Guys! Come out from your basements here!
Posted on 12/23/2007 11:06:38 AM PST by flowerplough
- Republican presidential hopeful Ron Paul on Sunday defended his efforts in Congress to bring home money to his Texas district, despite his long-held aversion to big government and congressional votes to reign in federal spending.
"I've never voted for an earmark in my life," the Texas congressman said under questioning on NBC's "Meet the Press" about reports that he has requested hundreds of millions of dollars for special projects in his home district.
"I put them in because I represent people who are asking for some of their money back," said Paul, who likened it to taking a tax credit. "I'm against the tax system, but I take all my tax credits. I want to get their money back for the people."
The 10-term congressman and longshot candidate for the Republican presidential nomination added that although he has requested special projects known as earmarks, he ultimately ends up voting against them in the House.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...
See I never considered earmarks as “tax credits” before. It all makes sense now. Thank God for Ron Paul for setting it all straight for us.
Said Pail: “I’ll take the money. I will hate doing it, but I do it for my voters. Uh, can I have a few more million? I’ll hate taking that too by the way.”
Nothing but word games. I saw him this morning on tv....He STILL makes me think of a crazy uncle who has escaped from the attic.
Tax credits? Thats a new one for “pork”
It is not pork Paul you are talking, it is baloney.
The issue isn’t whether a Congressman attempts to get Federal money spent in his district. It’s whether that spending is Constitutional, and is also in the nationl interest.
Well, now that Paul has officially admitted on national television that he is a slimey whore just like every other congressman, I await the apology and recantation of the dismally unethical Paul supporters who have slandered everyone else for the last six months.
I'm not holding my breath however, waiting for you jerkwaters who have supported RonPaul to man up.
This is Ron Paul and I approve this deflection.
So? Ron Paul is a very successful con man and he’s suckering people like you.
Sad, really.
Any projects involving rounding up Jews?
Here we have the genius of Ron Paul state in detail the meat of his ideas/platform to cut the government (which by the way he states was quite nice under the Clinton Administration). Notice the concrete and strong answers Paul gives (yes that is sarcasm). Also note that we will be requiring our reading audience to drink everytime the good doctor says the word “Contitution.”
Enjoy.
_______________________________________
REP. RON PAUL (R-TX): Thank you. Nice to be here.
MR. RUSSERT: Let’s start right at the very top, the issues. This is what you have been saying on the campaign stump, “I’d like to get rid of the IRS. I want to get rid of the income tax.” Abolish it.
REP. PAUL: That’s a good idea. I like that idea.
MR. RUSSERT: What would happen to all those lost revenues? How would we fund our government?
REP. PAUL: We have to cut spending. You can’t get rid of the income tax if you don’t get rid of some spending. But, you know, if you got rid of the income tax today you’d have about as much revenue as, as we had 10 years ago, and the size of government wasn’t all that bad 10 years ago. So there’re sources of revenues other than the income tax. You know, you have, you have tariff, excise taxes, user fees, highway fees. So, so there’s still a lot of money. But the real problem is spending. But, you know, we lived a long time in this country without an income tax. Up until 1913 we didn’t have it.
MR. RUSSERT: But, but you eliminate the income tax, do you know how much lost revenue that would be?
REP. PAUL: A lot. But...
MR. RUSSERT: Over a trillion dollars.
REP. PAUL: That’s good. I mean, we—but we could save hundreds of billions of dollars if we had a sensible foreign policy.
MR. RUSSERT: Well...
REP. PAUL: And if you go—if you’re going to be the policeman of the world, you need that. You need the income tax to police the world and run the welfare state. I want a constitutional-size government.
MR. RUSSERT: Would you replace the income tax with anything else?
REP. PAUL: Not if I could help it. You know, there are some proposals where probably almost anything would be better than income tax. But there’s a lot of shortcomings with the, with the sales tax. But it would probably be slightly better than the income tax—it would be an improvement. But the goal is to cut the spending, get back to a sensible-size government.
MR. RUSSERT: But if you had a flat tax, 30 percent consumption tax, that would be very, very punishing to the poor and middle class.
REP. PAUL: Well, I know. That’s why I don’t want it.
MR. RUSSERT: So you have nothing?
REP. PAUL: I want to cut spending. I want to get a—use the Constitution as our guide, and you wouldn’t need the income tax.
MR. RUSSERT: Let’s talk about some of the ways you recommend. “I’d start bringing our troops home, not only from the Middle East but from Korea, Japan and Europe and save enough money to slash the deficit.”
How much money would that save?
REP. PAUL: To operate our total foreign policy, when you add up everything, there’s been a good study on this, it’s nearly a trillion dollars a year. So I would think if you brought our troops home, you could save hundreds of billions of dollars. It’s, you know, it’s six months or one year or two year, but you can start saving immediately by changing the foreign policy and not be the policeman over the world. We should have the foreign policy that George Bush ran on. You know, no nation building, no policing of the world, a humble foreign policy. We don’t need to be starting wars. That’s my argument.
MR. RUSSERT: How many troops do we have overseas right now?
REP. PAUL: I don’t know the exact number, but more than we need. We don’t need any.
MR. RUSSERT: It’s 572,000. And you’d bring them all home?
REP. PAUL: As quickly as possible. We—they will not serve our interests to be overseas. They get us into trouble. And we can defend this country without troops in Germany, troops in Japan. How do they help our national defense? Doesn’t make any sense to me. Troops in Korea since I’ve been in high school?
MR. RUSSERT: What...
REP. PAUL: You know, it doesn’t make any sense.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/22342301/
Guys! Come out from your basements here!
Ron Paul: I have no idea how many troops are stationed overseas, but I would bring them all home.
“Doesn’t make any sense.” <— Perfect Dr. Ron bumper sticker.
Even Russert is confused by Paul and what is sad is Russert knows the answers to Paul’s platform and Paul does not.
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