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Today, 2012 Republican presidential candidate Ron Paulissued a statement outlining his opposition to the debt ceiling deal struck between the White House and Congress. See statement below.

Ron Paul: “While it is good to see serious debate about our debt crisis, I cannot support the reported deal on raising the nation’s debt ceiling. I have never voted to raise the debt ceiling, and I never will.

This deal will reportedly cut spending by only slightly over $900 billion over 10 years. But we will have a $1.6 trillion deficit after this year alone, meaning those meager cuts will do nothing to solve our unsustainable spending problem. In fact, this bill will never balance the budget. Instead, it will add untold trillions of dollars to our deficit. This also assumes the cuts are real cuts and not the same old Washington smoke and mirrors game of spending less than originally projected so you can claim the difference as a ‘cut.’

The plan also calls for the formation of a deficit commission, which will accomplish nothing outside of providing Congress and the White House with another way to abdicate responsibility. In my many years of public service, there have been commissions on everything from Social Security to energy policy, yet not one solution has been produced out of these commissions.

By denying members the ability to offer amendments and only allowing an up-or-down vote that will take place in the hectic time between Thanksgiving and Christmas, this Commission essentially disenfranchises the vast majority of members from meaningfully participating in the debate over reducing spending and balancing the budget. Furthermore, despite the claims of the bill’s proponents, there is nothing to stop the commission from recommending tax increases.

One of the reasons why I humbly suggest that I am the most qualified Presidential candidate is my experience to see and understand the long track record of failure, disappointments, and bad recommendations made by such commissions.Times like these require statesmanship and steady leadership, which I and the grassroots activists who have joined my campaign believe I am uniquely qualified to provide.

What should bother Americans most is that under cover of this debt ceiling circus, we learned from a recent GAO one-time, limited audit that the Federal Reserve secretly pumped $16 trillion into American and foreign banks over three years. All of the Fed’s fat cat cronies were taken care of at the expense of the American public.

To put that into perspective, our entire national debt is $14.5 trillion, and our annual deficit will be about $1.6 trillion, meaning the Federal Reserve created and appropriated more than our entire national debt to banks around the world in a few short years. We have been fighting in Congress these past few weeks over raising our debt ceiling by $2 trillion, an amount the Fed secretly gave away to just one big bank.

For decades, politicians have promised future restraint in exchange for hikes in the debt limit. We are always told that we must act immediately to avoid a crisis. But time and time again, politicians reveal themselves to be untrustworthy, and we soon find ourselves in a crisis being led by the same folks who wish only to maintain the status quo.

I believe in the great American traditions of free markets, sound money, and personal Liberty. But we are moving far away from what made us the greatest nation in human history. We must cut spending and balance our budget now, before it is too late.

Let me be clear. The cuts we must make will not be easy, and there will be difficult times in the short run. But I have the greatest confidence that if we come together as a People, work hard, and do the right things, our country will be back on track in no time and on its way to unprecedented prosperity. But, if we continue to print money and pyramid debt, we will destroy ourselves and lose the promise of America forever.

These difficult times require a President willing to stand against runaway spending. If elected, I will veto any spending bill that contributes to an unbalanced budget, and I will balance the budget in the first year of my term. I will not allow the Federal Reserve to destroy the value of our money by shoveling dollars into the pockets of its banker friends.

I remain committed to working on behalf of the American people to drastically reduce spending and implement fundamental changes that will reform government and restore our nation’s prosperity.”

Ron Paul to Congress: Freeze the Budget and Stop Plundering the American People!

by Ron Paul

One might think that the recent drama over the debt ceiling involves one side wanting to increase or maintain spending with the other side wanting to drastically cut spending, but that is far from the truth. In spite of the rhetoric being thrown around, the real debate is over how much government spending will increase.

No plan under serious consideration cuts spending in the way you and I think about it. Instead, the “cuts” being discussed are illusory, and are not cuts from current amounts being spent, but cuts in projected spending increases. This is akin to a family “saving” $100,000 in expenses by deciding not to buy a Lamborghini, and instead getting a fully loaded Mercedes, when really their budget dictates that they need to stick with their perfectly serviceable Honda. But this is the type of math Washington uses to mask the incriminating truth about their unrepentant plundering of the American people.

The truth is that frightening rhetoric about default and full faith and credit of the United States is being carelessly thrown around to ram through a bigger budget than ever, in spite of stagnant revenues. If your family’s income did not change year over year, would it be wise financial management to accelerate spending so you would feel richer? That is what our government is doing, with one side merely suggesting a different list of purchases than the other.

In reality, bringing our fiscal house into order is not that complicated or excruciatingly painful at all. If we simply kept spending at current levels, by their definition of “cuts” that would save nearly $400 billion in the next few years, versus the $25 billion the Budget Control Act claims to “cut”. It would only take us 5 years to “cut” $1 trillion, in Washington math, just by holding the line on spending. That is hardly austere or catastrophic.

A balanced budget is similarly simple and within reach if Washington had just a tiny amount of fiscal common sense. Our revenues currently stand at approximately $2.2 trillion a year and are likely to remain stagnant as the recession continues. Our outlays are $3.7 trillion and projected to grow every year. Yet we only have to go back to 2004 for federal outlays of $2.2 trillion, and the government was far from small that year. If we simply returned to that year’s spending levels, which would hardly be austere, we would have a balanced budget right now. If we held the line on spending, and the economy actually did grow as estimated, the budget would balance on its own by 2015 with no cuts whatsoever.

We pay 35 percent more for our military today than we did 10 years ago, for the exact same capabilities. The same could be said for the rest of the government. Why has our budget doubled in 10 years? This country doesn’t have double the population, or double the land area, or double anything that would require the federal government to grow by such an obscene amount.

In Washington terms, a simple freeze in spending would be a much bigger “cut” than any plan being discussed. If politicians simply cannot bear to implement actual cuts to actual spending, just freezing the budget would give the economy the best chance to catch its breath, recover and grow.

Ron Paul: It’s All a Fraud – Boehner’s “Cuts” Are Fictitious

by RonPaul.com on July 29, 2011

Larry Kudlow: Let’s go over to the House, which about 45 minutes ago passed Speaker Boehner’s debt plan. We’re now joined by Texas Republican Congressman and presidential hopeful, Ron Paul. As always, Mr. Paul, welcome back to the program. I read a piece in the Daily Caller today, you want to say no to businesses as usual, status quo and power and compromise to raise the debt ceiling. You are opposed to any debt ceiling increases. With all respect, isn’t that irresponsible? How can we operate without more borrowing?

Ron Paul: Of course, that’s why I want to stop the borrowing. I think it’s irresponsible to keep borrowing. If you have a debt problem, how do you solve the debt problem by raising the debt? See, that doesn’t make any sense to me, and it’s a spending problem and the Congress and the people don’t want us to really quit spending. Anytime you would have a token little cut, they yell and scream. So this crisis is going to evolve. I think everybody’s talking about default, but there’s not going to be any default in the sense that we’re not going to send the checks out and pay the interest; that’s not going to happen. Look at the bonds today, they did quite well, interest rates are going down, nobody’s worrying about it. But the default comes when we just print the money and pass it out, and the default comes because people are going to lose their purchasing power in the dollar, and that’s where the real problems come out.

Larry Kudlow: Well, I just want to circle back, though, because you got a 100 million checks being mailed, and yes, you could cover the interest on the debt, I fully agree with you, and the government bond market is trading very nicely off of the recessionary forecast, what, 2.75%. But what about the 100 million checks, that’s the position you’d be put in; Social Security, health care, veterans pensions, military troops fighting, the FBI. If you don’t raise the debt ceiling at all, you would reek havoc on the budget, havoc on the states, havoc on the cities. I just don’t see how you can take that position, Mr. Paul.

Ron Paul: Larry, you know something about runaway inflation, severe inflation. You remember the 1970s, I think you were in Washington at that time. Remember the dollar was under attack, we went hat in hand to the IMF and got 30 billion dollars 30 billion dollars, which is equivalent to 3000 billion dollars, to bail out our dollar. So we were on the rocks then and that was a bailout again and in a way it was a default during that year when we reneged on our promises to pay with the Bretton Woods Agreement.

So yes, I think it’s much worse to do what we’re doing, continue to spend, and usher in an age when all the checks bounce. And that is going to be much worse. You have to have priorities, and if Congress doesn’t give the President priorities on how to pay the bills, the President, I believe, has the prerogative of picking and choosing and spending the money as it comes in and face up to the fact that we are bankrupt. To deny that we’re not bankrupt is a big problem and will usher in this age of just endless spending and endless debt. You cannot solve the problem of debt by accumulating more debt. You would never tell an individual that’s way over their head with credit card debt, “Oh, what you need is more debt, and you’re going to be happy”. A country can’t do it either.

Ron Paul: August 2nd Debt Default “Deadline” Is Just For Show

by RonPaul.com on July 28, 2011

Megan Hughes: Joining me now is Congressman Ron Paul, Republican from Texas, also a presidential candidate. Thank you so much for being with us here. You are a “no” vote tonight, talk to me a little bit about your vote and what’s at stake.

Ron Paul: Well, I’ve been worried about the spending and the deficit for about 30 years, believing we’d get to this crisis. I’ve never voted for an appropriation bill because of that, other than some minor ones, believing that if we keep spending, the debt’s going to be too big and we’re going that to have a crisis. So we’re there. So the last thing in the world I would ever consider, is raising the debt limit so they can keep spending more money. Because the expenditures are what the problems are, and the debt is secondary to that. But when governments spend the money, the people don’t have the money.

So what we should be doing is not be talking about whether we’re going to get a temporary reprieve and raise the debt limit and continue to do what we’ve being doing. We got to ask, what should our government be doing. Should our government be the policeman of the world, should the government be running an entitlement system which they can’t afford, or should we obey the Constitution and just live up to our promises? So I want people to start talking about that, rather than the technical arrangement of adjusting for paying our bills which is not the main issue, because the bills are going to get paid for. The big thing is, we’re going to pay with bad money.

Megan Hughes: We did hear a lot of concern from the business community, we had a letter sent to the members of Congress and the President today from CEOs of all the major banks, we had another letter sent specifically to the House of Representatives, supporting Speaker John Boehner’s bill from the Chamber of Commerce, from a number of industry groups. Are they wrong to be worried about August 2nd?

Ron Paul: No, they should be worried, but they’re afraid we might cut spending, and they’re all on the dole, so often so many of them getting contracts from the government. We should be cutting back on that. They could be calling from the military-industrial complex. What if we changed our foreign policy and we didn’t just spend on weapons, what if we took care of sick people instead? You know, they would feel like they might be losing out, so they do have an interest in perpetuating the status quo, but we need to change the status quo because this deficit financing, big government spending cannot be maintained.

Megan Hughes: And getting back to this vote tonight, and sort of the divide that we’re seeing within the Republican Party, do you think that it’s going to pass, do you think that ultimately House Speaker John Boehner is going to win enough Republicans over to get this thing through?

Ron Paul: I think there’s no doubt that they will raise the debt limit and we will go back to spending again. Whether it’s going to be a vote tonight, if he calls a vote tonight – we’re not absolutely sure yet – if he calls a vote tonight, he’ll pass it. He won’t call that up and it goes down, that doesn’t happen. So he’s working on a few more votes to make sure it does pass. But whether it’s tonight or tomorrow or the next day, before August 2nd, because they have a lot of trips to make. I mean, August 2nd is more related to the month of August being off because there’s nothing magic about August 2nd. It is a bunch of fear mongering going on that the checks won’t come to the Social Security beneficiaries. But what they ought to worry about is all of us getting checks in money that has less value; that is the default this country ought to be worried about.

Megan Hughes: Treasury Security Tim Geithner has issued a lot of calls of concern about that August 2nd deadline, but you’re not buying it?

Ron Paul: No, I think it’s artificial. He’s already 200 billion dollars over the limits right now, and he’ll get the increase. But they have to put pressure on people, they would like the technicality of the laws changed. But just think of what they did for bailing out foreign governments. They came up with 5 trillion dollars from the Federal Reserve to bail out other countries and other banks, so they’re not going to let anybody fail. We’re not going to fail to pay our interest and take care of the bond market, but we’re going to fail to protect the value of our currency.

Megan Hughes: And there has certainly been a lot of talk though about this August 2nd deadline. Do you see there being some kind of compromise bill, even if this vote doesn’t happen tonight, even if House Speaker John Boehner’s bill does not pass? What do you see happening in the next week?

Ron Paul: Oh, it might be short one, but they’ll do something, I mean, something will happen before August 2nd. They built up too much anticipation for this. So whether it’s Obama who would have to compromise and say well, he wants to go through the election and people can see through that pretty easily. But he might have to say, “Well, get me something for 5 months” or something like that and settle some of these arguments some other day.

Megan Hughes: Do you think that Republicans have already taken a lot off the table, especially in terms of the tax overhaul that the White House was originally pushing for?

Ron Paul: Oh, I think so, but they haven’t touched the issue, because nobody is talking about any spending cuts. This is not real spending cuts, they’re just talking about the CBO increases. All these cuts are fictitious, so if they’re going to give up some spending cuts, they’re not giving up anything.

Megan Hughes: Now, House Speaker John Boehner has 915 billion dollars, I know it is discretionary spending, why do you say that’s not real?

Ron Paul: Because they’re cuts from proposed increases according to CBO. There are no cuts in the next 10 years, it’s all cuts in the proposal. If they were serious, what they should do if they said this is a serious matter, just freeze the budget from last year and you’d cut about a trillion dollars out.

Megan Hughes: Congressman Ron Paul, thank you so much for being here. One of the dissenters tonight. House Speaker John Boehner needs 216 Republicans to get his plan passed, and again, we’re still waiting on that vote.

Good Luck to all!