Ron Paul Stops by Smokey Row in Osky

Congressman and Presidential Candidate Ron Paul stops by Oskaloosa Tuesday (Photo by Don Hubbard)

Oskaloosa, Iowa – Congressman and Presidential candidate Ron Paul stopped by Smokey Row at noon on Tuesday. Before he began, Paul walked around Smokey Row shaking hands with event attendees.  A.J. Spiker, Co-Chair to Ron Paul’s Presidential campaign, introduced the Congressman.

Paul began by talking about the weather and giving a brief update on his campaign. He continued with discussing the debt/deficit problem of the federal government, wars, the Constitution, federal reserve system, and executive orders that President Obama has been stating he is going to issue because congress is too slow. ” Today our government does pretty much does what it wants. Right now we have a president who says ‘you know Congress is acting so slowly I’m just gonna start writing the laws,'” Paul said. He went on to say “He’s [President Obama] claimed every week he’s going to write a new law, which is called an executive order, because congress is too slow.”

The Congressman  also talked about the government spending four billion dollars a month on the wars overseas, and his position on foreign policy “I have a very clear position on foreign policy. We otta mind our own business and bring our troops home.”

Paul continued. “The government  should fulfill their role of protecting liberty, not to interfere in what we do. Protecting liberty to me means that your economic liberty and your personal liberty is one in the same. Your right to home school, or to practice your own religion, or practice your own personal habits, that’s really not the business of the government. It’s the same as economic freedom. Economic freedom means that you should have free enterprise. You should have property rights. You can have contracts [inaudible]. You otta have sound money, and you otta be responsible for yourself.”

Paul went on to say that, “We have no money in the bank. 1.5 trillion dollars in debt every year. We owe three trillion dollars to foreigners. We owe 15 trillion dollars in our national debt. It’s all going to have to change,” The Congressman had a suggestion. “We got into this mess by not following our traditions and our Constitution. We wouldn’t have that much trouble getting out of this simply by only sending people to Washington who understand this and who will obey the constitution.”

He went on to talk about the actions of the federal reserve and the federal government in the recent bailouts and how he’s been working on the transparency of the federal reserve for 30 years. He stated that, “65% of the American people believe strongly we should know more about the federal reserve. I’m convinced the more we know about the federal reserve, the more the people will demand we have sound money and we don’t need the federal reserve. The federal reserve is so important because it serves the interest of those individuals in Washington that like to spend money.”

Paul’s proposal is to cut a trillion dollars the first year he’s in office. “I want to emphasize how we do it and have priorities, because I think the overseas spending should be the most vulnerable, foreign aid and foreign wars. We’re in a hundred and thirty some countries, 900 bases. Its added four trillion dollars of debt in the last ten years. So that doesn’t help the American people. It certainly doesn’t help the military families who suffer the consequences of this. So I say cut that and have priorities at home.”

Paul continued. “We have a mess. We need a transition so I would say protect the elderly [inaudible] dependent, protect the people who are dependent on the government for medical care and let’s work our way out of this.” He went on to talk about cutting spending to get the economy going,  inflation, reducing regulation and  cutting taxes.

Paul ended by talking a little more about his campaign and thanking everyone for coming out. Afterwards he walked around talking with people and taking pictures before heading off to a town hall meeting in Ottumwa at 2 pm.