Ron Paul: America Must Do This to Avoid an Economic Collapse
Ron Paul Issues Dire Warning
Former member of the U.S. House of Representatives and three-time presidential candidate Ron Paul warned that government spending must be reduced if America is going to avoid a major economic collapse.
“Budgets that merely tinker around the edges of the welfare-warfare state, or only reduce the rate of spending increases, merely postpone the day of reckoning,” Paul wrote in his weekly column posted on the Ron Paul Institute web site on Sunday.
“Only a budget that brings the troops home, shuts down unconstitutional agencies, ends all corporate welfare, and begins unwinding our welfare and entitlement programs will ensure future generations enjoy liberty, peace, and prosperity,” writes Paul. (Source: “Beltway Conservative Budget Plans Are Big Spending and Anti-Liberty,” Ron Paul Institute For Peace and Prosperity, March 20, 2016.)
Paul said that many conservatives oppose the budget, arguing it calls for too much spending, and some GOP lawmakers who supported the bill in committee have said they did so as a favor to leadership but would oppose it on the floor.
The House Budget Committee approved a fiscal 2017 budget resolution by a 20:16 vote last Wednesday. The budget provides $1.07 trillion in discretionary spending for fiscal 2017 and proposes deep cuts to non-defense discretionary and entitlement programs in the years ahead. (Source: “House Budget Committee approves budget,” Politico, March 16, 2016.)
Paul said this year’s House Republican budget is higher than the GOP’s 2013 budget although anti-government spending sentiment “is a major reason Republicans control the House and Senate.”
Paul noted that some Conservatives, The Heritage Foundation and the Conservative House Republican Study Committee (RSC), have both prepared alternatives to the official Republican budgets.
“Unfortunately, neither Heritage nor the RSC budgets meaningfully reduce federal spending,” he wrote.
Paul, author of End the Fed (2009), cited the “love affair” between Conservatives and the military-industrial complex as the reason behind the imbalanced budget plan. He believes that Conservative support for ever-increasing spending on militarism undercuts their efforts to end corporate welfare.
“Much of the so-called defense budget is wasted on boondoggles like the F-35 fighter that only defend the lifestyles of defense contractors and their lobbyists,” Paul said.
However, Paul pointed to some other “positive” elements included in these budgets. “For example, the RSC budget calls for an audit of the Federal Reserve,” he said. “Both budgets repeal ObamaCare and provide the American people with much needed tax relief.”
Paul has long been warning of a calamitous U.S. economic collapse that could bring civil unrest and a stock market collapse. He expects the coming crash will be worse than the 2008 financial crisis.
