|
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?
By Ron Paul
The US Senate worked through the weekend on the “Big Beautiful Bill.” The goal was to pass it quickly to ensure the House will then pass it and send it to President Trump’s desk before the July 4th holiday. However, disagreements among Republican Senators over reductions in spending on programs including Medicaid and food stamps as well as language in the bill eliminating “clean energy” tax credits were preventing Senate Republican leadership from getting enough votes to pass the bill. Also, some Republicans disagree with other Republicans in both the House and Senate on increasing the state and local tax (SALT) deduction. Many conservatives see this income tax deduction as encouraging states to maintain high taxes to fund big governments. One item in the BBB that few Republicans are objecting to is the bill’s increase in military spending. The House version of the BBB added 150 billion dollars to the Pentagon’s already bloated budget. The Senate bill gave the military-industrial complex 156 billion dollars. Increasing military spending contradicts President Trump’s promise to stop wasting money on endless wars that have nothing to do with ensuring the security of the American people. Some of the BBB’s military spending will be used to put troops on the border. I support strengthening border security. However, I do not support using the military for domestic law enforcement, which includes enforcing immigration laws. Soldiers are trained to view people as potential enemies, not as innocent civilians to be protected. Introducing this mindset into domestic law enforcement will lead to abuses of liberty. Increasing spending on militarism while cutting spending on programs that help low-income Americans is bad politics and bad policy. Polls show that the majority of Americans, including many Republicans, do not support overseas intervention. The growing opposition to our hyper-interventionist foreign policy is easy to understand. The US has engaged in numerous military actions in many countries including Iraq, Afghanistan, and Syria since the beginning of the 21st century. The American people pay for this militarism in several ways. One is the “inflation tax” imposed by the Federal Reserve in order to monetize the debt incurred by the US government for endless wars. President Trump has turned his back on his antiwar supporters by bombing Iran and by increasing military spending to over a trillion dollars. The Republican insistence on increasing military spending is the main reason Congress cannot cut taxes without increasing the debt, making cuts in domestic welfare programs, or both. If the Republicans want to be the Make America Great Again party, they need to embrace a true America First foreign policy. This means no more regime change wars or US taxpayer supported “color revolutions.” Instead, America should return to the Founders’ vision of a country that, in the words of John Quincy Adams, does not go “abroad in search of monsters to destroy” and instead is “the well-wisher to the freedom and independence of all” while “the champion and vindicator only of her own.” A return to a noninterventionist foreign policy is the only way we will be able to begin to pay down the national debt and restore a government that adheres to the constitutional limits on its powers and respects all the people’s rights all the time.
On today's Liberty Report, we explore the collapse of financial stability and the future of the American Dream, with economist Christopher Whalen.
Amazon Link for Inflated: https://a.co/d/evUvSxf 
With wars still blazing in Ukraine and a war perhaps on hold for now in the Israel/Iran war, it was easy to overlook the "Daddy's Home" NATO summit this week. The European obsequiousness toward President Trump was embarrassing, but the biggest news was a "pledge" to increase NATO member state defense spending to five percent of GDP.
According to press reports, President Trump's special envoy Steve Witkoff is back in touch with Iran after the ceasefire with Israel. Will a deal still be possible? Is Iran still interested?
By Ron Paul
Just a few weeks ago in this space I urged President Trump to accept a deal with Iran allowing it to continue pursuing civilian nuclear power while ensuring that it would not pursue nuclear weapons. Iran signaled it was ready to sign such a deal, yet suddenly Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff changed the US position to demand no civilian nuclear enrichment at all. The US Administration understood that Iran could not accept such a demand – that it had that right as a signatory of the Non-Proliferation Treaty – but Witkoff shifted the position anyway. Just days before the sixth round of negotiations were to take place, Israel blew up the whole process by launching a surprise attack on Iran and here we are just over a week later staring right into the face of World War III. Had the “bait and switch” and subsequent Israeli attack not taken place, we likely would be seeing rapidly improving trade relations with Iran and throughout the region that would have enriched all parties. Peace and prosperity. It would have been a “win-win” for everyone. But the neocons and their leader, Benjamin Netanyahu, couldn’t stand the prospect of peace breaking out in the region so they dusted off their old lies about “weapons of mass destruction” from the lead up to the Iraq war and soon enough the talks were sunk beneath a barrage of Israeli – and as of this past weekend American – bombs and missiles. President Trump’s decision to spend untold billions of dollars on what appears to be not much more than a “symbolic” bombing of Iran’s already-vacated nuclear facilities was no doubt made with the intention of making himself look tough. Unfortunately for him, it has had the opposite effect. He has shown the world that he was no more able to resist the demands of the neocons and warmongers than his predecessors, and in abandoning his promises to be the president that ends wars instead of starting new ones he has also abandoned the most enthusiastic part of his base. What President Trump does not seem to understand is that true strength is not measured in how many missiles you can send to the “Hitler of the month” as designated by the warmongers. True strength comes from standing up for your stated principles in the face of the enormous pressure that will inevitably be placed on you. Real strength is strength of character. It often comes from the ability to say “no” when everyone around you demands that you give up a little bit of your principles for promises of riches or glory. As of this writing, we are standing on the precipice of a major war in the Middle East that threatens to bring in much larger actors such as Russia and China. The neocons, filled with unwarranted vainglory, welcome such a clash because they won’t be doing the fighting and dying. They will be the ones reaping the financial and other rewards. As usual. Unfortunately, President Trump has severely damaged his credibility by embroiling us in a war that is not our war. He would do well to immediately change course, search for off-ramps, make peace with Iran, and once and for all banish all neocons and warmongers from anywhere near his Administration. Otherwise “MAGA” will go down in history as nothing but a cruel joke.
Seemingly before either side agreed, President Trump announced a ceasefire between Iran and Israel. In several social media posts it appears the President is convinced the ceasefire will hold and that the two countries will never shoot at each other again. Is he correct?
Just months into his second term, "Peace President" Donald Trump has launched missiles into an Iran that has neither attacked nor threatened to attack the United States. And he has done so with virtually no input from the US Congress. What comes next? Former US diplomat and senior US Senate foreign policy analyst Jim Jatras joins today's Liberty Report.
In this episode, we’re joined by financial expert Phillip Patrick from Birch Gold to break down the growing tensions with Iran, rising recession fears, and what tariffs and global instability could mean for the future of the U.S. dollar.
Amid extreme pressure from Israel for US President Donald Trump to enter its war with Iran, President Trump claims he has not decided. Will he pull the United States into what could be the most disastrous intervention of all time?
Get tickets to the Ron Paul Institute's August 16th DC Conference! More info here: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/blueprint-for-peace-tickets-1397170888739 
|
Archives
July 2025
 
 
 
 
|
RSS Feed