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Dec. 18, 2024 - Ron Paul Liberty Report
29:44
Have Yourself A Merry Pork-Filled Christmas...Thanks To Speaker Johnson

If it's Christmas, then it's another massive, bloated "Continuing Resolution" keeping the US government open for a few more months. Every year House leadership - doesn't matter which party - strong-arms Members to vote for the bloated bill...or miss Christmas with their families. Also today: "Peacekeepers" in Ukraine is a very bad idea. That's why the neocons love it.

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Time Text
Understanding Inflation's Impact 00:05:12
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 this morning.
Good morning, Dr. Paul.
How are you this morning?
Doing fine.
The country is trying to do better, but hasn't convinced me yet that we're going to be doing better.
I watch what they're spending.
They're spending a lot of money.
I watch what the debt is.
The debt keeps going up.
So the government keeps getting bigger.
But there are a few people out there and they're trying hard, you know, to cut back.
There are some conservative libertarians around that would like to.
But right now, you know, it's up for grabs.
So we still have our work cut off for ourselves.
And we do have a couple of things we want to talk about today.
You know, a spin in what's going on in Ukraine and what that might do and what it means for us.
And also the budget came out.
So we have this new sentiment since the election.
So I'm sure the budget is going to shrink.
But, you know, they have to have a continuing resolution.
And a continuing resolution in the old days was just keep spending the money at exactly the same rate.
And there probably was a time or two that I thought, well, maybe we just should there, because if you kept spending the same every year, it would go down because, you know, they say you're not compensating for inflation.
Well, that would be the whole purpose of it.
So, but if you're looking for an outrage of the day, I would say that in the reports, yes, the continuing resolution is not a continuing resolution.
It's a Christmas present.
It's just a huge additional $100 billion actually added, added right, right on.
And that is a big problem.
But the outrage I want to mention, because I'm sure people will be a little bit annoyed, the congressman said that they're doing such a good job.
They want a pay raise.
Holy man, what's the evidence on this?
So if you get this pay raise, and I don't see any evidence.
They haven't even started the new campaign, new election.
And it looks like, you know, the foreign policy, they haven't listened to us yet, Daniel.
They're still talking about doing things over, even though we've praised Trump when he talks about maybe we ought to just get out of there and maybe we can stop some wars.
And that's what we want.
But the congressmen voted themselves a pay raise.
And I keep thinking about that.
But it isn't a clean paid raise.
It's sort of a little bit of deceit going on.
What they do is that they currently get $174,000 a year.
Not too bad.
They can live on that.
Yeah, but they have to travel.
And there is some truth to that because it is more expensive.
And if they have families and all this, so it does go up.
But you know that before you run for Congress.
But what they do when they take a raise, we don't vote for raised pay.
We just take a COLA, cost of living adjustment, which is translated into a very special group.
The congressmen, they're the ones who get to take it.
So the cost of living, they can add that on, add it up.
And actually, what they've taken, if it goes through all the way, that $174 becomes $243,000.
And, you know, we had a lot of inflation in the 70s.
The 70s were terrible for inflation.
Interest rates and all the mess we have was much worse than they are on the surface at this particular moment.
But the insurance, the interest rates were high, up to 21%.
And the budget was out of control.
And inflation rate was much, much higher.
And I made a suggestion.
I introduced legislation.
And guess what?
It didn't get passed.
I said, well, people don't understand inflation.
I want you to understand what inflation is.
So I want to get your attention.
So if we pass this bill in the inflation rate of 10%, which is, you know, the real inflation, but probably pretty high right now, take the inflation rate and deduct it.
You don't get a cost of living increase because prices go up.
What you do is if there's 10% inflation, all members of Congress get their pay cut 10%.
I said, I'll bet they'll learn real fast where the inflation is coming from.
But that little trick of mine didn't work very well because continues on and on.
But the budget did come out and Daniel has studied it thoroughly.
He's still looking for something that he can brag about and where they're cutting.
But it looks to me, and we'll see what have you learned, Daniel, from taking a look at that budget.
Vote, Vote, Vote 00:02:10
Well, the first thing, Dr. Paul, I really hate that they call it pork because I love pork.
I think pork is delicious.
I would eat it all the time if I could.
I like it roasted and smoked and calling this monstrosity pork is an insult to our pork on friends, I think.
Nevertheless, you know, Dr. Paul, as predictable as, you know, a hot Christmas in South Texas is the fact that when Christmas comes around, Congress will do its CR and hold the members hostage to vote for a pork-filled, for lack of a better term, bill, or you can't go see your families for Christmas.
You remember this.
I remember it.
Every year it was the same thing.
Oh, don't make us shut down.
Government Americans will hate us.
Well, you've always said, and I think you're right, that actually they would be grateful for government to shut down for a while.
But, you know, here's a funny clip that I found.
And it's our good friend Thomas Massey.
And he nicknames himself Thomas Nostrada, Nostratomas, because his ability to predict what's happening.
He was on the Kennedy show a while ago, actually back in November, when he predicted exactly what we're seeing today, which is the introduction of a continuing resolution, 1,500 pages that no member of Congress will have the opportunity to read.
Cannot read it that quickly.
And that's the intent.
And so that's what they've been delivered.
If we can queue up that piece and watch the first minutes and 14 with no.
We have broken the Christmas Omni, and I have no intention of going back to that terrible tradition.
So there won't be a Christmas omnibus.
As somebody asked me in the hallway a little while ago, will there be mini buses?
We don't want any buses.
We're not going to do any buses.
Okay.
Listen, I've seen this play call like four times in the seven years I've been in Congress.
They've punted the ball until December 20th.
And what they'll do is they'll come in a closed room with us and they'll say, okay, now we've got the really big omnibus.
And if you vote for this, you can go home for Christmas.
But if you don't vote for it and it fails, we're going to make you stay here over Christmas and New Year's.
Speaker Johnson's Prediction 00:12:14
And it's almost like a dystopian future.
I've been in the closed room where they start chanting, vote, vote, vote, vote.
And people run up there and vote for something they've not read.
C R C R C R.
Oh, you want to go home for Christmas?
We'll vote for this and we'll let you go see your families and your new grandbaby, and you can watch your two-year-old open presence.
But if you don't, you're going to stay here with your leadership and their leadership and wait and wait for a bunch of geriatric senators to send over the answer.
By the way, there you go, Dr. Paul.
He's absolutely on the mark, isn't he?
From your recollection, you know, also typically during the year after they finally get something passed, I always said that it doesn't mean anything because there always will be an emergency.
And the emergencies are going to build because, you know, I make a point that the way the deficit, the debt is, and the payment for that, it automatically goes up.
So when you're paying interest on $36 trillion, you know, it's ongoing.
So, but there's always going to be something.
There'll be another flood, another hurricane, another country to save, another opportunity to spread liberty around the world, another time to show that our country is safe and secure.
So there will always be one.
But most of the time that occurred in the past, it would be during the after they passed something.
This time they don't even have anything passed.
You know, they were supposed to do, you know, just weeks ago, they were talking about a continuing resolution at the old rate, which really is a cut because you're cutting out all the automatic increases.
But this time, you know, they didn't wait.
They went ahead and gave all the extra stuffs on it and said, well, we'll do the continuing resolution later on.
So they can't even wait to add it.
And that this one was $110 billion and it's sort of add-on before they even got started spending the money.
So it is a disease.
It's an addiction.
Withdrawal symptoms are too great for us to leave this.
People will, you know, say, yeah, you guys ought to run a better shop.
But, and Leonard Reed used to say, who ran the Foundation for Economic Education, he says, that's true.
People always want to cut back.
He says, but everybody had a butt.
And they had, yes, do that, except we need our pay raise.
We need to increase our pay and on and on in the military industrial complex and the pharmaceuticals.
And so it's a little bit scary because it's inevitable what's happening.
But I still want to work with Musk and the others, who I believe are very sincere.
But I think the effort right now, the signs are they better speak up and have some clout because we need to get some attention.
But they can't stop this now.
If they don't pass this thing, you know, people are going to be mad.
You're closing down government.
Well, that sounds good to me.
But other people say the first thing they're going to cut is, well, they'll do the Washington Monument.
You have to close that down.
But then they'll say, oh, yeah, the Republicans are going to start cutting Social Security.
But they never mention, say, bring the troops home.
Let's quit all this foreign interventionism, which to me I think could be popular.
And Daniel, you knew we were very popular when we put on the internet.
The fact I take a position that we shouldn't have any foreign aid.
That wouldn't solve the problem.
But the American people are sick of that kind of stuff.
And we have to do that.
And that's why Musk's approach is trying to get those things that the American people are outraged about.
And maybe they'll go along when the members of Congress take a tough vote.
Well, you know, Dr. Paul, this is all Mike Johnson.
And Mike Johnson is turning out to be a very weak speaker of the house.
He pushed through Ukraine money in the past, even though he said he wouldn't.
He's just not turned.
He's turning out to be a politician without a real conservative vision for America.
And it's a shame.
If we can put up this first clip now, this is Zero Hedge's take on it.
Congress gives itself a raise, as you pointed out, Dr. Paul.
Johnson tries to ram through pork-filled funding package.
And we know the routine because we've been there.
And I remember those late nights, everyone waiting because all the members wanted to go home.
That's when they start twisting arms.
Now, if you go to the next one, you know, continuing resolution, as you started out talking about, Dr. Paul, should keep spending at the same level.
That's the whole point.
We're going to be in stasis until we can actually do a proper funding mechanism.
We can go by regular order.
Well, this isn't that.
It has a bunch of extra stuff in it.
It has $100 billion for disaster relief, another $30 billion for the farmers, all kinds of goodies like restrictions on U.S. capital investment in China.
If you can put that second one on, please.
Here's a kind of a bill of particulars.
A nice shiny new stadium for the Washington Commanders football team, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
And as you mentioned, Dr. Paul, a nice big cost of living increase to Congress.
I think your proposal to reduce it rather than increase it would be very good, but probably not popular in Congress.
The other thing, if you can go to the next one that I mentioned is, you know, Dr. Paul, this is they always love to create fear because fear motivates people to ignore their senses, to ignore their common sense.
And this one is they've added addressing drone threats.
Among the legislation is a measure to counter threats from drones following a slew of mysterious drone sightings.
We have no idea what they are.
Remember the so-called Chinese balloons that we were supposed to shoot out of the sky?
They were just weather balloons.
This is probably the same thing, but they ramp up the fear.
And I just want to say one other final thing, Dr. Paul, about this.
We can turn to our favorite senator who has a great take on Speaker Johnson's failure.
If you can go to that next tweet, please.
And this is Senator Paul's tweet.
It's a little bit strong, but I think it's to the point.
Senator Paul says, I had hoped to see Speaker Johnson grow a spine, but this bill full of pork shows he is a weak, weak man.
The debt will continue to grow.
Ultimately, the dollar will fail.
Democrats are clueless and big government Republicans are complicit.
A sad day for America.
And just to go to the next picture, here is a picture of Senator Paul.
He is actually, he's not at the gym working out with weights.
No, he's actually just lifting the continuing resolution.
Look at all the trees that had to die for these bills.
So that's a great picture of Senator Paul calling out Speaker Johnson.
What do you think about that, Dr. Paul?
Well, the first thing I thought about was too bad we have all those computers, because if that was the actual bill and that's what they had to go by, we could burn it.
But it's in the computer so we never can get rid of it.
And they can doctor it up behind the scenes and who knows what.
And they do it along the way as they as they as the key as legislation goes from subcommittee to committee to the house floor and to conferences to the senate and all over.
Believe me, there's plenty of time for them to do whatever they want.
So that is a mess.
When I say one thing about Chip Roy and Thomas Massey and Norman, who they had a few conditions that they wanted to throw in, probably just for fun, because they probably can't win and win the vote.
But it's worth it.
One of the things they asked for is adherence.
This seems so strange that you have to ask for this.
We want a little bit of debate.
You saw the stack.
That would take me two days to read that.
And then I'd be on page three because I wouldn't be able to understand all the nonsense.
And I can't comprehend trillions of dollars all the way up.
All I know is it's bad news for the American people.
They wanted adherence to the 72-hour rule to review the bill before voting.
That seems reasonable.
And that's a big deal that we a lot of vote for it.
But they're down to that 72 hours array.
There's a vote on schedule.
And Thomas is actually absolutely right about all the rigor and I think even the history shows that that's how they've got the Federal Reserve Act passed.
I think it was Christmas Eve.
Most people had left and they passed it, you know, on unanimous consent.
So it is gimmicky and they try to get around the truth, hide it from the people.
That's why no audits are permitted.
But the other thing, which is something that we could start doing immediately, let's say there is a tornado and they should follow the Constitution rule because people in Idaho aren't responding for tornadoes and hurricanes on the Gulf Coast.
But it says always have an offset.
And can you imagine if we do have an emergency and they've been so conditioned for it, we say, all right, we'll do it.
But you have to cut the money.
You can't print the money.
You can't run up the debt.
So you do this and you cut the money out of more nonsense in Ukraine and the Middle East and all the military industrial complex and all the subsidies to the medical industry.
But I always said, if you're spending $10 billion, you should cut more than that than you're going to spend so that you always have some leftover to show that you can cut it out of the debt, out of the huge debt.
But believe me, I can guarantee you one thing, that suggestion might be entertaining for some people, but it ain't going to happen.
They're not going to do that.
That would be hysterical.
Just freezing the budget is hysterical.
But how many people in this country, when times get tough and they are getting tougher, they have to freeze their budgets.
They can't go out and they're cut back.
And they're talking a lot now about social things and how the kids are going astray and all.
And there was a program on last night about that.
And it crossed my mind that one of the problems that they really didn't mention of the economics of it.
What if part of the problem is there's nobody at home when they leave, come home from school?
And maybe the wife had to go out and vote so that they could pay for the rent.
And so, you know, even the economics interferes with things like that.
There was a time, even during the Depression and World War II, I remember everybody I knew, including my own family, mothers were at home and they were there to, you know, do their jobs.
And yet they won't accept the idea of any cut.
They're terrified.
They're totally dependent.
They're addicted to it and they're scared to death.
And you're right, Daniel, they scare people and say, can you imagine?
But what they should imagine and get scared is what's going to happen if we don't reverse this trend.
Absolutely.
And you don't have to be Nostra Thomas to predict what's going to happen.
It looks like there's going to be a vote on Thursday.
They know that they don't have the support they need.
My prediction would be that Speaker Johnson will actually put it up and suspend the rules because he won't be able to get the rules committee to do what he wants.
NATO Funding Debate 00:10:00
And you already mentioned that for some specific reasons because they actually have an ask.
So he's going to put it up for a suspension of the rules, which requires a two-thirds vote.
It will fail in the suspension of the rules.
And that's when the blood is going to be spilling on the floor of the house.
That's when the arms are twisted.
That's when the people are going to be brutalized by the leadership.
So we'll see what happens.
I wanted to do a couple reactions to it.
If you go to that next clip, so Vivek Ramaswamy, who's also working with the Government Efficiency Office, said, currently reading the 1547-page bill to fund government through mid-March, expecting every U.S. congressman and senator to do the same.
Good luck, Vivek.
To which Elon Musk said this bill should not pass.
We share Elon's sentiment about that.
And if you go to, I'm sorry, go backwards to the previous one.
I got ahead of myself here.
Wall Street Mav put up this point that you made about the congressional pay increases, to which Elon said, How can this be called a continuing resolution if it includes a 40% pay increase for Congress?
So that's the way things go at Christmas, Dr. Paul.
So do we want to mention really quickly the second point?
It's a very quick one we want to make.
And this is also something that was on hedge but has been discussed.
If we put this next one on, this is NATO state warns against Western troops in Ukraine.
Quote, the discussion has gone off the rails.
And this is one of the new members, Finland, who unfortunately for them, they had enjoyed decades of neutrality, which is the best foreign policy.
But now they've jumped into NATO and they're now being alarmed by the talk among some NATO states of, hey, we've got a great idea.
Let's put NATO's military inside Ukraine.
It's a crazy idea, Dr. Paul.
And I think we are a member of NATO.
And I think sometimes we think we own NATO.
And there are sometimes people will complain, but not seriously so that we finance NATO.
So that's us doing this.
And you know, on the Zero Hedge article this morning, they talk about this about sending Western peacekeeping forces to Ukraine.
And the you, but then this last sentence is the U.S. incoming Trump administration is reportedly, this has to be a typo, reportedly keen on this idea.
That's pretty loose and it was probably flipping, but I sure hope that's not true because there's nothing to be keen about sending that over and to think that it's going to happen.
And if we support it, it's going to be our money, our kids, and our economy that's going to hurt.
Yeah.
And unfortunately, they probably talked to some of the people that President-elect Trump has named to be his top advisors because we were both surprised to see that they were, many of them like the Ukraine war.
Waltz, his national security advisor, Gorka, who's going to be a senior official, they like this war.
They're in favor of this war.
And what I fear, Dr. Paul, what I fear is happening is what happened to Trump last time.
And I hope I'm wrong, but I think these advisors that he has and cabinet members who are in favor of this war are setting a trap for him to put him in a box where he can't get out of it.
Because if he comes out, they're going to tell him, Mr. President, this is a great idea.
Trust me, the Russians will back down.
If he puts this forward, it's already very clear.
Putin has been very clear about this.
Do not put NATO troops in Ukraine.
That was the whole reason the war started is because NATO was getting too close to Ukraine.
And now you're telling me you're going to stop it by putting troops actually in Ukraine.
It's insane.
But what it'll do, Dr. Paul, is it'll put Trump in a box.
So if he proposes this out loud, it will signal to the Russians that he's not serious about negotiations.
And so when he does make a negotiation proposal, the Russians will already be absolutely doubtful of his interest in a real discussion.
So they're basically trying to tie Donald Trump's hands.
If this is the case, he is definitely not being served well by his team of foreign policy and national security advisors.
They're playing a trick on him, and they're going to do him wrong if this happens.
I'm afraid you're right.
But, you know, the president of Finland, Stubbs, made the comment, you better be careful.
He was sounding the alarm.
And he said it's going to take a lot of troops.
He said, first off, you probably need at least 150,000 troops.
Well, you know, Europe isn't looking for that.
They have a reason they shouldn't do it.
They've been doing it under pressure from us.
But he said the 150,000 people recognizing militarily, that's what it would require.
But he's arguing, and the president of Finland is arguing, in rotation, that means three times that, 450,000 peacekeepers per year.
And then, and do you think that Russia is just going to lie low like they have been?
I mean, they're trying to, you know, get by and get over all this mess.
But, you know, one of these times they're going to finally escalate this thing or participate in escalation.
That's all this is.
Is, you know, solidify from our viewpoint, if I understand it, we're just trying to solidify our empire.
And we've been trying to do that.
You know, Assad has to go and all this stuff going on.
And now we have Syria.
Well, Assad has to go.
But why does he have to go?
Why wouldn't the people there make this decision?
But it is, I think there's so much effort behind the scenes and that we are involved.
And this is why the new administration might be able to slow it up if they truly believe we don't need to get involved in that.
And Trump has said some good things.
What are we doing there?
You know, and that's that's good, but we need to encourage them to do that.
And that's that's why I hope the committee to watch all the spending is successful.
You know, Trump promised to end this war.
He said in the first day.
But the thing is, there are powerful forces inside DC and around DC, including, I think, in his own inner circle, who do not want this war to end.
It is very profitable to the military-industrial complex.
So he's in for a real trouble.
And hopefully he will reach outside his inner circle to hear from people who have a broader perspective.
I'm going to close out, Dr. Paul, by asking to go to our very last clip, which is a QR code for making a Bitcoin donation to the Ron Paul Institute.
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Very, very good.
And of course, we are very hopeful that some of this talk of cutting back will work because I do believe that the American people want it.
But like I started off the saying, yes, everybody wants to cut.
But when it comes where they think they're going to get a nickel or dime cut, but they're going to get a bigger cut when you add in the inflation.
That's what they don't understand.
Yeah, I don't want them to cut anything.
So they keep doing this.
So what they do is they create new money.
Just think of what we've talked about today in this budget.
How are they going to pay for it?
Did they ever say anything about what they're going to do to pay for it?
And what are they going to do?
The Fed's going to take care of it.
They'll print more money.
The value goes down.
Prices go up.
And who pays that tax?
It's the middle class and the poor that will pay the tax, who are very often the ones who say, don't cut my programs.
We can't exist.
And so it's the acceptance of government intervention, the acceptance of a monetary system which is doomed to fail.
And it's persisted for so long.
And then when a government like ours gets so big that you can't allow it to shrink or it will sound an alarm.
But the market tends to work all the time.
Sometimes it's slow, but eventually, if it gets out of whack, and I think a lot of it's out of whack, you like the size of the deficit and the debt.
And the market deals with that with both the Federal Reserve.
They have no control over interest rate.
I mean, they are saying they're lower interest rates.
At the same time, they announce we just lower interest rate.
And interest rates, if you look at the market, the interest rates have gone going up.
So they don't have control.
So there are signs that this thing is ending.
And I sure hope that people will continue their interest in trying to figure out exactly where the problems are because the solutions aren't that difficult.
It's just restoring a principled understanding of the Constitution and the principles understanding of what liberty really means.
I want to thank everybody for tuning in today to the Liberty Report.
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