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June 30, 2025 - Ron Paul Liberty Report
30:27
Big Beautiful Bankruptcy

As was easily predictable, all the carrots they hung on the "Big Beautiful Bill" to get House Republicans to vote on it have been stripped from the Senate version. The only thing remaining is the massive increase in debt. As usual, Thomas Massie was right. Will the final vote saddle Americans with this bankrupt albatross?

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Time Text
Buying Short-Term Gain 00:03:42
Hello, everybody, and thank you for tuning into the Liberty Report.
With us today, we have Daniel McAdams, our co-host.
Daniel, good to see you this morning.
Good morning, Dr. Paul.
It almost feels back to normal now.
We had a weird week last week, didn't we?
Ready to go.
But I don't think Washington is normal.
Oh, I was going to say, maybe Washington is not back to normal.
I think they're back to normal plus.
Because the normal thing in Washington is they spend more money than they have, and so they print it.
So it looks like that hasn't changed.
Of course, it was a big weekend for the senators.
They got to stay up all night and play bridge or something, occasionally vote.
But what a nightmare.
And, you know, the House and the Senate controlled by the Republicans, which means that, you know, things should improve.
You know, we have, and I think with the president's a Republican, too.
So that means we should be cutting back.
So when the bill leaves the House, we were complaining a bit about the shenanigans on the House.
But since it's going on with the Senate, it's been increased in spending by another trillion dollars.
So that's a sign that maybe we're not home yet on this spending.
Matter of fact, I don't think they even believe that it's necessary.
They have to pay a little bit of lips of service to it.
But I don't think a liberal socialists believe that it's possible or that you should.
And maybe the chaos is a benefit because they can take over things and show capitalism isn't working.
So they'll blame capitalism on it.
But I think there is a bankruptcy going on.
And there's one other item that was reported today that I thought was important, but they won't talk about it because it has to do with monetary policy.
This was a sponsor.
This was reported by Hedge.
The headline is: the government is quietly buying its own debt, a silent signal something's cracking.
Now, why would they buy their own debt when they still have to pay interest and play the game?
They're buying bonds that are longer term and higher rates, and it's getting hard to renew at that rate.
So they're buying them and buying short-term in the treasure.
The Treasury's buying them.
I think, well, the Treasury has to have money.
You know, the Fed, we know where they get the money, but the Treasury has to get it.
So there's always a cost, but they don't talk about that.
But I think what is symbolic of is that people generally, when they worry about the economy, they don't go long on their bonds, even though they might think they're going to get higher rates.
That usually drives those rates down and the earlier rates, you know, start to go up.
But right now, they're doing it for short-term gain, thinking that we can handle this refinancing by having the shorter term.
But it's, again, it's an indication behind between the lines.
You can say this is probably the real problem.
And when they're looking at how they're financing in this bill, they might say, well, this is a pretty good idea.
They maybe ought to think about the real financing.
Maybe they ought to think about the dollar.
Maybe they even should think about the Federal Reserve.
And they do.
Trump has already picked his replacement.
And I'm sure he's picked somebody that is willing to print a lot of money faster than anybody else.
Anyway, that's a secondary thing, but it's probably, if we didn't have that type of monetary system, the condition of our country and our finances would have never gotten this far out of control.
Elon's Monetary Concerns 00:14:36
But it is, and it looks like it's going to continue.
But it doesn't look like over the weekend, If it went up with another trillion dollars, that they're on their way to happy landing, you know, that this soon they'll pass another bill.
Who knows what's going to happen today?
They have a lot of votes, but one thing for sure is long term, they're not going to deal with the real problem.
That is, government's too big, they print too much money, and they cause the problems that they pretend they're fixing.
Yeah, you know, we've been talking a lot about this so-called big beautiful bill.
And what it is, is a massive bloated omnibus bill that has everything but the kitchen sink in it.
We've talked about it for a while.
A few brave people on the Hill have stood against it, Thomas Massey being one, Senator Ram Paul being the other.
And over the weekend, as you point out, the Senate voted on their version of the bill and how this works.
The House, because it's a money bill, the House votes first.
The Senate brings up their version of the bill.
And then there's a reconciliation of the two bills for a final passage, which goes to the president, as you know, Dr. Paul.
So the Senate took out their version of the bill.
And as clockwork, Dr. Paul, as so easily predictable, what they did is all of the carrots that the leadership put in on the Republican House, on the House version of the bill to appease conservatives were ripped out by the Senate.
We got you.
We suckered you into voting for it.
And they were ripped out.
Now, Thomas Massey, of course, has the receipts.
Put that first clip up.
He points this out, and I apologize for my voice.
I've had a cold over the weekend.
So here's the things that were in it to appeal to the Republicans that were all taken out.
Thomas Massey said, you were promised the big, beautiful bill would do these things, but it does not.
One, prohibit welfare for illegal aliens.
Boom, zipped out of the bill, gone.
Stop funding sex changes for kids, ripped out of the bill.
End registration of suppressors.
That's for guns.
Ripped out of the bill.
Defund Plant Parenthood for 10 years.
Nope.
Take it out of the bill.
Implement the Reinsap Act.
Nope.
Take it out of the bill.
Reduce the deficit.
On the contrary, the Senate added to the deficit, as you just pointed out, Dr. Paul.
So you know this routine over and over again.
They drizzle a little sprinkles on it to appeal to conservatives, and then they ripped them away.
And then once you voted for that first one, you're on the hook, baby.
Maybe it's just an accounting error.
You know, because if Trump knew this was going in here, do you think he could approve of this?
Oh, no, he not only approved it, he probably wrote it, you know, in order to get his big bill passed.
So this is the same old story.
It's over and over again.
The spending is going to continue, but it's going to be utterly amazing how they're going to resolve this.
Maybe it'll be a 30-day continuing resolution and then fight for another day or something like that.
They've done that in the past, too, is just give a temporary deal to it.
But, you know, this whole thing about what Thomas put up, it reminds me of how people have to lie when they have shenanigans, and especially if it's very important.
And the saying, truth is treason in an empire of lies.
So they have to tell the lies.
So they do this.
And then this pacifies some people, but more and more people are disgusted.
And I understand that the polls are correct.
There are now a few polls that would like to hold the Republicans' feet to the fire because they thought they were going to get a better deal on budgeting than they've gotten so far.
Yeah, you make a good point.
They put these in to pacify them.
And then House members that go for it, they're on the hook.
They're not going to change their votes.
None of them have the courage to change their votes.
Hey, you voted for it already.
You better vote for it again.
It's going to pass.
He's going to sign it on the 4th of July.
It's going to be a real firework for America.
Well, I got a couple of clips of Massey and a couple of others talking about the bill.
Put the next one up.
This is Massey saying, lest ye blame the Senate, watch the House now vote for the lobotomized version of the 2.0 BBB product.
The initial promises got pro-life, immigration reform, and pro-gun groups to whip for version 1.0.
That's key.
House Republicans got voted for version 1.0, got pregnant, and will now vote for V2.0.
And see, that's important too.
He knows how this works, Dr. Paul.
They made all these promises they knew they were not going to keep in the bill.
They got all these groups, pro-life, immigration, program, to get their people to lobby for it, lobby for it, lobby for it.
They knew they were going to take it out in the end.
It's a bait and switch.
That does baffle me why the people stay so gullible.
You know, look how long it took people to wake up to some of the misinformation they were getting about COVID.
But they did eventually.
It's so slow.
Propaganda is powerful.
And the American people would like to believe their leaders.
You know, they're our leaders.
And you have to have organizations.
You can't have people, you know, disrupting things and they're going to ruin everything.
So we have to get rid of those kind of people who won't go along with the leadership.
But right now, they're fighting over who's going to lead the charge, who's going to spend the most money, and which way is he going.
And the argument is ongoing as we speak.
And a lot of the MAGA people are saying if you don't go along with more spending, you're not America first.
Well, as usual, Thomas Massey breaks it down very, very well.
If you go to that next one, it's simple, Dr. Paul.
As you always say, it's really not that complicated.
Here's what Massey puts up on X. There's no such thing as tax relief without spending cuts.
Government can reduce the tax rate, but the spending still must be paid for.
Government must borrow money, which raises interest rates and requires more taxes later, or print money, which causes inflation.
Both hurt Americans.
That is the perfect point, Dr. Paul.
And let's look at Senator Paul.
He was on the floor of the Senate.
He did his best.
In the end, it was only him and Senator Tom Tillis of North Carolina who immediately announced his retirement after he voted against the bill.
They were the only Republicans voting against this bill, very sadly.
But here's what Senator Paul had to say: when it comes to the not-so-big, not-so-beautiful bill, I'm asking one simple question: Will the deficit be higher or lower next year?
The answer is clear: higher.
That's why I'm voting no.
And I urge my colleagues to ask themselves the same question before voting.
Simple question.
You know, it's amazing how when they're maneuvering the people into these political votes and things, that it's easy for them to go along with a little bit more spending and power.
If they see that there's going to be a gain, but every once in a while, if somebody comes along and says, Well, we're going to get you, and they're not interested in their platforms.
I remember I got into trouble once because I voted a certain way, and this was under Reagan, and he was a good guy, and they had a good platform, but platforms never meant anything.
So they were going to censor me.
And I said, Well, okay, why don't you take my votes with everybody else that's a Republican and compare my votes with The platform and the Constitution, by the way.
Well, that's not practical.
You're just a dreamer.
Yeah, if you follow the platform.
Well, it wasn't just Massey and Rand who got involved with the debate.
Coming out of a slumber of a couple weeks, understandably, he's been keeping a low profile, but Elon Musk has come out again, making his position known on this bill.
Now, put that next one up.
This is Elon on the 28th.
He put out a post on X saying the polls show that this bill is political suicide for the Republican Party.
And if you go to that next one and amplify it, it's going to be hard to see.
But the first one, Elon, this is a poll they took, the Terrence Group.
Elon Musk claims that this legislation is an outrageous pork-filled spending bill that will massively increase the budget deficit and burden American citizens with crushingly unsustainable debt.
Yes, do you agree?
Green, you're unsure.
Blue, you disagree.
Look at those yeses.
All voters, 58%.
The hard GOP, 53%.
Medium GOP, 59%.
The toss-up, 61%.
So even the hardcore Republican voters in the majority say this bill is an absolute fiscal nightmare.
And they're on the side of people like Elon and Massey against Trump on this.
And it doesn't look like there's anything that put the brakes on it.
You know, the monetary system was supposed to do this, that if you have fiat money, if you give the privilege of creating money, you know, either to the Congress or some secret organization like the Federal Reserve, it becomes the engine of big government.
And it becomes the engine of big militarism and welfarism.
And it goes on and on.
And that's where we are.
And they're not going to voluntarily quit.
Matter of fact, the pain of quitting is very great.
And nobody wants to do that.
It's like a cancer operation, and nobody likes to have the operation.
They'd rather continue with no treatment or whatever.
They let it go.
But they will not cut.
You can see what happens.
They end up with two people willing to look at it in an honest way and see if their constituents will stand with them.
And you know what?
I think the constituents stand with people who stand on principle a lot better than they dream.
I think that's hypocrisy sometimes.
Oh, I can't do it.
My people don't want me to do this.
But the people who do it.
So that's why we better all be rooting for Thomas.
Yeah.
Yeah, absolutely.
Well, here's a couple more of Elon's things over the weekend.
If you put that next one out.
Now, he retweeted, reposted this comment.
This is interesting because if you go to that next clip, he reposted this.
It says, wow, if you can put that next clip on here, he says, wow, the trade union that represents America's 3 million construction workers just said that the Senate's big bill would be, quote, the biggest job-killing bill in our country's history.
They think it threatens up to 1.75 million construction jobs.
Then Elon, if you go to the next one, reposted Massey saying, BBB, well, that'll be our credit rating if the bill becomes law.
And then the final one, this is, I think, is an important post that Massey or that Elon Musk put out on the 28th.
He said, go to that next one if you can, please.
I know you're running around like a madman back there.
The latest Senate draft bill, this is before it passed on Saturday.
The latest Senate draft bill will destroy millions of jobs in America and cause immense strategic harm to our country.
Utterly insane and destructive.
It gives handouts to industries of the past while severely damaging industries of the future.
Now, when I heard that over the weekend, I was driving in my car, Dr. Paul, and someone was reading it on their show.
I immediately thought of you because what you've always said, it's not the government's role to pick winners and losers.
And that's what the bill does.
They believe they're going to subsidize this.
And Elon says that's not the future.
That's the past.
And sometimes they start very early when they decided we want you to be the winner here.
And this guy, we don't like him.
We'll make him a loser.
Yeah.
But no, it's a bad system of government.
Do you have another thing on the budget?
No, I was going to move on to Massey if you're ready to.
Yeah, let's do that.
Because, you know, this is something that is quite disturbing.
Now, Trump announced, I'll put on that next clip.
I'm not going to read the whole thing.
But, you know, unfortunately, this is becoming classic Trump.
He goes in and he writes a massive, I don't even know how you describe it, rage-filled post on his truth social.
And it just happens to be whoever he's mad at at the time.
And this one happened to be Thomas Massey.
Thomas Massey of Kentucky is not MAGA, even though he likes to say he is.
Actually, MACA doesn't want him, doesn't know him, doesn't respect him.
He's a negative force who always votes no, no matter how good something may be.
He's a simple-minded grandstander who thinks it's good politics for Iran to have the highest level nuclear weapon.
That's insane.
While at the same time, yelling death to America.
And I can go on and on and on, but here's what he did.
He announced that he's going to spend a million dollars.
His group's going to spend a million dollars running ads, negative ads against Massey in Massey's district to unseat Thomas Massey.
Now, the first ad dropped on the anniversary of Thomas Massey's wife's death, which is disgusting.
And let's watch how disingenuous this ad is, how disgusting this ad is.
If we could put that video clip on, you might want to grab your earpiece if you can, Dr. Paul.
Let's listen to what they said about the Thomas Massey that we know so well.
What happened to Thomas Massey?
Massey's Vote Against Tax Cuts 00:04:38
President Trump is banning sex changes on minors.
Massey voted against it.
President Trump is cutting taxes and saving Kentucky families $10,000.
Massey voted against it.
President Trump is securing our border and deporting criminal aliens.
Massey voted against Trump again.
And after Trump obliterated Iran's nuclear weapons program, Massey sided with Democrats and the Ayatollah.
Let's fire Thomas Massey.
MAGA Kentucky is responsible for the content of this advertising.
And of course, everything in there is wrong because they took out the measure that was banning sex changes for kids.
They took out the measure that was reducing taxes.
They took out all these measures and they still put out this attack ad against Thomas Massey.
You know, really awful, really awful stuff.
Yeah, you'd think they'd have a little more finesse about this.
How crude can they get?
Did you see that when they said about the sex change thing?
They had a clip of Massey with his eyes open like he was prurient.
You know, he was sort of a pervert.
They had that weird expression on his face.
That's really a low blow.
That's not, that's really bad.
That's really not bad.
It's pretty bad.
So that's why it's very important that people like this are rewarded by people standing behind them.
Because if it were strictly honesty and positions and you put up one list on one side and the other list, what really was the truth about what they're doing?
But that won't be the case.
The demagogues will be there, and a lot of them will be welcome to be a victim of a demagogue because that's where we get our check, and they rationalize it.
That's why I've been a pessimist on believing that it's going to change gradually, even though I work for the gradual change.
But I think the change will come, but it's when the whole thing falls apart.
And when you start seeing the rockiness that is entering the bond market right now and the deficit, and then this Mickey Mouse stuff about balancing and cutting back on this revolutionary administration, and they say, oh, well, we have a weekend to tinker up a little bit.
The Senate's going to improve your bill.
Oh, another trillion dollars, that's nothing.
We can afford that.
And I mean, they're not even in the real world.
Yeah, absolutely.
Yeah, I know.
It's crazy.
Now, I feel pretty confident that Massey will be able to withstand this primary challenge that they're trying to run against him.
He had almost 76% of the vote last time he had a primary challenger that was also funded by APAC partially.
And I'm sure they'll put in a lot of money as well.
I feel confident, but I will say that when I look on a thread on X and Massey's name is in the main post or it's about Massey, I'm seeing a lot more very, very nasty posts about him.
So that shows you the power of propaganda.
They're saying things about Massey, the same kinds of things they said about you when you were in the House.
Well, which is a record of achievement.
How many bills has he had passed?
You know, as if that's the measure of achievement.
But, you know, we both looked at this article in The Hill of All Places, praising Thomas Massey.
And I wanted to read a couple, if you'll indulge me, Dr. Paul, a couple of quotes from this.
This is an incredible, incredible article.
Can Thomas Massey survive Trump's swamp machine?
Now, if you go to the next one, I'm just going to read a couple of these quickly.
And again, I'm sorry, bear with me for my voice.
The knives are out for Representative Thomas Massey.
Trump's $500 million political machine has Kentucky's fourth district in its crosshairs.
And the establishment media is already writing the Congressman's obituary.
But they're missing the real story here.
This isn't about one Maverick politician bucking the system.
This is about the soul of the Republican Party and whether it still has one.
Go to the next one.
Massey stands alone.
While his colleagues genuflect before Trump's truth social tantrums, Massey asks the hard questions.
When the president bypasses Congress to strike Iran, Massey calls it unconstitutional.
When Trump demands Republicans rubber stamp another bloated spending bill, Massey votes no.
When the party leadership demands lockstep loyalty, Massey chooses principal.
For this, he's branded a grandstander and little boy by a man who turned the presidency into performance art.
If Massey Fails 00:06:25
Now, I'm going to, I don't want to belabor this.
I just want to skip to the one if Massey fails, because this is a very powerful go forward a couple, one more.
And this is poignant, Dr. Paul, and I sent this to you over the weekend.
If Massey fails, if Massey falls, the Republican Party won't just lose a congressional seat.
It will forfeit the last trace of the ideals it once pretended to believe in.
Who will vote against the next trillion-dollar spending spree?
Who will stand up to the next foreign war fever dream?
Who will remind the executive branch, Republican or Democrat, that it is not above the law?
That is a great little paragraph there.
And I would just urge people who are in this cult, who are being brainwashed, take a step back.
Take a deep breath.
Think about this.
Do you really want to be attacking the person who stands for the Constitution?
You can like President Trump.
You can hope President Trump does the right thing.
You can support President Trump.
Why on earth would you kick a man for supporting the Constitution?
And some people threw up their hair.
So what?
Because they themselves are in disagreement with somebody voting the Constitution.
I mean, there's a lot of people in Washington that not only do they not understand the Constitution, but when they do understand it, they're against it, you know, because it limits their power.
See, power overwhelms, and money overwhelms.
And therefore, the principle of personal liberty and personal freedom and privacy, just think of how the privacy issue is being just torn apart, that things that would have been unheard of.
Of course, it's been going on for a while.
It probably started with all our wars.
It's always been whittled away.
But right now, they're very, very active in making sure that you're discredited in all this stuff.
What we do is we suck these people in at universities and finance people.
Then we use that as a justification.
Well, it's our money.
We have to regulate.
We can't let them say this and demonstrate.
Well, you're absolutely right.
We shouldn't be doing it.
But stop the money.
And then it'd be up to the people who run the university and nobody has to interfere with them.
But no, we give them the money.
Then they start lobbying against the people who disagree with them.
And so they say, well, we use it as a weapon.
And a foreign policy, it's put on sanctions.
We take care of you and we're going to be nice to you and we're going to be your friend and this sort of thing.
And they say, well, and if you don't do it, we're going to put sanctions on you.
And we'll close you out of the marketplace.
So it's the kind of, and that is all the use of force.
And it's very disturbing because it's the opposite of what we're supposed to be really promoting.
Absolutely.
Well, you know, as a 501c3 nonprofit, we're very limited in the politics we can be involved in.
But if you do want to fight back, you need to support Thomas Massey, I would say.
Boy.
You know, he needs to have a war chest because they're going to unleash a lot of money against him.
He needs to have a war chest.
He needs, because he's fighting for all of us, I think, on this.
There's no doubt about it.
And I still think that there's a lot of people who like the special interest and they don't want to give up with it.
But I think if you took 10 of his positions against 10 of the positions of those people who are trying to get rid of him and compare them, I think it has to be 70 or 80% of the American people say, oh, we'd vote for this guy.
But as soon as you get labels on there and political shenanigans and also threats thrown at them, you know, well, you know, I didn't want to go.
I didn't want to retire yet.
So I better just go along with it this time.
And then they do.
Exactly.
It's a mess.
Pure democracy is a contributing factor to all this.
As soon as we can rally and influence and badger, you know, 51%, we can do anything we want.
And Trump has actually made those statements that he can do whatever he wants.
And we're not against Trump.
We want him to do the right thing, but this isn't the right thing.
Since we're about out of time, I'm going to skip ahead if we can to that final clip, if that's okay with you.
There we go.
The very last clip.
And to remind you that this is the gentleman that you will be spending the afternoon with when you come to see us on August 16th in Dulles, Virginia, the great Colonel Douglas McGregor.
You've seen him on show after show.
You've seen him on Tucker.
You've seen him everywhere.
Well, he is giving his time to be with us on that Saturday.
Here's a quote.
We are moving toward war with Iran, and the chosen destination is Armageddon.
That's a great quote from Colonel McGregor.
He's going to share his insights at our Blueprint for Peace conference.
I will put a link in the description to get those tickets today.
Get them while they're still available.
Come join us.
We've got to stand up.
We've got to stand up for peace.
We've got to stand up against wars.
We can't let our guard down.
And we'll also have a little bit of fun, too.
Very good.
He's been a close friend, and we will continue to be working with him.
And hopefully, he has more influence.
He does have influence because an intellectual has influence that you never can measure.
And he has already influenced a lot of people.
And if it looks like he's approaching the power structure, then they'll come down on him and they won't include him.
But anyway, I think truth wins in the end.
And I think that is very true.
And that's why I think I am very sincere in dedicating our efforts to peace and prosperity with our organization.
And I think that is so important because if you want to live in a happy world, why don't you just have one rule?
Why don't you make everything voluntary?
You know, whether they're business agreements, sexual agreements, religious agreements, or whatever.
Just say, well, if there are two sides to it, you can't do it.
You have a veto if both sides don't agree.
Voluntary Choices Matter 00:00:56
And that's what happens in most economic matters, even today.
You go in and if somebody wants to sell you a product and it's 10 times more than you want, you voluntarily say, well, I'm out of here.
So voluntarism is just a great symbol because that's a principle of liberty.
And yet the opposite, the authoritarians, the people who want authoritarianism, which includes just about every other philosophy to some degree, that means the bureaucrats and the authoritarians in charge, they like power and they like to tell people what to do.
And they say, well, we'll make a better world as long as you listen to it.
And the ultimate test is the authoritarians found in socialism.
I'll tell you what, there's a lot of people still, though, that know and want to live in a free society.
And we're going to do our best to continue that effort.
I want to thank everybody for tuning in today to the Liberty Report.
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