Ron Paul article. Can we please get this guy to run for president? The first quote is classic material.
He is acutely aware, however, of some of the tension between libertarianism and his social conservatism. He approaches it thus: “I believe in the federalist system, which means when you have difficult problems to sort out, they should do that at the local level. The one thing that is hard for a lot of conservatives to accept is that if you legalize freedom … you also legalize the right of people to do dumb things and to offend people. And as long as those dumb things only hurt oneself, the constitutionalist doesn’t object.”
While he’s voted for all of President Bush’s tax cuts, he says the bills “weren’t necessarily bad, but they weren’t good either, because they weren’t soon enough and they weren’t enough” dollar-wise. (Already this year he’s introduced 15 bills that would amend the Internal Revenue Act of 1986, along with a constitutional amendment to scrap the income tax.)
Yet Paul, a member of the House Financial Services Committee, still questions some of the supply-side assumptions underlying the tax cuts. Supply siders say, “just lower tax rates and that will generate enough revenue to continue financing government,” he says. “I don’t accept that philosophy. You can’t predict what individuals do with their money. There’s no computer that can predict if I give you $500 back on your taxes if you’re going to spend it or save it or squander it or send it overseas or put it under your pillow. That’s why the projections are inevitably wrong.”
He also remains stridently anti-deficit. How to square that with tax cuts? “Cut spending. That’s the only way you can add it up. I consider all spending a tax, no matter whether you tax the people to pay for it, borrow the money or print the money.”
He is acutely aware, however, of some of the tension between libertarianism and his social conservatism. He approaches it thus: “I believe in the federalist system, which means when you have difficult problems to sort out, they should do that at the local level. The one thing that is hard for a lot of conservatives to accept is that if you legalize freedom … you also legalize the right of people to do dumb things and to offend people. And as long as those dumb things only hurt oneself, the constitutionalist doesn’t object.”
While he’s voted for all of President Bush’s tax cuts, he says the bills “weren’t necessarily bad, but they weren’t good either, because they weren’t soon enough and they weren’t enough” dollar-wise. (Already this year he’s introduced 15 bills that would amend the Internal Revenue Act of 1986, along with a constitutional amendment to scrap the income tax.)
Yet Paul, a member of the House Financial Services Committee, still questions some of the supply-side assumptions underlying the tax cuts. Supply siders say, “just lower tax rates and that will generate enough revenue to continue financing government,” he says. “I don’t accept that philosophy. You can’t predict what individuals do with their money. There’s no computer that can predict if I give you $500 back on your taxes if you’re going to spend it or save it or squander it or send it overseas or put it under your pillow. That’s why the projections are inevitably wrong.”
He also remains stridently anti-deficit. How to square that with tax cuts? “Cut spending. That’s the only way you can add it up. I consider all spending a tax, no matter whether you tax the people to pay for it, borrow the money or print the money.”
posted by Champion at 11:35 PM
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