They call him Dr. No.
But medical doctor and Congressman Ron Paul does more than vote against awful and unconstitutional legislation. He has also proposed many bills to roll back the government’s assault on our liberties — bills to get rid of the income tax, minimum wage laws, antitrust laws.
Of course, to advocate undoing decades of ever-more-brazen governmental interference in our lives is to swim against the tide. To most congressmen, the idea of limiting federal governance to constitutionally authorized functions is so old-fashioned as to be perverse. So Paul hasn’t had much luck with his initiatives.
But one of them is now back on the table: A bill authorizing the GAO to audit the Federal Reserve. Paul first advanced it in the early ’80s, and since then it’s been gathering dust. But thanks to the way the Fed has been conducting itself during the financial crisis, with all its massive yet secretive bailouts and interventions, the bill is now popular.
It has a good shot at passing.
Ron Paul himself won’t be voting for it, however. It’s going to be packaged with other legislation to impose new financial regulations, regulations he opposes. Paul says: “I won’t vote for a bill that’s a disaster because one or two or five percent of it is an improvement.”
Can’t argue with that. If only all our representatives had such scruples.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
3 replies on “Ron Paul’s Gold Standard Version of Principle”
Back when Ron Paul was still running for the Republican candidate for President, I listened to an interview on KSEV radio in Houston, Texas. He sounded great up until the moment that he said that 9/11 was our fault; that we asked for it. The conservative interviewers were shocked and they never spoke kindly of Mr. Paul again. I never thought the same of Ron Paul. He is a nut.
All of our institutions have grown way beyond their original “mandates”. Bureaucrats have their ways of “justifying” their very existence and finding ways to grow their respective nests of bureaucratic armies.
We must re-evaluate all bureaucracies and eliminate those that have outlived their supposed usefulness and cut down others still needed to a bare minimum.
We can easily cut the State Dept by half (or more), we can eliminate the EPA, OSHA, NEA and so many others that drag down our economy.
Tort reform is needed accross the board, not only in the medical care fields.
America’s lack of global competitiveness stems from the high cost of bureaucratic compliance and legal affairs, both preemptive and ongoing.
Taxes and labor costs come in a distant second. I am all for a de facto “Tabula Rasa” in government and start all over. Government can be cut in half and it would only benefit business and make government far more efficient and responsive.
[…] contender for the GOP nomination seems committed to exercising veto power — the illustrious “Dr. No” — and he is not leading in the delegate count. A Dr. Veto as president could cajole Congress […]