Ron Paul Liberty Report - Weekly Update --- A Small Continuing Resolution Victory Could Have Big Consequences
Aired: 2023-10-04
Duration: 04:43


=== Federal Debt Explosion (01:40) ===

[00:00:00]  Hello everybody.
[00:00:01]  Thank you for tuning in to the weekly report.
[00:00:04]  A small continuing resolution victory could have big consequences.
[00:00:10]  Federal spending is so out of control that it only took three months for the federal debt to increase by $1 trillion to over $33 trillion.
[00:00:21]  In contrast, it took almost 200 years for the federal debt to reach $1 trillion.
[00:00:28]  So that the federal government racked up more debt in the last three months than it did from the ratification of the U.S. Constitution until Ronald Reagan's first term.
[00:00:40]  There will be even more shocking increases in the future, since, according to some experts, federal debt is increasing by approximately $14 billion a day.
[00:00:54]  Those tempted to blame the increases on President Biden, the Democratic Congress, or the COVID-related spending spree should consider the debt increase by around a trillion dollars a year in 2017 and 2018, years when the Republicans controlled the White House and both houses of Congress.
[00:01:19]  One more statistic to keep in mind is that the government's debt already exceeds America's gross domestic product.
[00:01:28]  In other words, the U.S. national debt, according to the government's own figures, is already worth more than the value of everything produced by American businesses.

=== Ukraine Funding Stripped (03:02) ===

[00:01:41]  Americans should keep these facts in mind when the media attacks as irresponsible the small group of Republicans who refuse to vote for a continuing resolution or CR and thus risk a government shutdown unless the CR is accompanied by spending cuts and reforms that would take federal spending off autopilot.
[00:02:07]  Unfortunately, the Welfare Warfare Spending Coalition has once again triumphed over the small group of fiscal conservatives as a continuing resolution that did not even pretend to cut spending passed in Congress over the weekend.
[00:02:26]  Fiscal conservatives and the growing wing of the GOP opposing foreign intervention did achieve one significant victory.
[00:02:35]  The CR did not contain the Biden administration's requested additional aid for Ukraine.
[00:02:43]  The successful effort to strip Ukraine funding from the continuing resolution may threaten President Biden's effort to obtain billions more in funding for Ukraine.
[00:02:56]  Since the start of the conflict, the U.S. government has wasted more than $100 billion in aid to Ukraine, which is close to Russia's entire 2023 military budget.
[00:03:10]  Not only does the Ukraine-Russia conflict have no impact on America's national security, it could also have been avoided had the U.S. not helped orchestrate a 2014 coup in Ukraine.
[00:03:26]  The Ukraine conflict is thus another example of Ludwig von Mises' observation that the unintended or intended consequences of government intervention are used to justify further government actions.
[00:03:44]  Unless the U.S. reverses course and begins to cut spending, the Federal Reserve will be forced to end its limited efforts to fight price inflation.
[00:03:56]  Instead, the Fed will bow to political pressure to keep interest rates low in order to help government manage its ever-increasing debt.
[00:04:07]  This will lead to both a rejection of the dollar's world's reserve currency status and a major economic crisis.
[00:04:15]  The best place to cut spending is the so-called defense budget that makes Americans less free and less safe.
[00:04:25]  Hopefully, the successful effort to strip Ukraine's funding from the CR is the first of many victories by the anti-war fiscal conservatives over the military-industrial complex and its politicians, lobbyists, and propagandists.