Ron Paul is running as a Republican, but is known mostly as a Libertarian. He believes in following the American Constitution in determining the role of government.
This means that drastic changes would occur with President Paul, and they would pretty much all represent free-market philosophy.
President Paul would phase out Medicaid, Medicare, Social Security, Food Stamps, Unemployment insurance, and almost any other federal program that you can think of. If it's not in the Constitution, he is not for it.
The real effect of these positions is not that any of these programs would be abolished. As President, you don't have the authority to do that. The greatest power given to a President is his power to veto. This power allows him to nullify bills that pass through congress. Using this power, Paul would not pass any increase in growth to these programs, thus forcing congress to pass budgets that would keep these programs from growing any more. Then he would advocate slowly decreasing these benefits until they are gone (over a huge generational time span). These social programs are the largest budget item and are the culprit of our ever-increasing federal deficit. They must be reformed, and if you're a believer in the Constitution, these government dependency programs must be phased out.
President Paul would decrease military spending to Constitutional levels. He would close down the hundreds of bases that we have spread out across the world. This "defense" spending is currently the second largest culprit to our federal deficit. President Paul would follow the Constitution and only spread our military power when we declare a war - something that hasn't been done since World War II.
President Paul wants to get rid of the Federal Reserve (blog post forthcoming). This is the private company who controls the supply of the dollar. Currently our dollars are backed by nothing but the "full faith and credit" of the United States government. Paul would advocate that a resource (such as gold) backs our currency.
Economically and constitutionally, Paul is the best choice for the Presidency. He would balance our budget and get rid of unconstitutional social programs. He would have no interest in subsidies or special interest spending. Paul is my man.
I am so torn on Ron Paul. I love his economic ideas, but his foreign policy makes me cringe! I also like that he does stick very strictly to the constitution, however the founders made it possible to make changes to the constitution because they knew they wouldn't be able to foresee every issue in the future. I think Paul might be a little, just a little, too libertarian on some issues such as legalizing drugs and gay marriage, etc. If it is Paul against Obama I will be marching in the streets for Paul though! He is intelligent, interesting, respectable!
ReplyDeleteI hear you Gabrielle, he's not for everyone. The big issue for me is economics, and he is hands down the biggest advocate of Adam Smith philosophy of invisible hand, so I'm voting for him. With regard to the constitution, you are right that they made it possible to change. The problem isn't with those changes. The problem is that President Obama, and most Presidents, circumvent the Constitution via "Executive Orders". They don't go about trying to change it by getting 2/3 majority vote in the House and the Senate, they simply do what they think is best at the time (like when Roosevelt instituted Social Security and Medicaid, or when Obama instituted Obamacare which was unconstitutional. Or when we went to war with Lybia just recently without formerly declaring war).
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