually on November 22nd, 1963.
I was in the Air Force at the time, and the killing of Kennedy was a sign that that was not Russia, it wasn't Cuba, and it had a lot to do with those people who are supposed to take care of us and protect our liberties.
And they do exactly the opposite.
But the coup has existed and really started back then, and it's expanding.
And I think this FBI is just another sign of it.
And they're not even shy about it.
You know, but it's up for grabs right now.
There is more debate, and we need to debate to continue because it's a farce.
It's a farce to have an agency of government that's supposed to protect our liberties when things get out of hand.
But no, the police, when the police are corrupted, it's very difficult to have justice.