| Time | Text |
|---|---|
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$1.7 Trillion War Bill
00:02:18
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|
| Hello, this is Ron Paul with your weekly update for Monday, December 26th. | |
| Those hoping for a Christmastime government shutdowns were once again disappointed when Congress passed a 4,000-page $1.7 trillion omnibus appropriations bill that few, if any, representatives and senators read before voting on it. | |
| The Republican leadership celebrated this bloated monstrosity because it spends $858 billion on warfare while only spending $772 billion on welfare. | |
| No one should think Republican insistence on more warfare than welfare spending means Democrats oppose a warfare state. | |
| Under President Biden and a Democrat-controlled Congress, defense spending has increased 4.3% over the last two years. | |
| Similarly, every Republican president in recent years, including two who had a Republican-controlled Congress for at least part of their term, supported huge increases in welfare state spending. | |
| Most Democrats only pretend to oppose warfare, and most Republicans only pretend to oppose welfare to appease their party's respective bases. | |
| The Omnibus Appropriations Bill, a $444.5 billion of giveaway to Ukraine. | |
| This brings the total U.S. spending to Ukraine's military to over $100 billion, approximately 50% more than Russia's entire military budget. | |
| This money is spent in a conflict that does not affect U.S. security, yet one that would likely have not occurred were it not for prior U.S. meddling in the region. | |
| The omnibus bill provides $11.3 billion for the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the FBI, a $569 million increase and $524 billion above the president's request. | |
|
FBI's Constitutional Overreach
00:02:48
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|
| According to the Democratic leadership, the funding increase is so the FBI can better fight extremist violence and domestic terrorists. | |
| The public recently learned what the FBI considers an appropriate way to fight extremism with the release of emails between Twitter officials and the FBI. | |
| These memos show the Bureau was working with Twitter and almost certainly other social media companies to suppress certain stories such as Hunter's, Biden's laptop, and points of view, such as skepticism regarding masks, lockdowns, and vaccine mandates. | |
| The Bureau even used taxpayers' funds to reimburse Twitter for the cost of implementing these requests. | |
| Government officials working with private companies to silence American citizens is a clear violation of the First Amendment. | |
| This is hardly the first time the FBI has violated the constitutional rights of American citizens. | |
| In fact, since its founding, the Bureau has targeted political activists and leaders such as Martin Luther King, whose agenda was considered extreme or dangerous by the Bureau's corrupt leadership. | |
| The idea of a national police force with the power to target Americans because of their political beliefs would have horrified the drafters of the Constitution. | |
| The federal government has no constitutional authority over criminal law except for cases of piracy, counterfeiting, and treason. | |
| Libertarians, constitutional conservatives, and progressives who still care about civil liberties should join together to defund the FBI. | |
| The fiscal year 2022 omnibus appropriations bill expands government, reduces liberty, and increases government debt, forcing the Federal Reserve to monetize more debt, leading to more price inflation. | |
| Our political elites prioritize militarism above the authoritarians at home over addressing the problems facing the American people, like the Federal Reserve's destructive monetary policy. | |
| This will fuel growing discontent with the political system. | |
| As the economy continues to worsen and the attempt to run the world continues to raw in failures, the discontent will grow until the welfare warfare state collapses and hopefully a new era of liberty, peace, and prosperity dawns. | |