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July 31, 2023 - Ron Paul Liberty Report
33:42
Bleeding America Dry: Senate Passes MASSIVE Military Spending Bill

Late last week the US Senate overwhelmingly passed another huge military spending bill while rejecting any oversight over how the money is spent. The Empire must be funded! Meanwhile US troops in Niger are nervously watching a military coup against the US-backed regime.

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Senators Cross Party Lines 00:14:54
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 this morning.
Good morning, Dr. Paul.
How are you on this Monday?
Wonderful, wonderful.
All right, all right.
But do you see the weather prediction?
Even though I don't believe weather reports anymore, you know, that's one thing we're supposed to believe everything.
Oh, but they backed off on global warming, so we have to worry about globalism.
But they said we were going to get 100 today, and I am predicting we won't.
I hope you're right.
Yeah, I feel like we're in it.
I feel like I was out in the dust bowl when we got a little bit of rain over the weekend.
If it does hit 100, I remember 100 days in the past, and the world didn't come to an end.
But today we're not going to talk about the weather.
We're going to talk about weathering a foreign policy, which we have dedicated in a major sort of way out of the Institute for Peace and Prosperity, figuring that our foreign policy isn't something that we endorse.
We want to change it.
We would rather take our advice from the very many implications of what were at least stated in the Constitution and by the founders, because the advice was very strong.
Stay out of entangling alliances.
Well, we haven't taken very good advice on that, and we've been at this attitude of having an empire and it's endless spending.
But the reason we'll talk about it today is just, I guess, a couple days ago, late at night, on Thursday night, passed the 2024 National Defense Authorization Act.
And, well, this is big, a big deal.
It's $886 billion.
And it was back and forth and back and forth.
But it's exactly the amount that Biden requested.
So he got what he wanted.
There were a lot of people, didn't care.
They still wanted to raise it.
And a lot of them, I guess most of those, were the Republicans, that we want to spend more and more money on peace and prosperity by spending more money and stealing more money from the American people.
But right now, it looks like this will have to, because it is not perfectly written like the House version.
You know, the modification and the supervision of the spending, watching the spending, that has not been resolved.
And they're still wondering about a couple other various points.
But they have to agree with it over the abortion issue, this whole thing.
So that is not the case.
So that will go, even though it's been the House and the Senate, it's one of the big bills, I think, because not only in nominal terms, but in terms of the importance of it.
But, you know, interesting enough, you know, I always predict it'll end because we'll run out of money.
But there's a race right now.
Which is going to be the biggest money for our militarism or the money we're paying for borrowing the money for our militarism.
And once you, and we're at the point now where the interest on the payments to run this foreign policy is growing faster, and it will be the big thing.
So I think, you know, everybody has their favorite things to look at for the economy.
And the economists have a lot of different things they do just to distract.
They never look much at the Federal Reserve.
But I think if you had one item to look at, if you could get an accurate measurement of real debt, you know, they can hide debt and obligations, all these different things.
But if you know what the real debt is, that will be the limiting factor because ultimately, even though it should have really challenged the dollar already, it's constantly charged, you know, challenging the dollar because that means prices are going up.
And so that's the case.
So we'll be watching that at least.
But I just thought today, Daniel, this is a big bill.
It's related so much to what we try to do and get information out.
But I would say the vote, which was, you know, 86 to 11, we didn't do a very good job.
But I still am optimistic that if the people really knew what was going on and really knew what's going on in our foreign policy, they'd have a different attitude.
And we'll talk a little bit about the, you know, nonsensical things that they do in our foreign policy.
Yeah, the one word that comes to mind when I think of this bill is sleepwalking, because they continue to go on pretending as if we're absolutely the top dog.
Our empire is unchallenged.
Spending a little bit more money will shore up our empire.
And in the meantime, as we see now, increasingly our weapons, our training, everything that we spend the money on that actually should defend us, we're seeing it fail before our eyes in Ukraine.
And so you're wondering, where is this money going?
What's happening to it?
The other thing, you know, put on that first one if you can.
The other thing about this that struck me is it's so classic DC.
Because you remember we talked about it on this show, the big deal about the budget ceiling, the spending ceiling, all this and that.
Well, the debt ceiling deal, okay?
That was going to really save us.
So even though this bill authorizes a record $886 billion in military spending, well, that's okay because that was the agreement set in the debt ceiling talks 886, so that within that.
But as Dave DeCamp points out from anti-war.com, this is a little loophole, Dr. Paul. Hawks in Congress, and that would be both parties, are planning to increase that figure even more by passing, quote, emergency supplemental funding, which is not limited by the debt ceiling deal.
And you would say, absolutely.
I mean, if we're in an emergency, who can deny them funding?
Who can count how many emergencies there are?
There's always going to be one, and that's why that whole debate, pseudo-debate, had very little meaning.
But in spite of all this negative talk on our program today, the vote in this House was a little bit better.
It was 219 to 210 when it passed the House.
So that means, and they are closer to the people than I think the Senate, generally speaking.
So they're getting the message, and I think they're feeling it harder.
You know, the average person of their pocketbook, I think they are catching on that when we're shipping so much money outside and we're having so many more problems here.
If you listen to the president, he talks pretty good.
Things don't seem to be that bad, you know.
Biden.
But the people aren't buying into this.
So that's going to continue.
And we will, of course, point out a couple things that, you know, where we have pretty good evidence that you shouldn't be overly optimistic.
You already have one.
The debt limit doesn't even do any protecting.
No.
And they can always cancel.
Well, let's look at the nay votes because looking at the yay votes in the Senate won't help us much because as you point out, Dr. Paul, the vast majority on both sides, it was a bipartisan vote, voted yay.
But there are some good nays on the Republican side especially.
I was happy but not surprised that Senator Paul voted against this bill, this massive bloated bill, and Senator Lee from Utah voted against it.
And I was slightly surprised but pleased to see that JD Vance from Ohio, the third Republican to vote against the bill.
And it's nice to see some Democrats.
It would have been nice to see more.
But, you know, I think the House vote was more along party lines, Dr. Paul.
Whereas you're seeing here, quite a few senators cross party lines to vote no on this, which you have to say, regardless of what motivated them, it's to their credit to have done that.
But the other thing that's not such great news is that Senator Paul attempted to introduce two amendments.
He introduced them.
He attempted to pass two amendments.
If you put this next one up, if you can.
So an amendment introduced by Senator Rand Paul to require audits and investigations of Ukraine aid failed in a vote of 70 to 28, with only Republicans supporting the measure.
So every single Democrat voted against any kind of audit on this.
The Senate also rejected an amendment to establish a lead inspector general for Ukraine in a vote of 51 to 48.
Now this is interesting because there was a procedural move in the Senate because they knew they were going to lose this to require a three-fifths majority on this rather than a simple majority.
So on that second one, I think it was good because Senator Paul came very, very close to getting that inspector general, which you have to ask, why don't you want to know where the money's going?
You know, why don't you want to know?
Well, I don't think they want to know.
Well, they might know, but they have to know that to hide it.
They just don't want the people to know what's going on.
But I think that's where it's inevitable they will wake up and they'll have to figure out.
And it has to be related to what the government is doing and that spending is a big deal.
The big issue, though, why that logic doesn't work, is that everybody has been conditioned over many, many decades to see what they get from the government as being very legitimate in its errors.
And you have other places where you're supposed to cut.
But when I did the campaigning nationally, I always tried to say, well, why don't you just start with corporate welfare?
And why don't you start with some of this militarism around the world?
And there were a lot of people that responded to that.
But no, they are conditioned because they're afraid to death.
Well, if the Democrats get into trouble, how often will they resort to Republicans are going to do away with Social Security?
And even though not too many of them would be able to stand up for it and say, no, we need to double it, that sort of thing.
But the sense that they might lose it, but they don't use the argument that stop the food stamps to the corporate ripoffs in the military or the pharmaceutical industry.
And at least you could work out of it if you just start cutting.
It would work.
But that doesn't happen.
They paint the worst picture, and then the people get frightened and tell the member of Congress, you've got to vote for it.
You've got to vote for it.
Yeah.
Well, here's a good tweet on Senator Paul's amendments, if we can put that next one up.
And I was just searching around.
It's Nick Short.
I don't know him.
Apparently, he's been published, whatever, but he's still, whatever the case, he has a good tweet.
He says the U.S. Senate once again blocks Senator Paul's effort to require audits and investigations of the tens of billions that the U.S. taxpayer has given to Ukraine.
You could say probably $150 billion, actually.
He continues, this comes just one month after the Pentagon's $6.2 billion, quote, accounting error on Ukrainian aid.
Yet the majority of both Democrats and Republicans still refuse to provide oversight.
As a reminder, just last year, the Senate passed a bill to hire 87,000 new IRS agents in order to deeply dig into the finances of everyday Americans.
You can't audit the money being printed for Ukraine.
Why do you think Congress won't allow Ukrainian aid to be audited?
And I love this because he says, yeah, they'll audit every single one of us and hire 80,000 to do it.
But they won't audit this $150 billion to Ukraine.
But, you know, I think we lose twice.
So, of course, they take the money, they buy this and say, we have to send more weapons.
Military industrial complex has to have a life too, you know.
So they do that and send the weapons.
But then it's not over.
You know, does it do what they claim it's going to do and bring about victory?
No, things get worse over there.
And what happens to the weapons?
They go into the black market.
And I've always been so cynical.
I said, you know, who knows?
Some of those weapons are going to be used against us someday.
And it happens more often than anybody wants to realize.
And they just shift them around.
I remember when Hillary had a few troubles when she was working on Libya, how the weapons quickly went to Syria.
Oh, yeah.
You know, move them around wherever we can find our loyal fighters and keep them going.
Keep the weapons going.
Well, here are a few things that, you know, where this military money is going.
And you ask yourself, does any of this help America?
I think the answer would be no.
Here's the next one I had, which is that we wanted to talk about Taiwan a little.
U.S. announces $345 million in unprecedented military aid for Taiwan.
So some of this money being spent is spent to poke China, try to get China to react, try to get China to do something tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of miles from the U.S. We've got to get Taiwan ready for war with China.
This is where the money goes.
Yes, and this is the belief they think that money can solve all the problems that they create.
But the biggest thing is, is they started from a philosophy of it's great to have an American empire.
I mean, they wouldn't call it that, but it's America's need to spread our wonderful message of democracy and freedom and liberty.
And it nauseates me when I thought and would have to listen to some of those members of Congress talk, you know, and it sounded so wonderful, but it was all just a con game.
And the system, the system that we operate with and all this stuff is really a con game.
So often it's painted in a picture of patriotism.
You know, if you don't do it, you're not a very good patriot.
And what we really need more is maybe a little bit more common sense.
But how about diplomacy?
You know, you don't want diplomacy to mean have a better United Nations and all this stuff.
Niger's Uranium and French Ambitions 00:15:54
Stay out of the entangling alliances and having decent, honest people going and representing the views of what America is about.
But they say those words.
They will use those words.
We have to have our American interests protected.
You know, we might run out of oil someday, which isn't true.
So therefore, we need to get the oil in Syria.
So we just happen to have been able to do that.
We never, we were, during the war, people say, what war?
Were we at war against Syria and stole their land and stole their oil?
And are we still doing that?
Well, it just happens to be true.
Yeah, we did for sure.
Well, here's another thing I think you had about Ukraine, about this Pentagon spinning.
Now it's not directly under the NDAA, but it's part of it, which is that the Pentagon approves hazard pay for U.S. troops in Ukraine.
Actually, that one's not the one.
That's the next one that we're going to do.
For U.S. troops in Ukraine, you say, what?
I wrote about this in today's Ron Paul Institute website.
They say, well, hold on a minute.
U.S. troops in Ukraine?
What are you talking about?
U.S. troops in Ukraine?
Hmm.
Is that an inconsistency?
Can we mark that down as an inconsistency?
Yeah.
So, but, you know, a lot of people think that we aren't as involved as we think.
But it's the names, the CIA, aren't they militarized?
And what about special forces?
Oh, they're generals and colonels and all these things.
They just take off their uniform and they have clothes on to go out there.
And they're the ones who really run the show and do all the planning.
But that came out, it shows how they infiltrate on that and get involved is the way that it was on the Crimea Bridge.
Seymour Hirsch had another article on this, second go-around, but he came really down hard on that.
It wasn't like, you know, the Americans maybe have been involved, and we have to check that out.
And he has a reputation of not being challenged very often.
Yeah, yeah, that's true.
Well, the other thing, we talk about what's the U.S. Empire involved in, well, Niger is big right now, and I predict it's going to get even bigger.
And I don't pretend to have the answers.
I'm not an expert on the region.
However, we do know a couple of things if we put that next one up, which is that if we go back one.
Yeah, thanks.
So we know there's been a coup.
We know that the president, Vazoum, has been temporarily at least overthrown.
He's being held in the presidential compound.
It looks like in a military coup to overthrow him.
The U.S. has called for his return to power and has condemned the coup.
But again, it is the other issue which I have highlighted.
And thanks again to our friend Dave de Camp.
He makes a point that the U.S. has over a thousand troops and a major drone base in Niger.
I did not know that.
I could have guessed it.
But so here we are.
We're in trouble.
There's a government there, obviously, friendly to the U.S.
They allow us to keep 1,000 troops in a drone base there.
Now, all of a sudden, it's overthrown.
What's going to happen next?
You know, I was having an interview the other day with a friendly source, and they were friendly toward my beliefs.
I was talking about foreign policy and started talking about the coup.
And not that there was a single coup possibly in Niger.
I said, you know, that's a tool we use.
And matter of fact, in an article about Niger, there was a statistic there that caught my attention because it's more incestuous than I ever believed.
They found out that since 2008, we participated in West Africa in 10 coups.
But the people that were doing the interview, this seem so shocking.
Really?
That much be accurate on this sort of thing.
But that is constant.
It's the coups and the lying.
And what has to happen for this to get started and continue until the bankruptcy is that you have to be serious about this.
And the seriousness can be pointed out by the slogan, treason.
Treason is, When you start treason, treason is to defend an empire because the lion and all has to be, but if you tell the truth, that becomes treason.
You cannot tell the truth.
So they live on lies and they make these stories up and scare the people.
And it looks like it's domestic as well as foreign.
This whole idea that when you have the erosion of liberty, that it's going to be in certain segments.
So with one industry here, one industry here, maybe a school district here.
No, it becomes universal.
And what we've seen going on now, you know, on wokeism, it's been pretty universal.
But also, we see signs that there's going to be some challenges yet to come on all this nonsense that's going on, the sacrifice of liberty and what they're trying to replace it with.
Yeah, and in Nigeria, things get heat up very quickly, Dr. Paul.
And some of the things this coup government has done, you know, junta, what have you, France has condemned it.
France is furious.
They are literally ready to go to war with Niger.
And let's put this next one on because this is from our friends at Zero Hedge.
Niger suspends uranium and gold exports amid rumors of imminent French military intervention.
Now the French don't have enough on their hand trying to overthrow the Russians.
They're now actually going to invade Africa, it appears.
And why would they do that, you'd say?
I mean, who cares?
Well, actually, they care a lot if you put this next one up.
This is a tweet from Mint Press News, a good source of alternative news.
And they say the shipment of uranium to France has been stopped by the new military government in Niger.
More than 50% of the fuel French nuclear power reactors used is derived from Niger's uranium.
Niger overall provides 24% of the uranium imported by the EU.
So all of a sudden France is looking around at their former colonial empire and realizing, because they get a huge amount of their electricity and energy from nuclear.
Now all of a sudden all that little stuff is gone.
You know, it seems like that answer out there about trade versus war makes more sense because uranium is a serious commodity and I have to be careful.
So when you sell it, it's sort of like the Soviets, Russians trading with Europe and having pipelines.
And some people, for mysterious reasons, they have to blow them up because they want more power or various reasons, which if you're a sensible person, you just seem to be bewildered at a time.
Here, why do they have to do this?
Why, you know, because I believe in the peaceful use of uranium for electricity.
It's, you know, clear and all that instead of closing down all electric units that we have now, that you can't use your stoves in the house.
It's crazy stuff just because they reject the notion that you should work out trade with people and get along with people.
But there's always a special interest that was competing through those commodities for power and profits.
But there's also the issue of blowback from meddling because the French has been meddling in Niger for so long, and now all of a sudden when there is a switch of government, there's some blowback.
They're saying, hey, no more uranium for you.
We're sick of you guys coming here and meddling here.
But if they understood trade, the value of the trade, and the people say, yeah, we like this idea of trade, it seems to be a tough sell.
But it shouldn't be.
That's why I always wonder why we don't do a better job worldwide getting people to understand the value of trade versus the value of coercion and force and war and who's going to be the most powerful empire around.
That's the problem.
Well, a couple more quick things about Niger, and we're going to keep watching this, but there really is a possibility of a wider war here because if you put this next to another, France is chomping it a bit.
We've got a thousand soldiers there in a drone base.
We're not going to sit by idly.
Now, here's a publication called the Iran Observer.
The Iranians are certainly interested, and they report that Algerian news outlets today wrote that, quote, Algeria will not sit by idly while an invasion of a neighboring country takes place, end quote.
This could pave the way for Iran and Russia to supply arms to the military junta in Niger via Algeria in case of invasion.
Now, Algeria is still, I'm sure, stinging after being under the French brute for so many decades and having only acquired its independence in the early 60s.
So they're saying, listen, France, you're not going to invade Niger going over Algeria.
We're not going to sit here and watch the region be destabilized.
But here's one more interesting little tidbit about it that makes it a little less cut and dry, as these always are.
And this is Nick Terse, who often does good work, and I certainly respect his writing.
Now, he makes an interesting point, Dr. Paul.
And he writes in the intercept: The Niger coup leader joins a long line of U.S.-trained mutineers.
And you see on the left how it started June 23.
Here he is meeting with a U.S. military official.
One month later in July, he's standing behind the mutineers.
So you do have to wonder what really is going on there.
I don't even pretend to know, but there's a lot of different factors.
But, you know, there's chaos over there.
As you point out, it's not easy to turn on the switch and also suddenly have trade.
But I always thought, as a member of Congress, that the protection of the Constitution and Liberty was a serious matter.
And what they do is they avoid, you know, they should avoid getting involved.
You know, that's a mess over there.
And this whole idea that selling iradium to countries and sharing, and same way with gas with Russia and the Europeans, it makes sense, but they're not likely to do it.
But we shouldn't be unnecessarily getting involved.
We don't have the authority.
And generally speaking, we don't do well this way because, you know, we're not exactly a country that operates internationally in an honorable way.
You know, they're out there for it too.
But a solution to this, you say, well, we can't get involved over there because it's such a mess.
I think just back off, you know, and because especially the United States could do that and say, we don't.
We want to trade.
We want to get along.
And trading is great.
Trade with people, less wars.
But if they do that, America could get by.
I mean, other countries could get by too.
But a lot of people just don't have enough confidence or understanding how markets work and why a free society is so much better than a warring society.
Yeah, absolutely.
Amen.
Well, the last thing we noticed is kind of interesting.
This is going around a lot.
RFK Jr., we put on this next tweet, and I believe this individual certainly is a support of RFK.
But she, Lori Spencer, she tweets out, RFK Jr.'s request for secret service protection was backed by 63 pages of documented threats.
This is a quote from RFK.
Biden and the DNC are vilifying me with the most odious defamations that might reasonably incite violence while simultaneously denying me the security to which I'm entitled, is what he said.
So he is asking for Secret Service protection.
He's backed it up with 63 pages of threats against him.
And Mayorkas, if you can go to the next one, he wrote him a letter in response saying, not going to happen.
Based on the facts and recommendations of the advisory committee, I have determined that Secret Service protection for RFK Jr. is not warranted at this time.
Now, there are a lot of other factors, Dr. Paul.
I think there's a provision for protection from 120 days out.
But that has been waived, I think, for Obama.
I think for Teddy Kennedy, interestingly enough, when Teddy ran way back when.
And it's been waived for a couple of other candidates who could demonstrate that there was a threat against him.
So obviously that was ignored, this demonstrating of a threat against him.
And now he's not going to have that Secret Service protection as he campaigns.
You know, to me, this is just an expression of unnecessary, vilified fear of the truth.
And Robert Kennedy's out there saying it, and he has views that we like, and he's imperfect as so many others are.
But he really is, you know, annoying the establishment and the Democratic Party and the Republican Party.
And I keep thinking of the new party they want to start in a no-name party.
You know, how can, anyway, I have an opinion about that.
You put a name on and it has a name.
But I say, let's put Kennedy up on that.
But the people who are pretending they're going to have a new party and they're going to control it.
What if you just get the moderates, the middle-of-the-roaders of the Democrat and the Republican Party, and the Democrats give up on civil liberties and anti-war, and Republicans give up a little bit on economic party?
You could have the worst set of words.
So instead of pretending that personal liberty should be understood and government should be minimized, then we'd all be a lot better off.
You know, I kind of joked on my Twitter page over the weekend about this RFK being denied protection.
I said, well, maybe, RFK, maybe you better double, you know, think this over because I don't know if you want federal agents being armed around you considering history, right?
So I don't know.
That is a sad truth.
Yeah, I don't know about that.
So I'm going to close up here, Dr. Paul, if you're okay with that.
And that's just go ahead and go to my very last clip here because today is your last day for our early bird special for September 2nd Ron Paul Institute Conference in Washington, D.C.
Now not in D.C., but at Dallas, which is away from D.C.
A lot of people don't want to go into the belly of the beast.
This is the belly button of the beast.
So he's a little bit away from it.
Last Day Special 00:02:38
Go to ronpaulinstitute.org and I will put a link in the description.
And get your tickets, take advantage.
There's just, you know, it's not an enormous discount, but hey, every bit helps.
There's a discount.
It does end at midnight tonight.
So get those tickets.
We had a lot of sales over the weekend, which I was very happy to see.
Get the tickets.
Come see us early next, just a little over a month away, believe it or not.
And we're going to have our seventh conference in D.C. Good.
Very good.
I want to close with trying to sort out my own mind and help other people think about it.
And the idea is, you know, why is it that people don't understand what liberty is all about?
And it's always leading to those individuals who grab power and they want to hold and control the money, and therefore the people sometimes are blackmailed into it.
Just think of our attack on our First Amendments right now through social media.
And it's always done in the name of taking care of these bad people who are going to be sending out misinformation, and we have to make sure to take care of so they sacrifice things.
The one thing that I always remind myself when I'm trying to sort things out is I think one of the most fantastic words to use when you're trying to sort the issue out when people have disagreement is don't do anything with anybody else if they don't want to, if they haven't hurt you.
Everything should be voluntary.
And oh, that sounds like a pretty good idea.
Nobody could force somebody else what to do.
What does that mean?
That means in social matters and personal matters, you can't tell people how to live.
And you can't tell people what their spiritual beliefs have to be.
And you can't do that in economics.
You can't tell people you have to buy these goods or we're going to blackmail you or do something to you.
And we can't not use the principle on the foreign policy.
We should always work to do things voluntarily rather than marching in with the troops, having another coup, and then thinking that it won't last.
Don't involuntarily destroy the value of money.
We were admonished not to do that.
So most of these things can be sorted out, but a lot of times people are bent on really making sure that they can maximize their power and maximize their control.
And this, of course, leads to a system where people become poorer and less free.
And that serves nobody's real purpose on the long term.
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