Ron Paul doesn't think House Speaker John A. Boehner's proposal to match any increase in the debt ceiling with an equal amount of spending cuts will work.

The Texas conservative, and presidential hopeful, points to none other than former President Ronald Reagan as proof that dollar-for-dollar debt cutting sounds fine but doesn't pan out in practice.

"Even in the '80s, when our good friend Ronald Reagan had a tax increase, which a lot of people forget about, he said he wanted two dollars of cuts for every dollar," Paul said in an interview for "Political Capital" with Bloomberg's Al Hunt.

"Nothing happened. The deficit exploded," Paul, 75, reminisced. "So do you think the American people are going to believe that we're going to cut in the future?"

In May, Boehner demanded $2 trillion in budget cuts in exchange for raising the government's debt ceiling. Many believe the cuts would take place over the next decade.

"You can't do $2 trillion just in cuts," Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said last month in response to the speaker's demand. "There has to be a mix of spending cuts, including Defense. There has to be a more fair apportionment of tax policy in this country."

Rep. Paul is predicting financial ruin for the U.S. if Congress continues to ignore the past and keeps spending.

"The catastrophe comes regardless, because as long as they encourage more spending, then we go over a cliff," Paul said in the interview scheduled to air this weekend. "So I want to stop us."

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Photo: Republican Texas Rep. Ron Paul on April 26, 2011 at the airport Holiday Inn in Des Moines, Iowa. Credit: Steve Pope/Getty Images