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April 17, 2024 - Ron Paul Liberty Report
29:31
Speaker Johnson Rolls Out MASSIVE Foreign Spending Bills. Zero For US Border.

The revolt against House Speaker Mike Johnson is picking up steam, as Johnson revealed plans to take several MASSIVE foreign spending bills to the floor this week. Tying foreign aid to protecting the borders at home - once a staple in Johnson's rhetoric - has been tossed aside. Rep. Thomas Massie announced he would co-sponsor a bill to vacate the Chair - an ouster of Johnson.

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Chaos in Congress 00:06:37
Hello, everybody, and thank you for tuning in to the Liberty Report.
With us today, we have Daniel McAdams, our co-host.
Daniel, good to see you.
Hello, Dr. Pohl.
How are you this morning?
Don't you wish you were back in Washington and telling them about straightening out the budget?
You know, it would be simple.
Our budget wouldn't be complex, would it?
Much simpler, much less money.
But, you know, it's interesting how confusion has burst out in Washington right now.
Not really a surprise.
But, you know, I was saying it to you a little while ago, Daniel, maybe it's not all bad because if it was smooth sailing last week, it had four big things in one bill and it would have sailed through the House.
That's what happened last, you know, many times.
But here, Johnson decided to change because he was having trouble rounding up the votes.
And there were four things he wanted to get passed.
So they were splitting it up and not dealing with the thing that should be the most important.
That is how do we protect our borders.
You know, that's been removed mainly because they don't know or think they have the votes, you know, do that.
But in the meantime, he has split up all these plans for more spending.
And now there'll be three separate votes on Israel, Ukraine, and Taiwan type of activity.
But he will have another one, which will include miscellaneous.
That's probably the biggest one.
Everybody else knows about this, and they can fight and have an argument.
But the other one has several things in there.
But the main thing is we're going to vote to ban TikTok.
TikTok is taking over the world.
And I think chaos is taking over our Congress.
And, you know, the bankruptcy is taking over everything.
And the attack on our freedom is the big deal.
But that's not on the agenda.
So this just really burst forth yesterday.
And these were the changing plans because, you know, there's a lot of resistance.
And our friend Thomas Massey got sick and tired of the process and the leadership in the House right now.
So I imagine he surprised some people, but it really shouldn't surprise you.
The surprise really is how did it get this far, you know, after all this nonsense going on.
But anyway, the thing that should bug us the most about Johnson, he came into the speakership with a different platform.
And all of a sudden, you know, he's giving up on that.
And that has to be the most frustrating part.
So he has different viewpoints on funding.
And it'll be interesting to see what happens this week, how much money they're going to get.
But, you know, and you've mentioned before that, you know, what the Congress generally does in the past, they'll have a separate, it's sort of like an amendment and a vote.
But when they have to send it to the Senate, there'll be an agreement, you know, and pile it all together.
It's not going to be separate votes probably in the Senate.
But one thing for sure that they're really working on is that the fourth bill, you know, the miscellaneous thing.
What are we going to do with TikTok and other things?
And that might be the biggest issue.
And that's where we're getting the least amount of information.
But we don't have a copy of these bills that they're talking about, none of it yet.
Well, let's put up that first clip because this is what we're talking about.
This happened yesterday afternoon.
Johnson unveils separate Israel-Ukraine funding bills that Marjorie Taylor Greene calls a scam.
And this is he's been facing pressure by the neocons, of course, and the warmongers, not by the actual Americans who have to pay for it.
He's been facing pressure in the Beltway.
When are you going to pass these aid bills?
When are you going to pass these aid bills?
And like you said, Dr. Paul, the reason Johnson is in that seat in the first place is because McCarthy seemed to be such an ambiPamby.
He was relying on the Democrats to pass bills.
He was not a fiscal conservative.
He was throwing money around like a drunken sailor.
So let's get in this guy, Mike Johnson.
He's a real conservative.
He's not going to lead us down this path.
And here it turns out, he is even worse than McCarthy.
And as you mentioned, Massey, Massey again warned us, warned America, getting rid of McCarthy.
He's the devil we know.
You know, you're going to end up getting something worse.
And once again, he's proven totally right.
So they get back from their Easter break, whatever they call it, spring break or whatever.
And he hits the ground running.
The first thing he does, and we talked about it over the weekend at our conference, the first thing he does is cast a tie-breaking vote denying the Fourth Amendment protection to Americans.
No longer does the government have to get a warrant to spy on you.
That was his first thing.
And then boom, he drops these four massive spending bills.
Put on this next one.
Here's apparently what he delivered to the colleagues in the caucus when they got together.
I don't know if we can make this bigger, but this is just apparently what was leaked out by a member.
$95.34 billion.
The numbers don't exactly add up, so this is probably just a napkin sketch.
Ukraine is going to get about $50 billion.
Of course, a lot of that goes $20 billion to replenish stocks to DOD.
That does not go to Ukraine.
$14 billion for DOD ops.
That doesn't go to Ukraine.
$8 million for the Inspector General.
That doesn't go to Ukraine.
So there's only actually about $7 billion direct support for the Ukrainian government.
And what that means, Dr. Paul, as you know, is paying the salaries of the bureaucrats in Ukraine and maybe buying a house or two for Zelensky because, you know, he's got to have that 10% to carve off the top.
So anyway, then Israel is going to get $14 billion.
A lot of that is going to them, but $4 billion of it is going to go to the DOD to replace stocks.
And then Red Sea operations, $2 billion.
That means to continue fighting the losing war with the Houthis to open up the Red Sea.
And then the Indo-PACCOM, whatever that is, $2.58 billion to irritate China and try to goad them into a world war as well.
And then, as you point out, the fourth bill is going to be, well, let's ban TikTok and give the President of the United States the power to ban social media that he doesn't like.
That's exactly what the bill does.
Razor-Thin Majority Rules 00:09:06
And in this process, where they dealt with the security and the Fourth Amendment and the warrants, you know, it turns out that they virtually amended the Constitution for doing that.
They come in and say, why did they say, well, what is the Constitution?
That's, you know, I think that's supposed to be like a law of land.
They said, why do they have to go through this?
And they've been doing it ever since 9-11.
But they shortened the period of time.
But the principle is there because all they have to do is say, you're under attack.
The national security is threatened.
Therefore, we have to go along with it.
And you just wonder, I think the founders warned us properly.
The oath says, you know, all enemies, foreign and domestic.
And I think there's a growing number of people who are agreeing that the domestic threat is much greater than the foreign threat.
But still, the comments and the history going on is the Chinese, you know, and the Russians are still as bad as if Stalin was still in charge.
And so you have to keep up that hatred and scare the people.
But like we could point out, the votes are not all that easy.
And maybe this chaos is a sign of something better to come.
Because if they could win all these votes, like when we were there, we couldn't even get, sometimes we'd get 12 votes on some of this stuff.
And now they're up there and they're having some real fights.
And they're nothing.
What appropriation is urgent?
You know, even if it was listed to protect the borders, I'm not sure you can say, oh, that's good.
There's the money.
Our borders will be safe.
It's no reason to assume they're going to do it correctly.
And there will be no stealing and no bureaucracy.
And nobody's going to be serving the military-industrial complex.
They'd figure out some way of getting along, any restraint.
And you mentioned domestic threats.
We put a trillion dollars of debt every three months on the books.
And if that's not a domestic threat, I don't know what is, right?
And we pay, we feel it when we go shopping.
We feel it every time you go to the store, the printing of money, the fake money.
Well, I want to put another one up because the Libertarian Party for New Hampshire is known for some spicy tweets, and they've gotten in some trouble in the past.
But they did us the favor of annotating Speaker Mike Johnson's tweet about what his plans were this week.
So let's put that up, that next clip.
LPNH comments in red.
So Speaker Johnson says, I've just spoken with the House GOP conference on my plan to address national security supplemental legislation on the growing security crises.
This week we'll consider separate bills with structured and germane amendment process to fund our ally Israel.
LPNH says, not America.
Support Ukraine in its war against Russian aggression.
Also not America, says the Libertarian Party.
Strengthen our allies in the Indo-Pacific.
Still not America, they said.
Pass additional measures to counter our adversaries and strengthen our national security, to which the Libertarian Party of New Hampshire says, sounds like it might be related to America, but it's actually the TikTok ban.
So I thought that was funny and cute.
So we brought it up.
I'm glad to see this because that's addressing the subject about many complaints within the Libertarian Party that they weren't really standing out.
And they were talking about, look at some of their people who were running on the Libertarian ticket.
I mean, they weren't really a libertarian.
So this is good that they're doing this.
It is.
Pointing out where it should be if we were more libertarian.
What's interesting about what's going to happen this week, and I'm trying to refresh my memory because it's getting further in the rearview mirror our time on the hill, but it's going to be a weird rule situation because the Republican majority is razor-thin.
Actually, they're going to lose another member this week.
Razor-thin majority, and they need to pass these rules.
He doesn't want to take it to the floor on suspension of the rule because he needs two-thirds of the vote, and he may not win it, particularly the Ukraine vote.
So there's going to be a situation, if you can actually put this up, where he is going to have to, Speaker Johnson, I mean, is going to have to go to the floor and probably rely on Democrats.
And this is from the politico write-up of what's going to happen this week.
He says, if even a handful of conservatives oppose the rule vote, then Johnson would need Democratic support to move forward.
And it's incredibly rare for the minority party to assist on those rules votes.
I underline that.
House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries declined to comment on whether he expected his caucus would support the package.
We're not going to come to any conclusion about the process till we understand the substance.
That means, and some people have even been saying on Twitter, it's actually Speaker Jeffries, not Speaker Johnson, because he holds all the power in his hands right now.
Yeah, I think it is, and they're holding the cards.
Yeah.
And you had rules about the rules votes back then.
Yeah, it's tricky, and I'd be more discretionary under the current situation, because my basic rule was if I'm elected as a Republican, which means the margin might be libertarians and others that help, but still there was probably an automatic vote I got, 30 or 40 percent.
If you run in a Republican district, you know, the Republicans will vote for you or the Democrat.
So I felt some loyalty there, but not ever to give up on any of the issues.
But when things controversial came up and the rule came up, it was very rarely when I think, think back when a bill like going to war or something was so atrocious that I just didn't even, it didn't even deserve to have a debate.
My general rule was, you know, debate it and have a vote up or down and not try to close them out in the rules because a lot of shenanigans go on in the rules.
And, you know, it was a surprise to me when I got to Washington that you might have a bill that's gone through a committee and spent a lot of time developing the bill.
And then they send the bill, you know, to the rules committee.
They can rewrite the whole thing if they want.
And it's a new bill.
That to me just seems weird.
And the other thing that I've warned about is where they do it is in a conference.
You know, the House has a bill, the Senate has a bill, and say, oh, okay, just split the difference.
And very often, there's a lot packed into the conference, too.
So the debates so often and all this noise you hear sometimes just superficial and just for the public's digestion.
Remember the strike all after the title and insert this text.
That's what they would do.
But I remember because it was rare, and I don't remember the exact bills, but it was rare that you voted against the rule against your own party for a rule.
Because it was when you were so disgusted by the process that you really wanted to make a point.
So the fact that Johnson is going to be relying on the Democrats to get this through, I think it shows he's lost confidence of the Republicans in the House.
He's lost the ability to lead them.
And we'll talk a little bit later about some of the implications of this.
But it's going to be a busy week and a bad week for people who care about America, I think.
But as chaotic as the situation is, and we're talking about the Republicans' chaos, I mean, the Democrats have chaos, too.
And I think the chaos and the failure of accomplishing anything and protecting our freedoms and balancing the budget, it's bipartisan.
Because when you think of the fighting going on between the progressives and the anti-war, well, the warmongering Democrats.
Yeah, the neocons.
Now the neocons are as powerful in the House as is in the Senate in the Democrat side as it is in the Republican side.
So that's a representation of how messy it is.
So the chaos is bipartisan.
And I keep thinking, well, there's about six of them get together and have their real strategy plan.
This is what we're doing.
But in the meantime, this is what we'll do.
Well, remember when Speaker Johnson came in, he was very, very vocal about opposing this aid to Ukraine.
We're not going to spend this money.
We're fiscal conservative.
And so when he felt the pressure and he actually said, okay, well, here's a bill, but it's got a lot of stuff on the border, and I will not budge.
I am going to demand that we have border protection in any bill that goes to protect other countries' borders.
And then he flip-flopped.
There's not a single mention of the border in all this wonderful suite of bills that he's putting out this week.
Chaos Is Bipartisan 00:12:15
Not a single mention of the border.
But, and I don't say it often, our friends at Reason, they actually have an interesting article out when you want to talk about borders.
So nothing about our borders, but put this next up.
And our friend Norm Singleton sent it to us yesterday.
We appreciate him doing that.
Biden sends U.S. forces to protect Israel's borders for the first time ever.
So nothing for our borders, but we protected Israel's borders.
Put the next one on.
This weekend's air raids in the Middle East set a lot of records.
Iran carried out its first ever direct attack on Israel from Iranian territory, launching an unprecedentedly large swarm of drones and missiles against military spaces.
And for the first time in history, U.S. troops engaged in direct combat in defense of Israeli territory.
U.S. military shot down three Iranian ballistic missiles and 70 drones that were en route to Israel.
So for the first time, we put our soldiers directly in contact to protect Israel's borders, but we are not allowed to protect our own.
You know, it's hard for me to understand why they do it.
Because, you know, we know they disagree on economic policy, and they have disagreements in foreign policy, but it seems to be overwhelming because I'm sold on the idea and the understanding that a real invasion is occurring.
And that it's not only unpatriotic, it's very, very dangerous what they're doing.
It questions loyalties because it's so bad.
And this goes to the point where you just don't quite understand this, but it eventually is starting to wake up a lot of Americans, but they better hurry up and wake up a few more.
And that's why, and I think the people under the attack and the one that run the system are realizing that maybe Trump is truly a threat to them.
Just think of the extremes that they're putting him through.
And, you know, it's just unreal.
I mean, he's the greatest domestic threat there is.
He represents it, and he sort of brags about that.
But I think there is some truth to that because he's symbolic.
And he intimidates the people, and the people love to go after him.
So this is something that will be resolved because the bankruptcy is not going to go away.
These problems are going to continue, and there's going to be more shenanigans than ever.
And I think we're going to lose more prestige around the world.
Our military is not going to be as strong.
Our dollar is certainly getting weaker.
And so big events are in store for all of us.
Oh, yeah, unfortunately.
Not good ones.
Well, let's do a couple more just from the reason piece just to kind of put it all back together.
If we can do that next clip, he writes, early in the war, Biden showed that he's willing to put American lives on the line in Israel's defense, even though his administration insisted that it had, quote, no plans or intentions to put U.S. boots on the ground in combat, end quote.
Biden deployed two aircraft carriers to the region as a threat to any other country that might join the war against Israel.
From Israeli leaders' perspective, the consulate attack was a win-win situation.
Either Tehran would not retaliate, making Iranian threat leaders look weak, or it would retaliate, forcing Biden to make good on his commitments to bring U.S. power to bear against Israel.
But if you'll just indulge me, Dr. Paul, I want to put this next clip up because he makes a critical point in all this.
We use the U.S. military in a combat, in combat, to protect Israel's borders.
Reason writes.
Left correctly rights, left out of the conversation entirely were the American people.
Congress has not passed a declaration of war against Iran or authorization for the use of military force against Iranian troops.
It hasn't even passed a supplemental aid package to Israel that Biden has been asking for.
So zero authorization for combat.
He had a couple of days ago.
We were in combat.
But they've been doing it now for decades.
And when it's mentioned, I think it's very good that they are, but it just goes on and on.
But everything is, our liberties are being pinched, our budgets are being pinched.
So they'll hear and see more of these debates, which is good.
And then you see the weakening of the party structure, and you see the parties infighting.
And if it was turned over to the Democrats, how could it get much worse?
It could be.
They could make it worse, but it's something that is beyond the solution with the current people that are there and with the apathy that exists with so many people in this country.
But the way I see it, that apathy is disappearing, not disappearing, but it's weakening and that there will be a change, a tone.
But there's a great danger in the process of achieving that.
Yeah.
Well, it's interesting that just before we started the show, Thomas Massey decided he'd had enough.
He's sick of it.
And we always follow what Massey does, and we're grateful for his thoughtfulness on the Hill.
If we can only clone a few more Masseys, so he has had enough.
Put this next one up.
Here's Massey.
He tweets out a little bit ago.
I just told Mike Johnson in conference that I'm co-sponsoring the motion to vacate that was introduced by Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene.
He should pre-announce his resignation, as Boehner did, so we can pick a new speaker without ever being without a GOP speaker.
So very dramatic move.
Politico picked it up, put that next one on.
Politico picked it up and said, second Republican says a back effort to oust Johnson from speakership.
And I highlighted this subtitle.
It means the speaker would almost certainly need Democratic votes to retain his gavel if his rivals move against him.
That would mean he is a speaker for the Democrats as well as the Republicans.
And here's Massey's bill of particulars, Dr. Paul.
Here's what he's talking about if we go to the next one.
Speaker Johnson has led the GOP to pass, one, an omnibus that spends more than Pelosi's highest year.
Two, an expansion of the domestic warrantless surveillance program.
And this week, he's pushing three, Schumer's dream bill, which contains $100 billion of foreign aid, mostly for war.
So I think he's pretty justified in that.
He's mad.
Overly justified.
Shouldn't have existed, but that's what they're up against.
And I just think that we're looking at this thing going on for a while.
And it'll be interesting, though, to see how they may have the transition and what they're going to do.
I don't think they'll be sensible enough for Johnson to resign.
But this literally means the Democrat not only votes to get rid of somebody they don't like, but it looks like it'll be pretty blunt that they're really voting Republican and the Republicans are ducking out, but standing up for maybe the Constitution or some other principle.
And this week might be a pretty big week on all this.
And I can't imagine if I'm a Dem out there and I have the opportunity to save Speaker Johnson, I'm not going to get my pound of flesh.
They're going to want concessions through the rules.
Think about it.
Because, you know, in exchange for supporting Speaker McCarthy, Massey got that great concession.
We need to have a majority on the Rules Committee.
And that's been very powerful.
People don't understand how powerful the Rules Committee is.
So nobody can tell me the Dems are not stupid.
They're going to make some big, they're going to demand some serious concessions, I think.
That's right.
To keep Johnson in power.
It'll be up to the people come November to see which direction we're going.
Yeah.
Well, if you don't mind, I just wanted to give Marjorie Taylor Green some of her thoughts, put these up, because she's announcing that Massey is supporting her bill to oust Johnson, and she makes some good points.
Speaker Monk Johnson has thrown our GOP conference into chaos by serving the Democrats and passing Biden's agenda.
Last week, Speaker Johnson shoved warrantless spying on Americans down our throats with FISA.
Now Speaker Johnson is going to fund foreign wars while refusing to force Schumer to hold a trial to impeach Mallorca and demanding Joe Biden sign H.R. 2 into law.
Now that's a big border control bill.
She continues, Speaker Johnson must announce a resignation date and allow Republicans to elect a new speaker to put America first and pass the Republican agenda.
Thank you to Thomas Massey for co-sponsoring my motion to vacate.
It's time for a new speaker.
Pretty tough stuff.
That's good, for sure.
I think you had a couple of things you wanted to bring up.
I wanted to bring up the subject of a little bit removed from what we're talking about, but in some ways I relate it all together.
And that has to do with a new policy out in California.
And nobody can expect anything decent coming out of the political system from California.
But this involves a moral principle on how they're treating people that want to try to recover and survive.
It goes along with the fact of how far we have been removed by Republicans and other so-called constitutionalists have done their best to get rid of the Fourth Amendment and permit these FISA courts.
But there wasn't a lot of events that mention it, but I think it was the FISA.
The FISA effort helped spy on Trump.
And also the whole thing about the dollar spam.
But the one I want to mention, things are bad in California.
Everybody knows that.
All you have to do is look at the streets in San Francisco.
It makes me ill when I think about how bad it is.
But they don't give up.
They don't give up.
But the headline here on Zero Hedge was, crime-ridden San Francisco.
Oh, they want to punish somebody.
That's good, isn't it?
They don't punish anybody.
Wants to punish the grocery stores for wanting to quit their businesses there.
Even though it's crime-ridden, they can't survive.
They're losing money.
They're going to quit.
And now they're saying you had to go through the, well, I guess the law hasn't been passed, but it's on the books and they'll probably do something like that.
That you don't have the right to leave.
You should have the right to start a store.
But it doesn't mean anything if you don't have a right to quit when you want.
That to me is so ridiculous and so symbolic of how bad things get.
And I think people wonder what's going to happen to our country now.
They might just look at California.
That's a pretty good example of what will happen because it's lawlessness and it's spending money that you don't have.
It's no concern about civil liberties.
There's a foreign policy of aggression.
Join NATO, run NATO, and pretend that you run the world.
So that all has to change.
But when you do that at a local level, fortunately, there's one thing that the founders were smart enough about.
It's been retained.
If you don't like California, you can leave.
And some of them are leaving, believe me.
So, hopefully, they don't take the bad habits with them.
And that can happen.
But no, you know, being able to do that, and even the way that the Supreme Court ruled on dealing with a very difficult problem on abortion, they said, you know, all effort to deal with violence and crime and murder and killing is still at the local level.
People Becoming More Aware 00:01:20
There's not one law for all that.
So that again was returned to the states.
So there still is an effort.
There still is some memory, although there's not a whole lot of respect for it.
So somebody says, How do we have to do we have to invent this whole new thing to recover from the disaster that has that we've been witnessing?
No, I think reading the Constitution and having a dose of personal morality, we could solve our problems with a bit of problem, but it's conceivable if we would follow some decent rules.
And I think the founders tried to help us right now.
We're still obsessed with the saying, well, we need a majority vote.
We need a majority.
And that encourages all the special interests to get together and gang up on the 49% who are still the ones who have to produce and they become the victims.
So it's out there, knowledge is there, and the people are becoming more aware of it.
But we still have to continue our effort here.
And all people who have a concern and understanding about what liberty is all about, they have an obligation to spread that message for their own sake, for their family's sake, and for the sake of all of us.
And this is why we thank you very much for supporting the Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity.
Those are our goals, and we thank you very much for that support.
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