You are here

Paul dismisses speaker's debt cut demand

Section: Daily Dispatches

By Julie Hirschfield Davis
Bloomberg News
Friday, June 3, 2011

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-06-03/ron-paul-dismisses-boehner-s-do...

WASHINGTON -- Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul dismissed House Speaker John Boehner's call for spending cuts to match any increase in the federal debt ceiling, saying a fiscal catastrophe is coming whether or not the country exhausts its borrowing power.

"I don't take it seriously," the Texas congressman said of Boehner's demand. Paul predicted Congress would "go up to the last minute" before the Aug. 2 deadline and then raise the nation's $14.3 trillion legal debt limit, yet fail to solve the problems underlying the nation's soaring deficits.

"The catastrophe comes regardless, because as long as they encourage more spending, then we go over a cliff," Paul, who said he will vote against raising the limit, said in an interview for "Political Capital with Al Hunt," airing this weekend. "So I want to stop us," Paul said.

... Dispatch continues below ...



ADVERTISEMENT

Sona Drills 85.4g Gold/Ton Over 4 Metres at Elizabeth Gold Deposit,
Extending the Mineralization of the Southwest Vein on the Property

Company Press Release, October 27, 2010

VANCOUVER, British Columbia -- Sona Resources Corp. reports on five drillling holes in the third round of assay results from the recently completed drill program at its 100 percent-owned Elizabeth Gold Deposit Property in the Lillooet Mining District of southern British Columbia. Highlights from the diamond drilling include:

-- Hole E10-66 intersected 17.4g gold/ton over 1.54 metres.

-- Hole E10-67 intersected 96.4g gold/ton over 2.5 metres, including one assay interval of 383g of gold/ton over 0.5 metres.

-- Hole E10-69 intersected 85.4g gold/ton over 4.03 metres, including one assay interval of 230g gold/ton over 1 metre.

Four drill holes, E10-66 to E10-69, targeted the southwestern end of the Southwest Vein, and three of the holes have expanded the mineralized zone in that direction. The Southwest Vein gold mineralization has now been intersected over a strike length of 325 metres, with the deepest hole drilled less than 200 metres from surface.

"The assay results from the Southwest Zone quartz vein continue to be extremely positive," says John P. Thompson, Sona's president and CEO. "We are expanding the Southwest Vein, and this high-grade gold mineralization remains wide open down dip and along strike to the southwest."

For the company's full press release, please visit:

http://sonaresources.com/_resources/news/SONA_NR19_2010.pdf



He dismissed discussion of a possible cap on future spending, saying it would be "too little, too late."

"Do you think the American people are going to believe that we're going to cut in the future?" added Paul, 75. He said any reductions promised beyond this year's budget amount to "pie-in-the-sky talking."

On presidential politics, Paul said that while other Republican candidates seeking to take on President Barack Obama in 2012 are echoing his themes on spending and debt, he is the only one who has a record that matches the rhetoric.

"I think there will be a credibility gap" for the other contenders, Paul said, responding to a question about potential primary opponents including former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney.

Voters "know that I'm leveling with them, and I've done it all along, and I've expressed these concerns for 20, 30 years," he said.

Paul, an advocate of abolishing the Federal Reserve, said while he doesn't expect other candidates to rally around the idea, they "won't laugh as much as they did last time" he ran for the Republican presidential nomination.

"Just think of the difference on the attitude of the people now about the Federal Reserve," Paul said, noting that Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke took the unprecedented step April 27 of holding a news conference to defend his policies. "It's a failed system, and people are starting to realize this."

A self-described libertarian whose anti-establishment views align with Tea Party activists' disdain for government, Paul developed a national following during his failed 2008 bid for his party’s presidential nomination.

Paul said he favors withdrawing all U.S. troops from Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Libya -- countries where he never supported sending them. He said other Republican presidential candidates are "making a big mistake" by backing a continued U.S. military presence there.

"The people now know that we can't pay it," Paul said, "and a lot of conservatives are coming in our direction because we can't pay it."

"I'd bring them all home, sure, because we have no reason to be there," he said.

Paul said Rep. Michele Bachmann of Minnesota and former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin, two possible rivals for the Republican nomination who also style themselves as populist conservatives, are "closer to the people" than other candidates and are starting to move in his direction on foreign policy and civil liberties issues.

Still, asked whether he understood Palin's economic agenda, Paul said, "No," adding, "I haven't studied them."

* * *

Join GATA here:

World Resource Investment Conference
Sunday-Monday, June 5-6, 2011
Vancouver Convention Centre East
Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada

http://cambridgehouse.com/conference-details/world-resource-investment-c...

Gold Rush 2011
GATA's London Conference
Thursday-Saturday, August 4-6, 2011
Savoy Hotel, London, England

http://www.gatagoldrush.com

Support GATA by purchasing gold and silver commemorative coins:

https://www.amsterdamgold.eu/gata/index.asp?BiD=12

Or by purchasing a colorful GATA T-shirt:

http://gata.org/tshirts

Or a colorful poster of GATA's full-page ad in The Wall Street Journal on January 31, 2009:

http://gata.org/node/wallstreetjournal

Or a video disc of GATA's 2005 Gold Rush 21 conference in the Yukon:

http://www.goldrush21.com/

Help keep GATA going

GATA is a civil rights and educational organization based in the United States and tax-exempt under the U.S. Internal Revenue Code. Its e-mail dispatches are free, and you can subscribe at:

http://www.gata.org

To contribute to GATA, please visit:

http://www.gata.org/node/16



ADVERTISEMENT

Lewis E. Lehrman on How to Solve the U.S. Debt Problem

Lewis E. Lehrman, chairman of the Lehrman Institute, sponsor of The Gold Standard Now project, advises that to reduce the $1 1/2 trillion U.S. deficit, the Republican Party must initiate an investment program.

Working Americans are not saving, which enables the banks to lead the country into a cycle of debt, leverage, boom, panic, and bust.

Lehrman says: "Eliminating the budget deficit of a trillion and a half dollars cannot be done overnight. The proposal by U.S. Rep. Paul Ryan was very dramatic -- one Republican called it radical -- but it was not happily received. The solution, of course, is to design an American program for prosperity, because you can solve these entitlement problems with a growing economy.

"We need a tremendous program of investment, and investment comes from savings. When you pay savers, middle-income professionals and working people, 0 percent at the bank, you are not going to encourage them
to save. Then we are left with a bank cycle of debt, leverage, boom, panic, and bust."

To read more and to sign up for The Gold Standard Now's free, noncommercial, weekly report, "Prosperity through Gold," please visit:

http://www.thegoldstandardnow.org/gata