Infowars.com

April 8, 2010

Transcript provided by Ethiopian Review.

Alex Jones: Ladies and gentlemen, we are live. It is Monday, the 5th day of April, 2010. Until the bottom of the hour, we have Congressman Ron Paul with us. And we appreciate him coming on. Congressman, good to have you here.

Ron Paul: Good to be with you.

Alex Jones: There is so much going on. I’ve got a lot of important questions I want to ask you. But out of the gates, what is most important on your plate that you want to warn the American people about today?

Ron Paul: Oh, there are too many things. And I don’t know which one is the worst. You know, the finances are so bad, and they’re getting much worse because of the way they’re spending money, running up the debt. I think the financial crisis is getting so much worse. Interest rates are going up. I think that’s a major, major problem we face. But Ben Bernanke believes that he’s achieved great things by printing the money, […], taking care of his friends. And the people who lost their jobs don’t have a voice. So he thinks he’s had a great victory. But the second thing is what’s going on over in the Middle East; that’s getting much worse. The Iraqi situation is worse, now they won’t remove any troops at all. And of course, we’re going to be up to a 100,000 troops in Afghanistan, and Karzai is now feeling very bold and critical of the United States. When that happens, you know, I just wonder how we’ll handle that, because at times when our good friends start to act on their own, we usually get rid of them or desert them or let them go on their own. So I think that thing is a whole mess and it’s really going to blow up in our face.

Alex Jones: Well, let’s get into the economy then first. I’ve seen the different job charts, showing that this is the worst recession since the late 1940s. And, meanwhile, I have a Business Week article from 2 weeks ago, where the federal regulators are pressuring public and private pension funds to be invested “in failed banks”. We have Geithner in the news with China talking about not buying as many dollars. We have open discussion by Moody’s and other top rating services of the U.S. losing their AAA rating. The economic situation appears to be spiraling downwards.

Ron Paul: Well, I don’t think there’s any doubt about that. But there are a lot of people with their head in the sand. And I don’t know whether they’re lying to themselves when they say, “Oh, I really believe that things have turned around.” They look at the other side of the story and they see more jobs are being found, and unemployment is staying under 10%, GDP is going up. And they either try to fool the people, or they’re fooling themselves. But ultimately, though, the market will dictate and everybody will catch on. But I think where the disconnect is the government is putting a positive spin on it, but the people that you talk to and the people who take part in the Tea Party Movement know better. That’s why they’re […]; they’re not buying into this. This is a completely different year than we’ve had in, I guess, many, many years.

Alex Jones: Well, the AP reported last week that half of these so called ‘new jobs’ are government jobs and census jobs. And we know that the unemployment number is really above 20%. So even with cooked numbers, they’re claiming that we’ve gotten a small amount of job increases.

Ron Paul: Yeah, and in this last report there were a lot of part-time jobs. They weren’t real jobs. There were part time jobs, government jobs. I don’t think there’s much good news in that report at all.

Alex Jones: Congressman Ron Paul, let’s talk about the healthcare bill; how it was passed, what it really does, the best ways you think the states can counter this. I think we shouldn’t just have lawsuits and trust the federal courts, state level nullification. Specifically on the healthcare bill, you talked about Obama being emboldened, and now he wants this carbon tax. He’s going to try to pass that in the Senate, declaring CO2 a toxic waste. Let’s talk about healthcare legislation, because we’ve seen Obama say, “Look, it’s been a few weeks since this passed, the birds are singing, the sun is shining”, but he knows that this thing doesn’t get phased in until next year and the three years after that. So that’s a very deceptive game he’s playing of perception.

Ron Paul: You know what he’ll probably do is by that time, whoever is in charge or whoever will be there, will say, “Oh, maybe we didn’t do quite enough. Maybe what we really needed to have was that single-payer system”. So failure to them is just another opportunity. And if in the next year and next six months the people only hear good news and they don’t see what it’s going to really cost, you know, he may get away with it for a year without it coming down hard on him. But ultimately, though, it’s an illusion to think that they can do what they claim and not cost anymoney and improve healthcare. That’s a hard sell.

Alex Jones: Well, you’re a medical doctor yourself, not just a congressman. And, of course, you’re also someone who’s researched how the economy really works. Specifically, for people that have questions about the healthcare legislation that is now law, a) what is in it that concerns you most, b) What do you think the most effective constitutional strategy is to defeat this?

Ron Paul: Well, if the people were awake enough and there were enough of us, the process would be to just change the Congress, change the president, and repeal all that stuff. That’s the smoothest way to do it. The part that bothers me the most, of course, is the process that you talked about. I mean, how they pulled it off and, you know, we passed the rule, and the rule passed the Senate version, and then they go to reconciliation. That was horrible. But I think philosophically the worst part was that they moved away any opening for a private option. You know, they talk about public option, but what about the private option? Why don’t individuals have the right to get out?

Fortunately, some people opt out of the public school system and they have private schooling and homeschooling. Why don’t we have that in medicine? And that’s the HSA approach. But they minimize those; it’s much more difficult and if you opt out and say, “I don’t want it, I’ll take care of myself, I’ll handle everything. I don’t want to be a ward of the state”, you’ll have to pay a fine. You know, pay your $9000 and that, to me, was a big, big move in the wrong direction. And instead of thinking the day after we got this passed, “Oh, let’s repeal the whole thing.” Well, that would be great if you could, but maybe if we could narrow it down. And I want to introduce legislation to just narrow it down to legalize a private option to get out and take care of yourself. And that might be less confusing than going through 2,000 pages and explaining what is good, what is bad, what we’re going to keep, can you really get rid of everything; you know, that whole thing. So I would like to see debate where we just have a change over in Congress and we wouldn’t have to fight these things over and over. I mean, they pass this stuff and the people now are becoming more informed and they get upset. So there is lot of frustration out there turning into anger.

Alex Jones: What do you see as the best strategy to defeat this, though, at the state level? I mean, can’t the states nullify this because it does force the states to pay for a large part of the federal mandate? So we have attorney generals now suing, but I don’t think that’s enough.

Ron Paul: Well, I’m all for that if people want to do it. But they’re behind the 8-ball there. It’s not going to be accomplished. It’s sort of like they take our highway funds and then they come and say, “Well, you get your highway funds from the federal government, so we’re going to set your speed limit. Everybody has to drive at 55 miles per hour”. That’s what they did for so many years. And the states say, “Oh, we’re not going to do that? We’re going to fight that. We don’t want that sort of law.” Thefederal government says, “Alright, we’ll just keep their highways fund”.

And that’s what they’ll do on Medicare. What are you going to do? Repeal every state participation in Medicaid? And then it’ll make the problem worse. There are unfunded mandates, and they’re going to have more unfunded mandates if they just try to ignore the law. I think the states want to do it, and I think it’s good that they’re talking about it and they passed these resolutions. That represents some good PR on how upset the people are. But I don’t think that is the solution. The ultimate solution for all this is people having a better understanding and a better trust in the way the market works and the way freedom works. You don’t need the government nanny state taking care of us from cradle to grave. If that isn’t repealed – that attitude – tinkering around the edges of legislation won’t do the trick.

Alex Jones: Congressman, you’ve talked about the fact that what’s really going to end this is the country collapsing financially. Can you speak to that? And then also as a medical doctor, my dad’s a physician, and everyone knows that federal money comes in for abortion. And then these hospitals and clinics just use money that they would have used for something else for the abortion, and use the other federal money to pay for the other programs. So it’s a shell game.

Ron Paul: Yeah, and that whole thing and the process was very annoying when they couldn’t agree on the abortion language. So Obama – it was easy for him: “Alright, they don’t have a law. I’ll write a law; I’ll write my own law. I’ll set up an executive order, and I will state the Hyde Amendment.”

A d v e r t i s e m e n t

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They argued back and forth, so the conservatives said, “Oh well, that won’t count. The executive order isn’t the law of the land.” I don’t think that was the right argument, because it is the law of the land. The reason it isn’t effective […] is that I don’t think the Hyde Amendment ever did that much. If you strike all those funds to all these pregnancy centers that are doing abortions, they say, “Well, the Hyde Amendment says you can’t use any funds for abortion.” But you can use them for birth control pills.” So they just shift money, it’s fungible, and when the money gets shifted over, they go ahead and do the abortion.

So that was all a con game. But it emphasized the process on how that whole thing was being bad. But this bill, in addition to what I said earlier, has put a lot more obstacles between the doctor and the patient. In recent years we’ve had insurance companies and HMO companies and drug companies. But now we’re going to have a lot of bureaucrats making the decisions about how to practice healthcare.

And that, of course, will cost a lot more money. But the money is going to go to paying bureaucrats and paying extra people to push papers around. So this is going to be costly and the care is going to go down and just a lot more people…

Alex Jones: And they admit that with this comparative care, now the bureaucrats will decide. And they’re actually in the news today, saying, “Look, you won’t get knee surgery, you’ll get a cortisone or steroid shot. And, oh well, you’ll get Prozac. We’ll just basically drug you.” So they cut Medicare and Medicaid, they raise taxes, and then they restrict benefits. This is exactly what Europe has done. And Dennis Kucinich, before he flip flopped, and others, said this was nothing but a boondoggle for the insurance companies. And I looked at the lobbying numbers, 90+% of the big healthcare HMO insurance companies, drug companies… 90+% of the lobbying money went for this bill.

So isn’t that a red herring when they say, “Oh, the right wingers just don’t want poor people to get care.” I mean, really all this is is government coming in, teamed up with corporations, to basically lower the standard of care, but make more money?

Ron Paul: I think that’s absolutely right. We don’t have the classical socialized medicine. We’re not on the verge of having that. I don’t even think Obama was pushing it. He was pushing for corporate medicine. He doesn’t have to destroy the insurance companies. They might have complained a bit to get their best deal. But they’re pretty happy right now. They have a lot more customers, the bills will be paid, and they’ll all do quite fine.

But we have the corporations get involved. And we talk a lot about the military-industrial complex, but there’s a medical-industrial complex, too. All the big corporations and government, and they do spend a lot of money on lobbying. There are some big bucks made. And somehow our country has been conditioned to believe that medicine [is their right]. Everybody has a right to medical care. So, therefore, the government has to give you this right to take care of it. And we’re not even close to changing that attitude.

Matter of fact, when I said that on TV, it sort of shocks people. They say, “What? You’re saying I don’t have a right to medical care?” Of course not. You have a right to your life, you have a right to your liberty, you have a right to your fruits of your labor so you can take care of your medical care.

Alex Jones: Well, congressman, you’ve been a medical doctor for 40 years. I mean, you know better than anybody that government involvement in healthcare in the last 40 years is what’s added all these layers of costs, and allowed big corporate medical care to institutionalize things and get into people’s bank accounts. And so now it’s only going to get worse.

Ron Paul: That’s right. And the companies will make a lot of money on it, and the patients, ultimately, will become very unhappy. And, of course, the doctors are more unhappy than ever before. And who knows what will happen there. Of course, there is the risk that a lot of doctors would quit; I’m not sure that’s going to happen, because they don’t have a whole lot of options. They’ve trained for a long time to practice medicine. They’re going to have to find something else to do. So they’ll probably moan and groan and put up with one more layer of government.

Alex Jones: Congressman, shifting gears into some other subjects. I don’t know if you’ve seen this video yet, but Representative Hank Johnson said he didn’t want us to be able to move more troops to Guam, because he was afraid that the floating island would capsize; and he was serious. Representative Phil Hare of Illinois was on video last Friday saying, “He doesn’t worry about the Constitution, because healthcare is a right.” And as you’ve said many times, it’s not just some evil force in Washington; we know the globalists play into that. We’ve also got a lot of other congressmen and government people that really are unfortunately as dumb as a box of rocks. Can you comment to people thinking that islands float, and that the constitution isn’t important?

Ron Paul: Well, I didn’t hear it. But you say that he sounded like he was serious?

Alex Jones: Yes.

Ron Paul: That’s pretty bizarre. But I think even not too long ago our Republican president said something rather careless about his conviction that we’re supposed to follow the Constitution. I mean, I guess it shocks us when they actually say it. We know either they are totally ignorant and they don’t understand the Constitution, or they don’t have any respect and they don’t care about following it. But for them to say, “Oh, we don’t have to do that, we don’t want to do that, we don’t need to do that” I think it is still shocking that somebody could actually say that.

Alex Jones: It is. We’ve only got about 3 or 4 minutes left with Congressman Ron Paul today. I wanted to bring up your son in Kentucky, Rand Paul. In many polls he’s ten points ahead of the Democrat and Republican challengers, showing that this anti-incumbency and this hunger for a constitutionalist type candidate runs across party lines.

And the Republican Party has, in Politico and other publications, said they are gunning for your son, who is a true conservative and a libertarian. And, of course, as you know, two weeks ago, the State Election Commission there ruled that Trey Grayson can run the election commission, and can oversee his own election. No other state that I’ve seen has ever allowed this type of conflict of interest. Can you speak to that as a new level of corruption, and any concern that you have for the election coming up in Kentucky?

Ron Paul: Well, I’m very concerned about it. I’m shocked that they allowed that to happen. But you think politically they ran campaigns to get some mileage out of that and get the people on their side. But that might not change the outcome of the election. In a closed election it doesn’t take a whole lot of work and effort to change things. So I’ve urged him to make sure they have the poll watchers and definitely Rand will do everything conceivable of to try to protect himself.

We probably all have these perfect elections in the United States. You know, we go across overseas, start wars to teach them how to run good, honest elections. So I guess we better have faith in our system.

Alex Jones: Well, I mean there is no doubt that he is the chief election official running the election. And the Kentucky Executive Branch Ethics Commission said that was fine. I mean, this is a felony and in most states people have to recuse themselves. I mean, on its face he’s got all these employees that know that they’re going to end up being in a senatorial office. So even if he doesn’t want to cheat, there is no doubt you’re going to end up having county officials and others that have been promised jobs, that are going to steal votes if it looks like their candidate is going to lose. And your son is 10 points ahead, and so if he doesn’t win, ladies and gentleman, something is rotten in the state of Denmark.

Ron Paul: Absolutely. You think if they were honest about what was going on, they wouldn’t even want to be close to it. Because if they figured they’re going to win and they pulled it off and they won legitimately, nobody would believe them anyway. You would think that the Grayson people would be the ones that would want to be away from it.

Alex Jones: Amazing. Folks can find out more at www.CampaigForLiberty.com. Congressman Ron Paul is our guest. For the last 45 seconds, the Democrats are really starting to talk about censoring the internet, censoring talk radio. They violate the Constitution and all these other fronts; why not there? Are you concerned about restrictions on free speech cyber security?

Ron Paul: Oh yeah. I think the other day when we had our cyber security [review], I don’t know if the was anybody else… but anything touching the internet or communications, I will not vote for. And they’re always wanting to do that. Though I think some of the talks I’ve heard about this: that we need more government management of the media to get a better balance. Pretty scary stuff.

Alex Jones: Congressman, we’re going to break. I know you’ve got to go, but I need to tell you something during this break, so please hold for one moment.

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