Wednesday, 05 Jan 2011 11:46 PM
By David A. Patten
Former presidential candidate Rep. Ron Paul warned
Wednesday that even if Republicans fulfill their pledge
to slash $100 billion in federal spending, the United
States still only has a one in 10 chance to avert an
economic catastrophe.
Appearing jointly on Fox News with his son, newly minted
Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul, the Texas Republican said that
a $100 billion cut in federal spending — a goal that
leading Republicans now are cautioning may not be
realistic — would amount to “peanuts.”
“It hardly does anything,” Paul said of the $100 billion
cut, which would roll back federal spending to 2008
levels.
Rep.
Paul pointed to the fact that the Federal Reserve
recently embarked on a massive $600 billion expansion of
the money supply without congressional authorization.
“The government itself is so out of control,” Rep. Paul
told Fox News host Neil Cavuto, “that I don’t think
anybody realizes how bad it is, and how little control
we have on it . . . And that’s why for 20-some years I
have been voting against every single appropriation,
because I assumed that spending is too high, government
is too big, it’s growing exponentially.
“And boy,” Paul continued, “to reverse this, it’s not
going to be easy. I think we only have one chance out of
10 to reverse it without a cataclysmic crisis with our
dollar and our financial situation.”
Cavuto pointed out that a cataclysm is precisely what
Obama administration economic adviser Austan Goolsbee
predicts if Congress refuses to raise the debt ceiling,
which is bumping up against its $14.3 trillion limit.
Economists believe Congress has until March or April to
authorize the federal government to run up more red ink.
Otherwise, it a shutdown of some governmental functions
could result.
Sen.
Rand Paul dismissed Goolsbee’s strident prediction of a
catastrophe if the debt ceiling isn’t raised, however.
“As a senator, Senator Obama voted against raising the
debt ceiling,” the younger Paul said. “So it’s a little
disingenuous for his people now to say, ‘Oh, the sky is
falling if we don’t do it.’”
Sen. Paul said he would vote to raise the debt ceiling,
but only once. And he said he’d only cast that vote if
Congress also agreed to an iron-clad rule that all
future budgets must be balanced.
“If they say, ‘No more debt will be added, and from here
on out we’ll balance the budget,’ I’ll vote one time to
raise the debt ceiling,” Sen. Paul said. “But we
shouldn’t give in and say, ‘Oh, we have to raise the
debt ceiling.’
“Let’s make them be fiscally responsible,” Sen. Paul
added. “And that’s what the people want. They didn’t
send me up here to be a rubber stamp for President
Obama’s agenda.”
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