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Nov. 17, 2025 - Ron Paul Liberty Report
26:55
How Is This Possible? US Debt ROSE By $620 Billion...During The Shutdown!

Many Americans mistakenly believed that shutting the government down for the longest stretch ever might actually save us some money. The opposite is the case. No matter what Washington does, the debt bill keeps getting higher. Also today, tariffs cause chaos for US business.

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Time Text
Government Shutdown Savings 00:03:44
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.
Happy Monday, Dr. Paul.
How are you?
Doing well.
Good, good.
Want to talk a little bit about the wonderful savings and count up the savings we've had since we had the government close down.
Now they'll go back to spending money.
Boy, was I fooled.
Oh, I can't imagine them spending.
I wonder how it compared to a regular week.
Who knows?
The total amount will go up for all the things that they're doing.
But what I'm referring to, of course, is the U.S. debt rose by $620 billion during the government shutdown.
So that's such a farce, this whole thing of a shutdown.
But people live through it, and yet there's still a lot of ramification where they still have to deal with all the finances.
We want to mention how much money we've saved on tariffs and how they're going to handle that.
But $620 billion is a fair amount of money that they spent when the government theoretically was closed down.
It was all done in the name of austerity.
They were doing this to really shrink the size of government, just like the opening with the new administration.
They had all these plans, but so far we haven't had any savings.
And it's done in the name of really they're going to help and bring things together.
And we're standing for liberty and this sort of thing.
But there was a major argument, you know, about the close down, but not much essence to it.
It was, to me, just a matter of arguing technicality and who can get a smidgen of benefit from a political thing going on and trying to demagogue it and make sure that one side can beat up the other side.
You know, and they pretended that they were getting a lot of benefits, but it turns out not so much, not so much benefits.
And the people, you know, put their heart in some of this.
I mean, it was a big argument over the medical system.
And the odds of them reversing anything, it's like saying, well, let's modify Social Security.
I would know how to, you know, try to modify it and shrink it and give people more responsibility, but it's not going to happen.
And so this whole thing about what they were arguing about, it was a pure political stunt.
Who could get bigger edge?
And now the Democrats, they did well in the election.
And the current administration doesn't seem to be doing so well in their presentation of this shrinking of the size of government.
Yeah, you know, the headlines, the Republican headlines, remember when they solved the problem temporarily, the Democrats cave, we won, we won.
You know, if this is what winning looks like, you know, I put up that article.
This is from Heads, but this is Eric Peters, CIO of One River Asset Management, wrote the article.
But you can actually see this same figure throughout the web.
U.S. debt rose by $620 billion during the government shutdown.
I think it was 42 days, maybe 47.
I don't remember exactly.
42 Days Of Debt 00:07:12
But here's what the House Freedom Caucus wrote.
This package, i.e., the settlement, demonstrates that we can govern without surrendering to big spending or letting Democrats dictate priorities.
This is a freedom caucus, not the spending caucus.
Anyway, they continue.
We successfully stiff-armed the massive omnibus spending bill.
We locked in disciplined fiat spending level, flat spending levels, preserved President Trump's policy priorities and kept our leverage for the next round in January.
This is the victory cry, Dr. Paul, of the House Freedom Caucus.
I have to say, if this is victory, it almost feels hopeless.
Boy, that's for sure.
And, you know, the Freedom Caucus, that sounds like a good thing, but I don't think Thomas is in it.
No, he's not in it.
So we can't expect a whole lot.
But I think to be realistic, you shouldn't expect a whole lot because when a government gets out of control and the people's demands get out of control and people are politically and patriotically dedicated to empire, that's the one that really annoys me because all you have to do is talk about that.
And yet, we're hoping that we're making some inroads to that.
And some people are starting to say, hey, wait a minute.
You know, we could use a little bit of that money here at home.
Maybe we ought to take care of some of our problems before we send more billions of dollars.
And it hasn't slowed up.
You know, I wonder how much I haven't added it up.
But the money flow into the Ukrainian thing and the Middle East, it continues.
So then we wonder why we're bankrupt.
But it's amazing how well we still get along.
But that's when you look at the superficial things.
When you look at the details and talk to the people, all of a sudden there's a lot of people that aren't doing so well.
And the statistics, especially on employment and all, can be so deceptive.
They can fudge the figures.
They can delay some of those so it doesn't have as much political effect.
But it's something that we have to realize, and of course, I think we do, that the hopefulness that we were part of, you know, after the campaign, I think that's all dissipated.
People are now getting less and less.
It's pure politics and nothing else.
I mean, we don't have a serious discussion on more foreign policy.
It's not very serious on funding.
So when the government's not in session, they still go raise the national debt $620 billion.
I'd say we have a problem.
We've got a problem, Houston.
Yeah.
Well, here's that next one from Steam.
Cole, this is also Eric Peters writing.
He says, people can say whatever they want, but I'm pretty sure our politicians closed the U.S. government for a record 42 days and changed absolutely nothing.
That's quite an accomplishment.
Sublime ineptitude.
Congressional approval ratings supposedly declined 11 points to 15% during the period.
Remarkable.
Now, here's a chart that was in the article, but I actually went on X and found one with some commentary.
You know, for those of us just, for those of you just listening, you can see, you will not be able to see, but this is stock market news on X.
This is wild.
The U.S. government was shut down for 42 days, and the total U.S. debt still jumped by $620 billion.
Only the U.S. can freeze its own government and issue more debt than most countries do in an entire year.
And you can see on the chart that vertical arrow shows the big increase in debt.
Well, the government was shut down.
It actually increased the pace of debt even.
Unbelievable.
Yeah.
And nothing really will change because, and they're allowed to, or they're permitted to, or they get away with it.
And I always go back to the monetary system.
Well, you know, if your government needs to borrow, they should be able to borrow.
There's emergencies and there's a war going on, but I thought they should borrow the money from the people and pay for it and realize what they're doing.
But now, with the Federal Reserve existing, it's so casual.
I'm sure I think we've made some inroads on calling attention to the Fed.
Absolutely.
But I'll tell you, there's still a lot of people that wouldn't have any ideas, even this whole idea about tariff.
Because I have to admit, there was a time when I thought the people wanting to set this stuff paid the tariff.
But it's the American businessman that does it.
It's the American consumer that suffers the most.
Yeah, absolutely.
Well, the shutdown, here's a couple of things I just pulled up.
Now, the first one is from the same article, and this is again Eric Peters talking.
He says, crypto prices got smoked with Bitcoin down roughly 16% for no particularly good reason, even as gold rose 5%.
Liquidity trades often need momentum to sustain them, and the hot money has been chasing AI and gold, as you've said on the show before.
Here's an interesting comparison, though, Dr. Paul.
Beijing added roughly 62 gigawatts of electrical generation capacity to China's grid.
Well, Washington remained closed.
That's roughly the generation capacity of the entire UK, once the world's greatest power.
But I would reply to our friend Eric Peters that we did move some aircraft carrier groups outside of Venezuela, so it's not like we were sitting around on our hands.
We got to get ready for war.
They probably used some hydrocarbons and those maneuvers.
A couple of those, yeah, a couple of those as well.
Nope.
The spending continues.
I just want to do a couple more posts on X.
The first one, these are two accounts that I think are very good.
Unusual Wales.
Here's a fallout again from the shutdown, Dr. Paul.
The U.S. shutdown led to roughly 60,000 job losses outside the federal workforce.
It cost the economy about $15 billion each week for a total of around 92 and could reduce fourth quarter GDP by as much as 1.5 percentage points as per Kevin Hassett.
And I'll go to the next one.
This is from the Kobe Si letter on X.
Now, these stats are pretty sad.
U.S. government shutdown final stats.
5 million airline passengers delayed or canceled.
$619 billion in new federal debt.
Federal statistical system, quote, permanently damaged.
October jobs and inflation data may never be released.
43 days of economic data currently delayed.
750,000 federal workers furloughed.
The current funding bill only reopens the government through January 30th.
Round two awaits.
That's a pretty bad fallout for these 42 days.
Many Companies Struggle With Tariffs 00:15:58
You know, and every one of them that did this, possibly, did this because they believed themselves that they were standing on principle and that they were doing this to preserve liberty.
And they look at this as very positive.
But, you know, it always boils down on things like that.
Because if you don't toe the line of playing the politics, because every vote counts, if you're one or two people that stand out and say, hey, look, this is important, but you guys are going the wrong way.
You're making things worse.
You're not obeying the Constitution.
I promised, you know, I remember taking an oath office to the Constitution.
I campaigned on this, and you don't want me to vote for it.
And, oh, you're a heathen.
We're going to destroy you.
We're going to spend all our money on getting rid of you.
You have to be a team player.
That used to really bug me that people say, you got to be a team player.
Well, what was it?
What's the team doing?
You know, I wasn't all that comfortable being part of that team.
Well, that's you know, that's a big complaint now against Massey and people like Marjorie Taylor Greene.
You're not with the team.
You were elected to follow the president's agenda.
No, you actually weren't.
You were elected to represent 700,000 people in your district.
You know, that's what you're elected for.
People don't understand it.
Well, the second one we're covering today is related.
And this is, I mean, this really is an interesting article, I think.
It's from Politico.
And it's about the way that tariffs are costing not just companies, but the U.S. go to this next one.
Now, people are going to be mad because a lot of people still think tariffs are nifty.
Listen to what we have to say on it and see if you haven't changed your mind.
Politico says Trump's tariffs are costing companies.
Keeping up with them may cost even more.
The proliferation of trade regulations and threats of intensified enforcement have driven many companies to spend what could add up to tens of millions of dollars, probably even more than that, Dr. Paul.
Yeah, see, this becomes a messy situation because it's hard to follow, hard to measure, but the tariffs have been, you know, presented to the public as something very beneficial, which is something that we've questioned that because even when they were talking about putting them on and pointing out, it isn't like we were looking into the future and news on it.
All you have to do is look into past, not too distant past, how many how damaging the whole tariffs can be.
But this thing right now is very, very complicated because there are for the businessman who maybe thought he was going to get some benefits by having some protection.
And it turns out it's very expensive to the businessman who has to import something.
It's very legally complicated.
There are a lot of lawsuits going on.
There's some court ruins pending.
And who knows what's that going to do to the businessman trying to decide how to manage his affairs?
And then with the ability, they're going to try hard.
See, the big issue is, boy, that we realize that, but we're going to take care of it.
We're going to lower interest rate.
We're going to turn out the printing press.
We're going to make sure the money's available.
And this will keep us out of trouble.
Something they've tried to do in the past.
It never worked.
All it does is create more of the problems of the devaluation of the currency.
And that means higher prices for the consumer.
But a lot of this fighting is a political thing.
Who's going to have the edge?
And it's a party thing.
You know, you get most of the time 100% on each side voting.
And they lose themselves into the politics rather than what the issue is all about.
And it's, when you read some of this stuff, it's a bureaucratic monster of what the businessman has to do and how many reports he has to do.
And it was cited that there were times when tariffs were used in a more modest way.
Maybe this is what the founders had in mind.
Maybe a three, four, five percent tariff, and people recognize it and they paid it.
But there was no fighting and fuming, and nobody was filing these suits and saying, what was 50 cents?
Oh, we're going to 100%.
It's actually crazy.
So I think that maybe the conclusion of this, maybe people will wise up and try to get a better policy out of the administration.
Well, that's one of the things that you had said when we were talking before the show is, yeah, I mean, you've said it before, too.
I can see a system where there might be modest tariffs.
They might be used for specific things as the founders may have had in mind.
But so even maybe our viewers or listeners out there who believe that that might be useful, the point I think here is how bizarre and impossible to follow.
And this article captures it.
Go to this next clip.
This is businesses from Wall Street to Main Street are struggling to comply with President Donald Trump's Byzantine tariff regime, driving up costs and counteracting the benefits of corporate tax cuts that Republicans passed last earlier this year.
It's ripping up the old tariff code and replacing a system with something that is vastly more complicated.
Go to the next.
I'm trying to summarize this to give an example.
And this is what you just said, really, Dr. Paul.
An industrial product that faced a mostly uniform 5% tariff in the recent past can now be taxed at 15% if it comes from the EU or Japan, 20% from Norway and many African countries, 24% to 25% from countries in Southeast Asia, and upwards of 50% from India, Brazil, or China.
And here's Gary Shapiro, a CEO and vice chair of the Consumer Technology Association.
This has been an exhausting career for most CEOs in the country.
The level of executive time that's being put into this is enormous.
So instead of focusing on innovation, they're focusing on how they deal with the tariffs.
I think that last sentence is all you need to hear about.
That is it.
I often thought, never calculated it, but wondered whether or not if you put a tax on everything, not just products, but even financial transactions, it had a 1% tax on everything.
It make it very simple and clear, but because I don't think they tax every financial instrument that comes in, but I'll bet you that would be a huge amount of money.
It's just limited to that.
No income tax, just that one tax.
But if it's simplified, it's not going to be acceptable.
They got to keep it complicated in order to take care of their friends.
Byzantine is really the best word for it.
But you know, it led to this whole thing on tariffs, though.
It led to a positive thing on the Treasury.
They collect a lot of money.
A lot of money.
And now they're in a dilemma.
At one time, here they are spending $620 billion they don't have, but in theory, they have it.
I think it might be still on a wrapping paper, but it's come in, but they haven't spent it.
Now it's a fun game.
How are we going to do this?
Oh, whoa, we can get some more votes.
Let's pass it out.
Let's give dividends to our supporters.
Oh, which counties are those?
Which state are that?
We're going to give them some money.
And then the same old story.
Give them a, they call it a dividend.
So we'll give them a dividend.
$2,000 apiece might be, but Daniel, don't hold your breath because I don't think you're going to get one.
I don't think so either.
So this whole idea of passing out this money.
But the whole thing, they take the money.
They try to punish the foreigner companies.
If really the American companies pay for it, so they have to take the money from the consumer in America.
And now they have to return it.
Well, return it to the people you took it from, which would be impossible.
But by the time they do it, the money will have already, well, theoretically, it's all been spent anyway when you look at how much they owe.
I mean, the country owes so much money for, and that's just a superficial numbers, $38 trillion.
But they never think we should deal with that.
One of the things that really gets me in this is how much it's hurting business in the U.S. You know, again, even people who like the idea of tariffs, we think they're taxes, but even theoretically, here's just a couple of good quotes on this.
Go to the next one.
People are saying they can't put money into RD, research and development, said one industry official.
They can't put money into siting new factories in the United States.
They don't have the certainty they need to make decisions.
Now, go to the next one.
Now, Besant, his response is, well, I would love to have been able to snap my fingers and have these facilities going.
It takes some time.
I think 26 is going to be a blockbuster year.
Okay.
Now, go to the next one.
Now, this is the point, I think.
We are no longer investing in product innovation.
We're not investing into new hires.
We're not investing into growth.
We are just spending our money trying to stay afloat through this, said Cassie Abel, founder and CEO of Wild Rye, an Idaho company that sells outdoor clothing.
Company employees have spent hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of hours countersourcing products, pausing production, restarting production, rushing production, running price analysis, cost analysis, shipping analysis, Abel said.
I spent zero minutes on tariffs before this administration.
You can understand the frustration in trying to run a business and not knowing from minute to minute what will happen.
You know, sometimes you hear, frequently, matter of fact, people coming from the socialist field, they point out some of these discrepancies and how it's such a mix up and ruins the economy.
And they use this just as a weapon to change it.
But we're not talking about free markets here.
I mean, this is just a monster that they have to deal with.
And that is the one thing, and that's why we have these problems.
But the people will accept this argument and they say, oh, yeah, capitalism doesn't work.
Just think of that.
You're looking at it.
That's not capitalism.
What I think is capitalism is something much closer to laissez-faire.
Let the market be free.
A simple term.
Why shouldn't all transactions, social and economic, be voluntary on two sides?
Boy, would that be a miracle?
It would, for sure.
Well, I remember I got a lesson early on when I worked for you on the Hill.
I didn't know anything about trade policy, but I happened.
I don't know how.
Maybe I got unlucky in a way.
But I had to have a meeting on the issue.
But it was from one of our constituents.
And I've told the story on the show before, but they run, ran, they may still do it, a steel company around there in our old district at the time.
It was super high-quality steel, very specialized steel.
It had employed a lot of people from our district.
And this was the trade issue, the tariff issue was going on big time then.
It was the idea is we have to protect our steel.
When they came in and said, well, where do you think we get the raw materials from?
They're all imported.
Then we value add and we put out a great product and it sells and we employ a bunch of people.
So you can't just look at it at the final stage.
You've got to look at the whole stage of production.
So I can imagine if you're running a company right now, what are you not doing?
You're not hiring people because you don't know what's going to happen one day from the next.
And we're seeing a lot of problems, you know, with employment and everything else.
But what you can do when you have a totally free market, there will be bits and pieces.
And at times things don't go right.
And some people lose money.
And the busy bodies come in and say, well, we have to take care of that person.
That person went bankrupt.
But it's only like one out of 100 that should produce.
So what do they want to do?
Use that as an excuse for control on everything.
And of course, that expands the complications and the downturns and the problems.
Because when people make problems, and bureaucrats are quite capable of making mistakes when they do that, just think of the mistakes in, say, medical care and COVID.
Just think how many people suffer from that rather than letting people make their own decisions.
Absolutely.
Well, I'm going to close out.
I think if we're done, and I'm just going to thank everyone for watching the show again on this Monday.
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Over to you, Dr. Very good.
I too want to thank our viewers for tuning in today.
We feel very dedicated to doing our very best to seek out the truth, especially in political and economic problems.
And we do a lot of extra work, especially because we think it's a real gigantic issue, and that is our foreign policy and the patriotism that is dedicated to listening to the empire.
The false patriotism, that is, of course, because people seem to like this idea.
And just think of what we're doing around Venezuela right now.
I mean, we're in so many places around the world, but this military buildup, I guess we just got tired, or they got tired of us or the war they're winding down up in Ukraine.
But we did that.
We had not American ships, but American money and the taxpayers' money.
So it's the policies that we have that is so important to us.
And because I am very, very annoyed at the fact that trying to stop a war is very difficult once they get started.
And we believe that we should be able to prevent them by pointing out what's going on.
We work very hard in the Middle East.
We try to prevent that.
We worked hard on Ukraine.
That didn't happen.
We've done that off and on because it's an off and on war for years and years in the Middle East.
And that requires it.
And then they come along and we have all these examples.
Once it gets by, and there's so many people dependent on the corruption that occurs with these wars that the wars go on maybe for 10, 20 years.
It doesn't make any sense.
And it's just a matter of getting the information for the American people in a large majority to join us in fighting for the cause of liberty and let the people decide how they want to live.
And to me, that means just legalize voluntarism.
Let voluntarism be the deciding factor on what kind of decisions we make.
I want to thank everybody for tuning in today.
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