House Proceeding 03-10-09 on Mar 10th, 2009 :: 0:24:40 to 0:30:10
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0:24:36 to 0:24:56( Edit History Discussion )

Ron Paul: of one great american, state person, and pioneer, mr. ron h. brown. i yield back the balance of my time. the speaker pro tempore: thank you. the gentlelady yields back the balance of her time. the gentleman from north carolina, mr. mchenry. for what purpose does the gentleman from texas rise? >> i asknanimous consent to take my five minutes at this time.

0:24:40 to 0:30:10( Edit History Discussion )
Speech By: Ron Paul

0:24:57 to 0:25:18( Edit History Discussion )

Ron Paul: and take the gentleman's time. the speaker pro tempore: without objection. mr. paul: thankou, madam i would like to address the subject of earmarks today. i think there's a lot of misunderstanding here among the members as exactly what it means to vote against an earmark.

0:25:19 to 0:25:39( Edit History Discussion )

Ron Paul: it's very popular today to condemn earmarks and even hold up legislation because of this. the truth is that, if you removed all the earmarks from the budget, you would remove 1% of the budget. so there's not a lot of savings. but even if you voted against all the earmarks, actually you don't even save the 1% because you don't sanche save any money.

0:25:40 to 0:26:01( Edit History Discussion )

Ron Paul: what is done is those earmarks are removed and some of them are very wasteful and unnecessary, but that money then goes to the executive branch. so in many ways what we are doing here in the congress is reneging on our responsibilities because it is the responsibility of the congress to earmark. that's our job. we are supposed to tell the people how we are spending the money.

0:26:02 to 0:26:23( Edit History Discussion )

Ron Paul: not to just deliver it in lump sum to the executive branch and let them deal with it. and then it's dealt with behind the scenes. if you voted against all the earmarks, there would be less transparency. earmarks really allows transparency and we know exactly where the money is being spent. the big issue is the spending. if you don't like the spending,

0:26:24 to 0:26:45( Edit History Discussion )

Ron Paul: vote against the bill. but the principle of earmarking is something we have to think abt because we are further underming the responsibilities that we have here in the congress. and if we want to get things under control, it won't be because we vote against an earmark and make a big deal of attacking earmarks because it

0:26:46 to 0:27:07( Edit History Discussion )

Ron Paul: doesn't address the subject. in reality what we need are more earmarks. just think of the $350 billion that we recently appropriated and gave to the treasury department. now everybody's running around saying we don't know where the money went. we just gave it to them in a lump sum. we should have earmarked everything. it should have been designated where the money is going. so instead of too many earmarks

0:27:08 to 0:27:28( Edit History Discussion )

Ron Paul: don't have enough earmarks. transparency is the only way we can get to the bottom of this. if you make everything earmarked, it would be much better. the definition of an earmark is very, very confusing. if you would vote to support the embassy which came up to nearly $1 billion in baghdad, that's not called an earmark.

0:27:29 to 0:27:50( Edit History Discussion )

Ron Paul: but if you have an earmark for a highway or a building here in the united states, that is called an earmark. but if you vote for a weapons system t. would support and help a certain district and that's not considered an earmark. when people are yelling and screaming about getting rid of earmarks, theyre not talki about getting rid of weapons systems or building buildings and bridges and highways in

0:27:51 to 0:28:11( Edit History Discussion )

Ron Paul: foreign countries. they are only talking about when it'sesignated that certain money way in this country. ultimately where we really need some supervision and some earmarks are the trillions of dollars spent by the federal reserve. they get to create their money out of thin air and spend it.

0:28:12 to 0:28:32( Edit History Discussion )

Ron Paul: they have no responsibility to tell us anything under the law they are excluded fm telling us where and what they do. so we neglect telling the treasury how to spend tarp money, and then we complain about how they do it. just literally, just thinking -- just think literally the treasury is minuscule compared

0:28:33 to 0:28:53( Edit History Discussion )

Ron Paul: to what the feral reserve does. the treasury gets hundreds of billions, which is huge of course, and then we neglect to talk about the federal reserve where they are creating money out of thin air and supporting all their friends and taking care of certain banks and certain corporations. this to me has tbe addressed. i have introduced a bill it's

0:28:54 to 0:29:14( Edit History Discussion )

Ron Paul: called h.r. 1207. this would remove the restriction on us to find out what the federal reserve is doing. today the federal reserve under the law is not required to tell us anything. so all my bill does is remove this restriction and say, look, the federal reserve, you have a lot of power. you have too much power. you are spending a lot of money.

0:29:15 to 0:29:35( Edit History Discussion )

Ron Paul: are you taking care of people we have no idea what you're doing. we in the congress have a responsibility to know exactly what you're doing. this bill, h.r. 1207, will allow us for once and for some supervision of the federal reserve. they are exempt from telling us anything and they have stiffed us already. there have been lawsuits over the freedom of information

0:29:36 to 0:29:56( Edit History Discussion )

Ron Paul: act. believe me, they are not going to work because the law protects the federal reserve. the constitution doesn'trotect the federal reserve. the constitution protects the people to know exactly what's going on. we should enforce the constitution. we should not enforce these laws that protect a secret bank that gets to create this money out of thin air. the sooner we in the congress

0:29:57 to 0:30:12( Edit History Discussion )

Ron Paul: wake up to ourer responsibilities, understand what earmarks are all about, and understand why we need a lot more a earmarks -- more earmarks, then we might come to our senses and might then have a more sensible monetary banking system, the system that's