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I am no fan of Ron Paul's libertarian beliefs. There are some components to his ideas that align with liberals such as civil liberties and ending unjust wars, but if young people who recently jumped on his boat realized what his economic policies are outside of attacking the Fed, anti-Iraq/Afghan war and phrases like "economic liberty" and "freedom," they would drop him like a hot potato.

Candy Crowley asks him to explain his beliefs that federal student loans should not exist to the millions of college students that depend on them.

They are so 1965.

CROWLEY: One of the things that you have proposed there have been some controversy about is to begin to phase out, as you explain it, federal student loans to folks who want to go to college, federally backed student loans, that you want to phase out over time. At some point then you would have people who really don't qualify for private loans, who couldn't walk into a bank and say my son needs to go to college and I need a loan. They simply won't qualify. Are there just some people who won't be able to go to college that want to in a Paul administration?

PAUL: No, I don't think so. Anybody who's ambitious enough will get to go to college. The problem is college costs to much. And with the good intentions of giving people houses at discount, you know, it ends up with a house bubble and the people who are supposed to be helped lose their house, same way with the education. The attempt to help people in education, all you do is you don't get better education, you end up actually pushing the price of education up. So we've delivered now hundreds of thousands of students graduating with a trillion dollars worth of debt? And no jobs? So it is a totally failed policy.

Only a generation ago we didn't have government programs and people worked their way through college. And I was able to get through medical school and college. But it wasn't so expensive. So it's the inflation, the problems with the government. As soon as the government gets involved for good intentions, there's always unintended consequences and almost inevitably it back fires.

And besides, let's say it did sort of work -- and it does work for some people. Some people get an education at the expense of others. But why should people who are laborers who never get to go to college, why should they be taxed to send some of us through college? So it not even a fair system when it works.

But obviously it doesn't work. And that's why it is coming to an end. And now they have to talk about, well, we're going to have to bail out everybody, bail out housing and now bail out the student loans. But that's not the answer. The answer is looking toward the cause and the cause is spending, debt, printing money, inflation, too much government, loss of confidence in the free market, loss of confidence in liberty is what it is. And where is the responsibility? The responsibility is on the individual and family to take care of their needs, not federal bureaucracy. It just doesn't work.

CROWLEY: But would you admit that there are people who need federal help, be it an education or be it in housing, or food stamps, I mean that kind of thing.



PAUL: Yeah, there's always some needs. The market isn't perfect. But instead of having a trillion dollars worth of debt in a medical care system that's totally broke down, you would always have some needs.

But that was in existence before 1965 but there was nobody out in the streets without medical care, nobody out in the streets that -- there were more people under bridges now than there were back then.

And also, there were loans. People do loan. But even if they have difficulty, you know, sometimes it takes people six years to go through college and sometimes it takes people four years. But back then, there were jobs available. The whole thing was the cost was so much lower.

So, yes, it will not be perfect but what we have now is this catastrophic mistake where people have a pseudo education and no jobs and all debt. I mean we've indentured them for a long, long time to come. So we have to challenge the status quo on how we run our economy and run this country.