All Episodes
Previous Next
April 28, 2025 - Ron Paul Liberty Report
29:46
No Income Tax?

Over the weekend President Trump suggested that with the "bonanza" created by his "Liberation Day" tariff plan, taxes on Amerians making $200K or less may be sharply reduced...or even eliminated. Can it be done? Also today: Saudis to buy $100 billion in US weapons. What could go wrong?

|

Time Text
Tax Break Debates 00:15:10
Hello, everybody, and thank you for tuning in to the Liberty Report.
With us today, we have Daniel McAdams, our co-host.
Daniel, welcome to the program.
Happy Monday, Dr. Paul.
How are you today?
I'm doing fine, thank you.
And Balda's good news.
We'll talk about the good news, but we're not sure whether we should believe it or not.
Because there's been an effort sincere on some people.
Sometimes it's a gimmick.
Sometimes it's all politics.
And sometimes it's a daydream.
And I think that mixture's in there.
Of course, we're going to set everybody straight.
Of course.
Because what we want to deal with is this pseudo-pledge that we're going to get rid of the income tax.
Sounds good.
Technically, it's not constitutional.
What they do in collecting taxes is atrocious.
And they could easily justify getting rid of it just on constitutional grounds.
But the current administration has said strong things about the damaging effect of the income tax.
And Trump floats plan now to slash or eliminate income taxes for millions using Bonanza tariff tax.
Ah, we've heard about the tariff.
The tariff is magic.
If you understand political magic, you can understand this.
We're going to collect money to taxing the American people through an indirect tariff.
And they say, well, we're going to get rid of your taxes.
But the whole thing is, we have to question, or I'm questioning, I wonder if they're really going to get rid of the principle of income tax.
They don't even touch on that.
You know, ownership of whose income it is and income taxes, you know, we'll slash them and do all this stuff.
And hardly do they talk about serious intent.
Musk, I think, was very serious and others were very serious about cutting spending.
And they did a good job in pointing out why it should be easy for the atrocious spending and waste that's going on.
But I guess we're not going to talk about that today.
It's not in the news today, so we'll delay that.
Besides, we weren't overly confident that those cuts would occur.
So I think it's good that we can at least talk about this.
But I would have to say people need to be very cautious about assuming this is on its way.
I think when I hear promises like this, both parties do it, I call it political magic.
Oh, this is going to happen.
For this to happen, there would have to be a magician someplace that puts everybody to sleep.
And then it'll all happen.
But I just am very leery of this occurring, but delighted that somebody's at least talking about it.
Exactly.
Now, let's put up that first clip.
This is from Hedge, and it's something that Trump put up over the weekend.
They call it Trump Float's plan to slash or eliminate income tax for millions using the Bonanza tariff cash.
Now, I had two impressions initially on this, Dr. Paul.
The first one is a positive one, is that President Trump realizes that getting rid of the income tax is popular.
He wouldn't be doing it if he thought it was unpopular.
So he recognized that Americans don't like the fact that the government believes it owns our money.
And the second one is he also recognizes the fact that people are frustrated that the economy is not bouncing back as they had hoped.
And I have a clip later that I'll show that talks about some flattening numbers on his part.
And so he's obviously looking at the numbers and recognizing it.
So he throws this out as an idea.
And let's put this next one up.
Here's what he posted on his Truth Social.
He said, when tariffs cut in, many people's taxes will be substantially reduced, maybe even completely eliminated.
Focus will be on people making less than $200,000 a year.
Also, massive numbers of jobs are already being created with new plants and factories currently being built or planned.
It will be a bonanza for America.
Capitals.
Exclamation points.
The External Revenue Service is happening.
Well, that's encouraging.
I wonder where they are being built.
It'll be interesting to see some of those.
You know what I find interesting in this subject?
Let's say they cut something, cut taxes or cut a program.
They always say, how do we pay for it?
Well, if it's illegal, wrong, and doing damage, and everybody's being hurt by it, why do they always have to pay it?
They make the assumption that government, we work for the government, the government has the control, and the government's running in this ledger to make it balance.
And they say, oh, well, how are we going to pay for this?
We're going to cut taxes here.
Well, we have to do something else.
And that's the gimmick here.
It's a tariff tax.
And that is way overblown.
I mean, the tariff, the history of the tariff is long-lasting.
Matter of fact, I think the tariff and that principle has something to do in a major way with our civil war.
You know, one group taxing the other through a tariff.
So people should see this as a tax, and a tax can't solve anything other than deception.
And the odds, again, will be that they will offer that up, something will be done, and people say that's good, but then they'll have to pay for it, and maybe they'll raise taxes elsewhere.
Who knows?
The amount of tax, if they do reduce some taxes, who knows whether or not the tariff is going to raise enough or any at all.
Now they're reporting billions of dollars have been collected already from the tariff.
Well, but they have already spent probably more money than that they promised from the tariff.
They've already spent the money they think they're going to collect.
But the one thing about the tariff, you can't predict that.
You know, governments do different things, and people do different things on their purchases when the prices go up.
So that's false planning.
And I think people should get back to the idea if we have problems, it's excessive government, the solution then is reduce the size and scope and authority of the government.
I think people are also frustrated at the lack of explanation of what's happening because there was this big hoopla.
I mean, Trump is great at generating excitement over things.
This big hoopla over Liberation Day, a Liberation Day, it's going to be fantastic.
It comes, and then the markets crash for a few days, and then he says, oh, well, never mind.
We're going to rescind a lot of these.
We'll only keep the ones on China.
And then it's a sort of token 10% on most of the other countries.
And I think if this is true, if there is a bonanza that's being created so far that he's thinking about, rather than just extrapolating, as you said, if he's thinking about it, well, let's see it.
Why doesn't he explain?
You would not believe how much we're getting from here, there, and the other.
So people, I think, are getting a confused message about it.
They don't even wait for that.
They've already spent it.
In their minds, it's already spent.
Oh, we're going to save this money here.
Oh, yeah, we'll cut the taxes.
But believe me, the revenue is coming out of the pocket of the American people because the inflation tax is always there.
They don't even talk about that.
That's where the bills are really paid, is with the government borrowing the money and then devaluing the currency and pay back with worthless paper.
So that's it's all a gimmick and the whole principle has to be looked at is what should the government be doing and our Constitution had and the founders had different ideas and they didn't envision what we have here today.
Yeah.
Well one of the ways at least in the article that they talk about that he's thinking about raising the money to give a tax break or tax elimination, income tax elimination to the middle class or those making under 200,000 is something that I don't think that you would think is a good idea.
Now go to that next clip.
This is from the same article.
That said not everyone's excited after Trump told Time magazine in the April 25th edition that he quote loves the concept of raising taxes on millionaires as a means of paying for an extension of the 2017 tax cuts.
Quote, I certainly don't mind having a tax increase, Trump told Time.
I would be honored to pay more, but I don't want to be in a position where we lose an election because I was generous.
But me, as a rich person, would not mind paying, and you know, we're talking about very little, end quote.
He said it would involve raising taxes on the wealthy to, quote, take care of the middle class.
That almost strikes me as what the Democrats have been saying for decades.
Yeah, but I think we should have the tax program that he believes in and he used.
He didn't pay taxes.
Legally was able to take his deductions and get out of paying the taxes.
So that is a big difference.
But he's doing two things.
One is, you know, they talk about taxing the rich, and that'll solve our problem.
But this promise is he's going to give tax breaks for the workers.
But the odds, well, anyway, I'm a cynic.
Yeah, yeah.
Well, here's another one.
Here's something about Bannon on this idea, this idea of raising, actually raising taxes.
Go to that next one.
Former White House strategist Steve Bannon told News Nation's Cuomo on Friday that he supported the idea.
Quote from Bannon, this is being fought behind closed doors right now.
And I'm telling you, with the massive tax cut, in addition, he's going to give the working class and the middle class.
The math only works out if you actually increase taxes on the wealthy.
So this is them saying, Dr. Paul, the only way they can give tax cuts to the middle and working class is to raise them on the wealthy.
There has to be another way, doesn't there?
Yeah, these plans are all political gimmicks, you know, talk, because the odds of them following through on this, because if that's the case, they've talked about that before.
You know, one time it went up to 90-some percent, but that didn't last long because it didn't make any sense.
And I think they say that more than half of the people don't even pay income tax.
I remember saying in the debates that, well, we're halfway there.
Yeah, exactly.
Nobody's paying taxes.
But, of course, that's a daydream unless they decide that people become self-reliant, take care of themselves, and find out to their amazement, we're better off without the government largesse.
Prices are more stable and the economy is stronger.
But right now we're not winning that, but we're winning new converts and more people are understanding it.
And I think that's one of the reasons why we've seen this sincere effort to expose the waste and fraud that's going on.
And that's all good.
But we're a ways off before the people are going to accept the solution.
What we're seeing, though, is a rebellion against any suggestion.
And they haven't even gotten around to making the cuts.
And there's, you know, burning up cars to make a demonstration.
You know, you're not going to quit paying.
You're not quit taking care of us.
You take care of us first.
Well, it seems like the elephant in the room, I mean, thinking about it, how do we eliminate income tax on people?
Let's tax other people more.
Seems like the elephant in the room is: why don't you just stop spending so much money?
Why don't you just cut government like Musk was trying to do?
Slice the, you know, he talked about, I want to cut the defense and military budget in half.
That would go a long way.
Then they come and say, well, the first victim will be an unemployed person with homeless and a sick child, and there's no way people are going to do it.
But I have a theoretical answer to that: cut the military-industrial complex first, and then do the last thing.
If you can't do it all at once, then you look at some of the benefits that we've conditioned people to be totally dependent on.
You know, it's a way you could do it practically, but the odds aren't going to be that way.
They're not going to do it that way.
Yeah.
Well, as I started by mentioning the numbers, and I think this is important.
This is probably why it has his attention, the president's attention.
To put that next clip up, this is the last clip from this article we're going to talk about.
But I thought this was interesting, and I think I mentioned it last week as well.
Now, this is quoting Mike Johnson, the Speaker of the House.
There were lots of ideas thrown out on the table along this process over the last year, but I would just say for everybody, let's just wait and see.
Now, here's a part where I wanted to get to: a CBS news poll released on Sunday found that 69% of Americans believe the Trump administration isn't focused enough on lowering prices.
Approval of Trump's handling of the economy dropped to 42%, down from 51% in early March, Bloomberg reports.
Still, Trump's team insists their strategy will pay off eventually.
That's a pretty big cut, down to 42% from 51.
And there's a fact there that supports that position that he might not be serious.
Because what has the big fight been, you know, with Powell?
And that also interest rates.
So Trump just blankly says, you know, we need lower interest rates.
In a way, he's right.
When you have runaway inflation, all interest rates in the 70s went up to 70, you know, 21%.
So you could get lower interest rates that way.
But to mandate lower interest rates, the only way they can do it is inflate the currency.
And that gives him, what does that do?
That gives you higher prices.
So, no, I don't, it's either totally misunderstanding or they are just playing games with us.
And a lot of people will, you know, have trouble with it because people have been indoctrinated, a bit you didn't realize this.
Indoctrinated in our colleges to tell us how wonderful the Fed is.
He'll take care of us.
Yeah, I think a lot of the young people know better than that.
Well, we want to just touch on the second story because it's related in a way, and it relates to a senator also that we both know.
This is Daily Caller put this out today, and this is an effort by Senators Rand Paul and Ron Wyden of Oregon.
White House says Trump would veto effort to eliminate Liberation Day tariffs.
Now, this is a disingenuous title, and that's an understatement.
Because what Senators Paul and Wyden, who've been joined by a number of other senators, a lot of them Democrats, I think all of the others being Democrats, if you put the next one up, it's not to negate the tariffs.
Emergency Powers Debate 00:09:08
The Senate is set to vote as early as this week on a resolution to rescind Trump's national emergency declaration, justifying the imposition of broad tariffs on imported goods.
Now, I'm not, I don't have access to Senator Paul.
He's not sitting here with us, but my guess is, knowing how he approaches legislation, that his objection is to the process.
You declare an emergency and then you do a bunch of stuff the Constitution doesn't allow because it's an emergency.
And I think, if I'm right, what Senator Paul is saying is no, this is not what the Constitution requires.
This is not what the framers intended with regard to tariffs and taxes.
Yeah, they opened the door to tariffs, but they were pretty specific that the president couldn't do whatever he wanted anytime he wants, no matter how big it is, without even a consultation or a vote in the Congress.
He was able to do that.
And that's back to the power of the executive.
And I think I'd have to take the position that I believe Trump sort of likes a strong presidency.
I bet he loves writing executive orders.
He wrote two or three that first day, I think.
Well, there's nothing wrong with the strong presidency if it's within the context of the Constitution.
What should they do?
I wish he'd be stronger with the people that he has on his team to get them to shape up.
But go to the next one now.
This is just from that article.
I just wanted to do one little bit more to explain what they're doing because this could come up this week, Dr. Paul.
Most likely, if it passes, it'll only require a bare majority to pass.
But Trump says if it gets to his desk, he'll veto it.
So Wyden and Paul introduced this bipartisan resolution on April 8th to rescind Trump's emergency powers, giving the president authority to issue universal tariffs.
Senate Minority Leaders Schumer and Democratic Sends, Senators Tim Kaine of Virginia, Gene Shaheen of New Hampshire, Peter Welch of Vermont, and Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts are co-sponsoring the resolution.
Now, here's a quote from Senator Paul, which explains his position.
Tariffs are taxes, and the power to tax belongs to Congress, not the president.
Our founders were clear.
Tax policy should never rest in the hands of one person.
Abusing emergency powers to impose blanket tariffs not only drives up costs for American families, but also tramples on the Constitution.
It's time Congress reasserts its authority and restores the balance of power.
That makes sense.
That's right.
And the whole idea was the Congress got out of hand when they went along with producing an amendment to the Constitution implying that there is an authority for the income tax.
I think that's a wicked tax.
I think it makes the assumption who owns us.
The government owns us and everything we earn, and they give us permission to spend a certain amount as long as we follow their regulations.
I mean, it turns the system upside down, and you could do that when you're filthy rich and the country has a strong currency.
But we're not filthy rich anymore, and we're in a much different situation.
Our dollar standard is fading away.
So that's why this crisis is building, and there will be a climactic end to it.
So I work on the assumption that, yes, I want to do everything I can to expose what they're doing, to change it, whatever we can.
But the whole thing is, is I think the preparation for the people to know, because we've run into it already, they're talking about making a few cuts.
People are reacting rather angrily about this.
But the people have to be conditioned to know that if they want to do away with inflation, they better talk about the power, the secret power of the federal reserve system and the influence that groups like the military and industrial complex and the pharmaceutical index, they have to recognize these are special interests that are ripping off the people.
Yeah.
Absolutely, absolutely.
Well, you know, it's kind of ironic and sad that I think the two most conservative representatives, one being a senator, one being a member of the House, that would be Thomas Massey and Rand Paul.
Conservative, meaning actually what the word means, trying to conserve what's left of the Republic, are the ones getting lamb-based.
And I can see Senator Paul probably taking a big hit from the MAGA people for doing this because they unfortunately are looking at the persons and not the principles.
But the last thing that we have our eye on today is something that also came up, I think, over the weekend.
I'll put that next one on.
This is a big deal.
And I mean by deal, I mean arms deal exclusive.
Trump is poised to offer Saudi Arabia over a hundred billion dollar arms package.
Sources say they're going to spend a hundred billion dollars on American weapons, Dr. Paul.
It looks like that's a chunk of money.
You know, and some people will say, and I even mentioned it to you, you know, some people will say, well, what the heck?
They have a lot of money and they'll spend it and they'll make us rich and there's going to be profits made.
So it really helps our economy.
But the whole thing, it's only a gimmick because, and this article that you quoted, it originated in Yahoo.
I got it from Yahoo.
The companies that benefit.
And I think I didn't know there were so many, and they're all rich.
So Lockheed Martin could supply a range of advanced weapons.
C-130, RTX Corporation, formerly Raytheon, they're going to get a bunch of orders.
Boeing Company, Northrop Grubin Corporation, General Atomics.
I mean, that's a lot of people getting the money.
So you would say, well, the wages are probably pretty good there, but it's a distribution of wealth.
And why should, you know, in a free society, I don't think we would be guiding more money in the people who make bombs to sell to somebody else to take our orders and then we tell them who to bomb.
Oh, well, we need these bombs, you know, paid for.
We might have to bomb Yemen.
You know, they're about to take over the world.
So we have to start bombing them.
So they go and buy all this stuff.
And it has nothing to do with morality of the Constitution.
It's a sneaky way to redistribute wealth.
And sometimes it's even worse than that.
Sometimes they don't pay back their loans.
And sometimes we just, if we give it to a country that doesn't have the cash, we loan them the money or whatever.
But it's always a cost to the American taxpayer because in one way or the other, it pushes up prices without helping the average person.
So some labor groups might benefit from that, but that doesn't justify this type of spending.
Yeah.
Well, I remember when working for you on Capitol Hill, there was really the debate in whether these companies should be allowed to sell these weapons at all to overseas, you know, because the idea is that they are socializing the cost of developing these weapons.
The American taxpayer pays the costs of development, and then they privatize the profits and their big profits, as we can see from numbers like this.
So they have the best of both worlds.
Do you recall the argument over helicopters for Columbia?
Yeah, yeah.
You know, the assumption was: I didn't know that Columbia was that rich, but it wasn't assumed that we were giving it to them.
They were paying for them, probably with our money.
But the big argument, I don't know the names of the helicopter companies, but the two majors.
Remember the lobbyists running around?
They got to buy these.
This is why this helicopter, you know, a bunch of congressmen up there are supposed to know which helicopter is the best.
And the best one is the privately owned ones that you use it for transportation.
But anyway, they argued back and forth about, and they could not resolve it.
Simple.
In politics, what you do, you sell, you split the order.
Give one company half and the other company the other half.
So I thought that was so bad.
Well, the one thing you mentioned in your office before we started when we were talking about this topic is you were looking back in the 70s and what happened with the embargo and you were thinking about some possible foreign policy challenges down the road with selling all these weapons to the Saudis.
Yeah, and the Saudis were the big, now they're inviting this stuff again.
And the Saudis were big in the 70s because, you know, they're the ones that put the tariffs on us and boycott.
The embargo, yeah.
The embargo.
We couldn't buy oil and the prices soared.
That helped.
And that's unpredictable.
Selling Weapons to the Saudis 00:02:24
Any country can do that.
It's a mixed bag now, and that's why there's wars going on, these pseudo-wars about who gets the higher tariffs and who's going to get the worst deal.
And so it makes it very hard to calculate, especially when you end up with a currency that makes it practically impossible to know what the value of the dollar will be next week.
How do you make a really good solid contract with a devaluation of a dollar that's steady and is accelerating if you measure it by gold, which a lot of people still do, and more and more people are doing that.
So it's going to be harder and harder to make these contracts.
But the spending continues, well, the price is going up.
We'll just print more money.
Yeah.
Well, the other thing, I mean, and you touch on it here, the other thing is the danger downstream, the down, you know, through the passage of years of selling these massive weapon systems to countries that may or may not continue to do our bidding.
Now, the Saudis have done that since, you know, several decades, you know, the petrodollar, but that may end.
Now, I'm not one that endorses the idea of Iran as the enemy, and that's probably, hopefully, one area where we can see a reduction of tensions is if the talks with Iran continue.
And I'm glad to see the administration at least talking to Iran.
Nevertheless, one could foresee a scenario down the road where Iran and the Saudis get together and they both reject being dictated to by DC, but they have the advantage of these hundreds of billions of dollars worth of weapons.
And in fact, it's already happening in a way.
Put up this next clip because this is something I was watching last week, and it's a very significant development.
Go forward a little bit here.
We'll skip over this.
Go to that.
There we go.
This is a very significant development that people may not have noticed.
On April 17th, the Saudi defense minister, Prince Khalid bin Salman, visited Tehran, marking the highest-level Saudi visit to Iran since 1997.
That's a long time.
He met with Iran's military chief, Major General Mohammed Baghari, to discuss defense cooperation, regional stability, and counterterrorism.
Saudi-Iran ties have thawed since a China-brokered normalization in 2020 and 2023 with joint military meetings and diplomatic exchanges.
Iranian Student's Observation 00:02:52
Now, go to the next one.
This is a post by, I think this gentleman is a student in Tehran, but he makes a very good observation.
He said, and this is the same, the meeting between these two high-level Saudi and Iranian officials.
He says, it was not so long ago that the current Saudi defense minister, Khalid bin Salman, was sitting at the Oval Office with President Trump during his first term discussing ways to suffocate the Iranian regime.
But now he is in Iran.
And there's the lesson about how things can change.
Rather quickly.
Rather quickly.
You know, I failed to mention one thing about these helicopters to Columbia because there was a war going on.
But you remember the war was against drugs.
The anti-drug movement.
They were justifying this because people did dumb things in this country and they used drugs and they might have been drinking alcohol or who knows what.
They were using drugs, so they had to stop it.
So they did this by justifying all this.
That meant we can be pretty sure who paid for those helicopters.
Yeah, exactly.
Well, there you have it.
Well, I'm going to close out, Dr. Paul, on this Monday by thanking our viewers for watching the show.
Please hit that thumbs up.
Reminder, August 16th is the Ron Paul Institute Dulles, Virginia Conference.
I hope to have some more info this week.
We're just tying up some things and getting some things ready.
Hopefully get those tickets on sales because we do want to see you in August.
Over to you, Dr. Paul.
Very good.
And I too want to thank our audience for tuning in today.
We appreciate this very much because our message can't be spread without your help.
And a lot of times people get discouraged because they think, well, we're not getting the huge numbers.
We're not on national television and this sort of thing.
But I tell you what, I'm a strong believer in ideas.
Ideas can't be stopped no matter how big the opposition is.
So I think that when you look in between the lines to look and find out what people are interested in, and we meet them and talk to them, and these conferences give me a great boost because there are individuals who, if in the last 10 or 20 years, have shifted their ideas.
So we haven't seen the full fruition of the shift toward libertarianism and liberty that has occurred in the last several decades.
So I'm an optimistic in that regard.
On the short run, I think we have to go through some adjustments.
Rather difficult.
It doesn't have to be that way, but I'm not optimistic enough to say that the politicians we have in Washington are smart enough to do it gradually and deliver to us a system of emphasis on personal liberty, which would solve our problem.
I want to thank everybody for tuning in to the Liberty Report.
Export Selection