All Episodes
Previous Next
April 10, 2025 - Ron Paul Liberty Report
26:04
Big Beautiful Budget...Or Ugly Spending Death Spiral?

As the House passed its budget resolution by a razor thin margin, all eyes are now on the Senate, which has promised to cut an additional $1.5 trillion before sending it back to the House for a final vote. Does anyone believe it? Also today, yet another Trump threat on Iran as a new poll shows the majority of Americans oppose Israel.

|

Time Text
Government Ownership Debate 00:10:37
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 today.
Good morning, Dr. Paul.
How are you this morning?
Doing good, and the budget got passed.
Everybody's happy.
You know, markets are returned at the normal chaos.
But it was a close vote, and there's a lot of rhetoric going around it.
You know, it's not that difficult to be cynical, but it is in a way from the viewpoint of people in Washington.
It's pretty cynical.
I mean, pretty amazing that the Senate and the House agreed on something like this.
But there are so many options and so many things to do.
And they have the tax cuts to deal with, you know.
So there's a lot of mischief in there.
But anyway, they couldn't get the vote yesterday, but I guess it was early this morning.
And they got up before breakfast and they went over there and voted.
And it's a big, wonderful tax bill, a beautiful pill of a bill.
So we'll see what's happening.
But, you know, I think that there's a lot of good intentions and people would like to see things smoother.
They'd like to lower their taxes and quit the spending.
But, you know, the philosophy of the purpose of our government in particular that has developed over the last hundred years is such I consider it impossible.
See, I think you have to change the nature of government.
And I think there are people who would agree with me on that.
But the big problem is, and I agree with it, that it's not going to be easy because there's so many popular things in it, the people who are recipients, but also the people who are running the show, the deep state, you know, the people who want the military money.
So it's a tremendously huge obstacle there.
That's why, you know, my negative feeling leads me to believe that the process is going to continue.
We have to keep fighting it all because I think a day will come when maybe we can participate in a system of government much closer to what the founders envision than what we're getting today.
Because right today, the people coming out in support of real cuts and spending and the people voted that way.
But the obstacles, I think, are overwhelming.
But I wish them well, and we're going to do whatever we can to encourage them to go in the right direction.
Well, I just get this feeling.
We've seen this movie before.
The timing is everything.
This is a Thursday, right?
Members want to go home tonight.
You remember how that felt.
And next week is a week off because it's Holy Week.
So it's a Thursday before a break.
That's when they start twisting arms.
That's when they start kicking in kneecaps and they say, do you want to go home or do you want to stay here next week?
And every member is going to say, I want to go home, except for a couple.
And the other one is that no one wants to be the last person standing in opposition except Thomas Massey.
And in this case, Victoria Spratz, both of these two House members voted against it.
This is almost breaking news, in fact.
But he put on that first clip.
Here's the CBS news.
And Politico's got a summary out as well.
This probably a bit better.
But House GOP adopts Trump budget plan after conservatives fold.
You can see that's gleeful on that.
Probably the most predictable thing in the world.
Conservatives fold.
Here's what happened.
Go to the next one.
And some of this is insider stuff, but they adopted a budget blueprint for Trump's agenda after Republican leaders scrambled to convince GFP holdouts who want deeper spending cuts.
The resolution was adopted at 216 to 214.
Two Republicans, Thomas Massey and Victoria Sparks of Indiana joining, joining the Democrats I hate when they say that to vote against it, about a dozen House conservatives ultimately flipped their opposition.
That here's the part that's going to be near and dear to your ears.
After receiving assurances from leaders that the Senate would pursue 1.5 trillion in savings at a minimum, so basically they sold out their votes for a promise that the Senate, of all bodies, would be the one doing the heavy cut.
Yeah, but uh, both Mike Johnson and and uh, John Thune uh, they said they got together and and they, they made sure it was a public statement.
They'll, they'll be held to their word.
Uh, spending us to a safety net programs and the final package.
So uh, how many times have we heard that story?
You know, get something passed and this is what we will give you, and you've already indicated that.
You know, even the week off is going to be very busy, bending arms and finding the strongest supporters that at their, in their district, to come and say, you can't vote against this wonderful, beautiful package.
You know, you know, in many ways good, a lot of the Republicans are in a bind because the rhetoric has generally been good, the effort uh, by the efficiency uh, committee.
You know that has been good.
But uh, the the whole whole thing is is the trust has not been returned.
I I wonder what the odds are.
I wonder what uh, you know, you know, the betting community would say about what are the odds of this 1.5 trillion dollars of spending coming to fruition?
Yeah well, we have a Republican Democrats are in charge.
That should be easy.
Yeah well, here's some of the little bit.
If you go to the next one, here's a little bit of the um inside baseball sort of thing, and it's it gets.
I'll try to keep it simple.
But so the Senate wants to account for the tax cuts enacted during Trump's first term.
They want to keep those 17 tax cuts, Dr Paul, that's the plan and of course, the wording is not one that we would use.
Um, it assumes that continuing the expiration policies will cost nothing.
Under that baseline, the nearly 4 trillion it would cost to extend the cuts.
It doesn't cost money to extend cuts um, so before backing the resolution, House conservatives warned, wanted assurances from the Senate that there'll be deeper cuts.
We don't trust the Senate representative.
Eric Burleson, a Missouri Republican, told reporters wednesday night after fiscal hawks huddled with Johnson for more than an hour.
We all campaign on spending cuts, but then again, again and again, it doesn't happen, and the Senate sent over something that said four billion is their floor.
That was unacceptable to a lot of us, so they kicked the can down the road.
Yeah, you you sort of alluded to this it's a cost to government.
Yeah yeah, you know that that that fits into my assumption, and and my belief is that uh, that the government starts off by taking all our money yeah, 100 and then they allow us to keep some of it so and so the liberal works on the basis of that, and a lot of conservatives will too, because national defense is important, border control is important and uh, the You know, the people who are suffering from government medicine,
they're important to take care of.
But it's interesting to me, and really a basic flaw is that the government owns us.
I use the two things as a proof of the government owning us.
One is the income tax.
They own all our income, permit us to keep some.
And the other is hanging over the heads of those individuals who could be drafted into war.
And just if you take my lifetime, since 1935, how many people have been drafted?
You know, I remember after World War II, we have relatives, but I can remember one of my school teachers was redrafted in Korea and didn't come back.
So this stuff, this is government ownership.
It's a principle that they believe.
And we start with the principle: it's your life.
Take care of it.
Don't hurt people and you can do what you want.
Really complicated.
Yeah.
Well, I bet we can, I know where we can bet some of the cuts will not come from.
One is a military budget.
Yeah, right.
That's not going to, despite what Trump said a few weeks ago, you'd love to see it cut by 50%.
No, it's not.
In fact, you and Chris did a show on Tuesday saying it's going to be a trillion.
They're looking for a trillion dollars.
And the other, I would say, I think the left does have a point because I think the cuts are going to come from people who are vulnerable, the Social Security, the Medicare people who you would cut last, you know, if you had to.
Well, the other thing is, is, you know, the ultimate payment, when you have an endless inflationary machine that is putting up money, that it is the middle class and the poor.
They never keep up.
There's a record of that.
Wages, they manipulate wages and they write increase in the minimum wage laws and all this, but it doesn't work.
The average person suffers from the price increases, you know, much more so than the people who are ripping off the system and have ready access, like the military complex or the pharmaceutical industry, where their businesses and their involvements are guaranteed by government funding.
Well, I clicked a couple of our friends to see what their view was on this, just to check in on to see how they're going.
First one is Senator Rampaul from Kentucky.
Here's what he said: The deficit for 2025, estimated to be about 2.2 trillion, affirmatively approved by most Republicans other than myself.
Deficit for 2026, estimated to be over $2 trillion.
Also, the big, beautiful bill raises the debt ceiling by $5 trillion to pay for 25 and 26 spending.
But borrowing that much is not conservative.
That is true.
And now Thomas Massey rings in and his comment is thus.
If we go to the next one, if you were trying to hasten the financial collapse of our country and bribe voters to go along with it, the strategy wouldn't look much different than what Congress is doing today.
This big, beautiful bill cuts taxes while keeping spending on an increasingly unsustainable trajectory.
Sounds like same old, same old, Dr. Paul.
You know, when either Thomas or Rand are interviewed, the interviewers generally don't allow them to explain this.
They don't say, well, is this true?
Where does the money come from?
But they don't challenge them because now you wonder, well, the Republicans are in charge.
The Democrats should challenge them, vice versa.
But that doesn't happen because they're in bed together.
Israel And American Debates 00:15:17
They're absolutely bid together.
And it's always bipartisan.
I don't know.
The bills might not be as biased on the military stuff.
But when I was there, there would be five or six or seven of us.
Now, at least there's people speaking up against it.
And that means that the information I think gained by the committee to study waste and waste and fraud.
People heard about this.
But then there's also the people who are on the receiving end.
They get an incentive to speak out.
I mean, we've always supported Doge 100%.
I mean, it's a great idea.
Very, you know, very important.
It almost seems like they're being kind of shunted aside.
Okay, you've had your day in the sun.
Now it's time to get back to business as usual, which is military spending and militarism.
So, and with that in mind, actually, here is our second story for today.
If you go to the next one, he pulled this off of anti-war Dave de Camp.
Trump again threatens attack on Iran, suggests that Israel could lead it.
On Wednesday, President Trump again threatened the possibility of the U.S. taking military action and suggested that Israel might lead the attack.
Here's Trump.
If it requires military, we're going to have military, Trump told reporters in the Oval Office when asked if the U.S. would attack if the nuclear deal isn't reached.
Israel will obviously be very, very much involved in that.
It'll be the leader of that.
But nobody leads us.
We do what we want to do, he added.
So there you go.
Now, that would be interesting to see Israel lead it because they don't have the capacity to do that.
But nevertheless, and the response from Iran, if you go to the next one, Iranian President Peshkenian restated Iran's long-stated standing pledge on comments Wednesday.
We're not after a nuclear bomb, he said.
You have verified it 100 times.
Do it a thousand times again, he said.
The president also said that the Iranian Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamene, was not opposed to U.S. investment in Iran.
His Excellency has no opposition to investment by American investors in Iran, he said.
American investors come and invest.
So they want to do business.
That's what the Chinese do.
They don't go threatening to bomb people.
They do business with people.
The Iranians are obviously interested in that.
And all you have is Trump saying bomb, bomb, bomb.
But we know he's being led by the nose by Netanyahu.
And Americans don't understand why.
And I clicked this one.
This is the Trump of 2019.
I want this Trump back.
Go to the next one.
This is the Trump I want back.
He tweeted, there was Twitter at the time on October 19.
The United States has spent $8 trillion fighting and policing the Middle East.
Thousands of our great soldiers have died or been badly wounded.
Millions of people have died on the other side.
Going into the Middle East is the worst decision ever made.
Dear Donald Trump of 2019, please come back, right?
You know, he was going to stop wars and not start any new ones.
So how's he going to explain what's going on in Yemen with Iran?
Well, he could argue the case.
And in a way, they do.
Oh, this war is to prevent the next war.
So we're getting rid of.
Yeah, we have to start this little war because we're going to prevent World War III by doing this.
And Israel said, yeah, that's right.
We're going to take care of Iran because that will take care of the problem of war and peace forever.
If we just could do that.
So, yeah, they very psychologically buried that in the brain and say, no, what we're doing is a good war and we're going to end it.
And that'll end the other war and prevent these wars from coming because we ought to post that on our website.
But, you know, that's what Nathaniel said on the Iraq war.
And we regurgitated it here many times.
I assure you, once you attack Iraq, everything will be peaceful in the Middle East.
He said it again.
So I want to thank Georgias for kicking in $45.
Greater Israel Project is what he commented on.
We did talk about that yesterday.
But here's the thing, Dr. Paul.
On the one hand, very clearly, Trump wants to attack Iran for Netanyahu.
Netanyahu is goading him into it.
But at the same time, something very interesting is happening in the United States.
Now, there was a new poll released yesterday by the Pew organization, which is a major polling outfit.
Go to that next clip.
It's really fascinating to see this.
How Americans view Israel and the Israel-Hamas war at the start of Trump's second term is the name of the poll.
And there's plenty of interesting things in the poll.
But here's one that is making the headlines if you go to that next one.
And this is a first.
A majority of Americans, 53%, now express a somewhat or very unfavorable position opinion on Israel.
This marks an 11-point increase in unfavorable views since March of 22 when we last asked the question.
Now you can see overall U.S. adults in 22, it was only 42% who have an unfavorable view.
Now it's 53.
Leaning Republican, it went from 27 to 37.
That's a huge jump.
And then when you look at younger Republicans, this is the non-boomers.
This is the next generation of Republicans.
It rose from 35 were unfavorable to 50% unfavorable view.
They've lost the Republican Party, the young Republican Party, 18 to 49.
Now, the 50 plus, they've even gone up from 19 to 23% unfavorable.
And then when you look at Democrat Party numbers, it's gone up from 53 to 69 overall.
And the younger 18 to 49 age range, 62 to 71.
But even the older generation, now this is a dramatic shift, Dr. Paul.
In 2022, 43% of older Democrat voters, 50 plus, only 43% were in opposition to Israel.
That has jumped up to 66%.
So it's clear that the majority of Americans do not support what Trump is doing.
And I would just say, Dr. Paul, I actually think that Trump is turning Americans against Israel by so obviously taking his marching orders from Netanyahu.
He's actually counterproductive to his stated goals.
What segment of the population are they offending?
It's not only the Palestinian supporters on our Carolina campuses that are receiving an education from the taxpayers that he offends, but he offends the principal.
Anybody can be stopped like that because they all get some money and it's a blackmail project.
But, you know, Trump, justifiably, you explained it very clearly that Trump is contributing to this.
But this is one time that I think we need to give a little bit of blame, not credit, blame to the Biden administration, because I think things were shifting then in the chaos that was in there.
Even Obama wasn't an angel understanding out of trouble.
So it doesn't happen in three months to get these major shifts because this looks like it's going to be significant.
And I like to use the phrase of prevailing attitude when the prevailing attitude changes, like the prevailing attitude during COVID changes.
People knew that it was something catching on.
And I think this has started, but we were, and I think Trump recognized this and he campaigned against it.
So that's the sad part about it.
But maybe it will be a beautiful bill before we know it.
You can't.
I mean, you can't continue to call opposition to our relationship with Israel extremist infringe if the majority of Americans hold that view.
It's now the mainstream view that we don't support our relationship with Israel.
And here's another reason why I think Americans are turning.
This came out from Homeland Security yesterday.
This is amazing, actually.
Talk about attack on the First Amendment.
Go to this next clip here.
Released by the Homeland Security.
Department of Homeland Security to begin screening aliens, social media activity for anti-Semitism.
Today, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services began considering aliens' anti-Semitic activity on social media and the physical harassment of Jewish individuals as grounds for denying immigration benefit requests will immediately affect aliens applying for lawful permanent resident status.
Now, on the one hand, if you are having people who have demonstrated acts of violence toward any group, now that should be basis of, you know, probably be the basis for denying entry into the U.S.
But what they've done is that they've redefined the term anti-Semitism to include any criticism of the state of Israel, which it never used to be, but now it is.
So if someone says, holds up a sign that says free Palestine, all of a sudden that is violence against Jewish people, which half of the time it's Jewish people holding these signs because you know they're leading a lot of these protests.
There was a time not too long ago where it was assumed and we would give credit to the progressives and they would be more anti-war and more pro-civil libertarian.
And yet right now that doesn't exist.
It looks like the progressive movement is dead and gone.
Every once in a while, you think it would be nice to have a little bipartisanship on protection of civil liberties.
But I think that right now, though, as far as the progressive movement goes, they're much too close to the military industrial complex.
And they're all spinning, of course.
They've always been that.
And then on civil liberties, that's a real sad story.
But every once in a while, there will be one that'll stand up.
But there's a libertarian or two on the Republican side.
And there are some good Republicans that will stand up for it.
But that, of course, is pretty darn important.
I've argued the case or made the point that the First Amendment is key to our ability to reach people to try to peacefully convert them to a different philosophy because you can't bulldoze it over.
You can't use a gun to tell people you shouldn't use guns.
And that's why I think persuasion is a much better tool.
Yeah.
I want to thank Conrell 2020 for also putting in a little donation here for the show.
We appreciate it.
But now go to the next one.
This is a post on X from the Homeland Security, DHS.gov.
There is no room in the United States for the rest of the world's terrorist sympathizers, and we are under no obligation to admit them or let them stay here.
Anybody who thinks they can come to America and hide behind the First Amendment to advertise for to advocate for anti-Semitic violence and terrorism, think again, you're not welcome here.
It's strange.
I mean, they don't talk about anti-French or anti-German or anti-Native American.
You can leave that up, actually.
You're not welcome here.
Now, the thing that's interesting now, most people would say, yes, if they're advocating for actual violence, that could be a problem against any group.
It shouldn't just be one group.
But the problem, and again, again, Dr. Paul, is that they've changed the definition.
So anyone who holds views on the Israel-Palestine conflict that the administration doesn't like, they really are adopting the woke left.
Remember what the woke left would say?
Words are violence.
You don't have to attack a trans person.
If you say something bad about them, that is violence.
And that's exactly what the woke right is doing here by saying that it is violence to criticize the policies of a foreign country.
You know, out of ignorance, they cite this thing.
They don't belong to us.
They're not citizens.
How they get here and they go through this and if if, they're lawbreakers and they, they aren't citizens.
Due process is important and they're talking about that a little bit.
The courts have mentioned that the other day.
But uh right, right now uh the, the people are are, are really outraged by this method and uh it uh they, they cancel.
They cancel these people's rights with, without due process, but they also cancel the constitution.
Yeah, and it.
The point is and I can remember a day when my original in understanding the constitution was that you know why don't we throw the bums out, you know, and then they go to.
Well, where does it say that it must say something that uh, a citizen of this country and you get protection of the courts?
It doesn't say that.
So so they, they never mention that when they want to do this uh, throwing up, is it?
But i'll bet you there's some ignorance on that part, but it's also the people who find it convenient to be a little bit ignorant on on being working out details on where the constitution is on civil liberties, exactly.
Well, we're going to close out for today and we appreciate excuse me, appreciate you watching the program.
Uh, don't forget to mark those calendars for august 16th in Dulles Virginia, for the Rpi conference.
More details coming, hopefully next week, over to you, dr Paul.
Hello everybody again and thank you very much for tuning in to the Liberty Report.
We talked about two things today uh, one about war and peace and and one about uh, budgeting.
They're two.
They're two, two different things in some ways, but they're very much the same thing, because it is the foreign policy which has driving force to do a lot of budgetary manipulation and finagling and a lot of money they spend quietly and secretly because they don't get any more auditing than the Federal Reserve.
So that's the, that's one of the things problems that we have, and it has been the trust in our dollar and our country for many, many decades, even over 100 years.
But it's fading quickly and the markets are telling us right day something really weird is going on.
To me it looks dangerous.
I think the system that we've criticized, that has developed and gone away Way with a lot, is disintegrating, and the budgetary debate is an important thing.
The military debates and our presence around the world is getting more controversial.
So, this to me is an opportunity to forcefully go ahead and intellectually present the case for liberty because I think that's what has to do.
That has to be the alternative to authoritarianism.
And that, of course, is what we work for at the Liberty Report.
I want to thank everybody for tuning in today to the Liberty Report.
Export Selection