Conducted by Sam Gensburg

Congressman Ron Paul (R-TX) is a physician and a 2008 U.S. presidential candidate. After graduating from Duke University School of Medicine in 1961, Paul became a U.S. Air Force flight surgeon, serving outside the Vietnam War zone. Paul later entered politics and has represented Texas districts in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1976 to 1977, 1979 to 1985, and 1997 to present. He entered the 1988 presidential election running as the Libertarian nominee while remaining a registered Republican, and he placed a distant third.

Mr. Paul, you’ve introduced yourself as the “champion of the Constitution,” and you are characterized as almost exclusively in favor of small government on virtually every issue. What is the proper role of the federal government?

What the Founding Fathers intended: the federal government should operate to protect the lives, liberties, and properties of American citizens. I believe the federal government should operate in accordance with what Article I, Section 8 of the U.S. Constitution empowers it to do—nothing more and nothing less.

You are currently running for President of the United States. In your view, what are the most pressing issues facing our nation and why?

The war in Iraq is the single most important issue facing Americans today with broad foreign and domestic
policy implications. With our nation over $9 trillion in debt, and the cost of continued war expected to clear $2.4 trillion, the war’s drain on the economy is felt most by the poor and the middle class. Thus, stabilizing and stimulating the economy is also important. This requires massive cutbacks in government spending coupled with tax cuts and deregulation of industry. Furthermore, the devaluation of the dollar needs to be remedied by preventing the government from printing money out of thin air, which makes every dollar in American pockets less valuable.

Terrorism is another key issue that America faces today. What are the fundamental causes of terrorism and what can the United States do to combat this problem at its roots?

In a way, the fear of indefinable terrorism is based on our inability to admit the truth about why there is a desire among a small number of angry radical Islamic individuals to kill Americans. It’s certainly not entirely because they are jealous of our wealth and freedoms.

We fail to realize that the extremists, willing to sacrifice their own lives to kill their enemies, do so out of a sense of weakness and desperation over real and perceived attacks on their way of life, their religion, their country, and their natural resources. Without the conventional diplomatic or military means to retaliate against these attacks, coupled with the unwillingness of their own government to address the issue, they resort to the desperation tactic of suicide terrorism. Their anger toward their own governments, which they believe are co-conspirators with the American government, is equal to or greater than that directed toward us.

By following a foreign policy of non-interventionism and encouraging free trade, discussion, and travel with all nations, we will go a long way to discouraging terrorism.

The proper focus should be on identifying those responsible and using limited military force to bring them to justice. We should arrest or kill the perpetrators abroad, use our armed forces more wisely to defend our borders, and reform immigration laws to keep terrorists out. There is also a powerful constitutional tool that the president can use to bring terrorists to justice. Congress can issue letters of marque against terrorists and their property that authorize the president to name private sources who can capture or kill our enemies. This method works in conjunction with our military efforts, creating an incentive for people on the ground close to Osama Bin Laden to kill or capture him and his associates. Letters of marque are especially suited to the current War on Terrorism, which will be fought against individuals who can melt into the civilian population or hide in remote areas. The goal is to avail ourselves of the intelligence of private parties, who may stand a better chance of finding Bin Laden than we do through a conventional military invasion.

If you are elected President of the United States, how would you change President Bush’s strategy in Iraq?

I would withdraw immediately from Iraq.

Given that you support an elimination of the income tax, how do you believe the federal government should raise revenue? Would this shift the overall tax burden to those who are less able to pay?

Over 50 percent of federal government revenue comes from sources other than the income tax. In fact, the majority of revenue is gleaned from constitutional sources, such as corporate taxes, excise taxes, and fees. Federal government expenditures have ballooned over the course of the Bush presidency. We could successfully scale that back and enjoy the same amount of big government spending that we had less than a decade ago, without revenues from individual income taxes. Furthermore, when we change our interventionist foreign policy, we will save hundreds of billions, even trillions, of dollars from being spent overseas. This is the end goal; it would enable us to quickly pay off our foreign debt, restore American prosperity, and make April 15 just another normal day.

What is your stance on outsourcing American jobs overseas? Should the United States government take measures to prevent this current trend? If not, what would you say to those who lose their jobs due to outsourcing?

Outsourcing is a result of too much federal involvement, not too little. It’s a result of bad domestic economic policy. The government should create economic incentives to keep jobs in America, like cutting taxes, eliminating the Overseas Investment Protection Corporation, and setting in place a sound currency. With these steps, we can begin to be competitive again, but it will be a difficult process.

You are often criticized for your desire to downsize the Federal Government. For instance, how would you change the role of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA)? Can we trust corporations with self-regulation of upholding safety standards?

I want to reform the FDA to make it easier to make new and alternative medicines that are already being used safely in other countries available to Americans. I also want to preserve health freedom and the First Amendment rights of dietary supplement companies, which are currently censored by the FDA from revealing certain truthful health claims. If given the opportunity to operate within a true free market, competing corporations would want to employ the best practices to gain the most consumers, and could be trusted more with self-regulation of safety standards.

As president, what will be your China policy? Specifically, what is your stance on subpar exports and the undercutting of American prices?

First, we should remove our trade subsidies with China. Very few people realize that China is one of the biggest beneficiaries of American taxpayer subsidies and that this directly impacts China’s role in the global economy. We should eliminate the $4 billion subsidy our nation quietly gives China through the U.S. government’s Export-Import Bank, and when we cease to subsidize their economy, we should see fewer subpar exports infiltrating the American economy and see less undercutting of American prices.

How would the federal government support a monetary system based on hard currency and where would it acquire the resources to do so?

It will be difficult and require several steps to set us on the path to sound currency, but the first and most immediate step would be to legalize gold and silver as legal tender and remove the sales tax on them so that notes backed by hard money can compete on a level playing field with fiat Federal Reserve notes.

If you are elected president, what will you do about the rising prices of gasoline?

The federal government has misled us into thinking that oil was cheap. For years it kept prices at the pump artificially low by saddling taxpayers with the costs of corporate subsidies and oil-driven foreign entanglements, and we made rational choices, albeit with false information, that have led to our oil-dependent economy.
We can, however, make strides to convert to an alternative energy-driven economy. By repealing all overnment subsidies and policies that artificially lower the price of fossil fuels, we could open a true free market in energy. When access to Middle Eastern oil is no longer a central component of our foreign policy, my administration will provide new incentives for private investors to devote more resources into alternative energies, such as ethanol, and for consumers to voluntarily seek out opportunities to use them. As president, I would fight to end oil subsidies, to stop giving preferential treatment to Big Energy lobbies, and to stop abusing our military whose lives are risked to fill corporate wallets.

In the past, you have come out against affirmative action. However, if you look at schools like UC Berkeley that have stopped using affirmative action, you see a serious racial imbalance emerging. Do you see this trend as a problem, and if so, what would you do about it? If not, is eliminating affirmative action unfair to the student groups that are adversely affected?

First, I do not support any government action that strips citizens of their own individual integrity, and this includes affirmative action. The federal government most divides us when it classifies us by race, class, religion, and gender, and government-administered affirmative action is no exception. When the government comes to think it can best decide who suceeds and who fails—whether by taxes, restrictive regulations, corporate subsidies, welfare programs, or other racial determinants—it breeds hostility and suspicion in others and does not achieve true tolerance and acceptance. Racism is an ugly form of collectivism, as it views humans strictly as members of groups rather than as individuals. I propose, as Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. did, that we judge and reward individuals not on the color of their skin or gender or ethnicity but by their individual achievement and strength of character. Anything but this is a problem–for both sides affected.

What are your chances of winning the 2008 Presidential Election? Where do you think the biggest challenges lie in achieving your goal?

I think the chances are a lot stronger now than they were two months ago, and I think the odds are higher every day that I could win it. I’m humbled by the outpouring of support that’s rising steadily each day, especially among college students at Yale and nationwide. Just a few weeks ago, over 2,000 students at the University of Michigan came out for a rally, and thousands of students are actively campaigning on their campuses, but it’s important that with the primaries approaching that everyone translates their support into votes by registering with their state’s Republican Party to vote in the primaries!

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