Ron Paul: 'Get Rid of the Federal Reserve'

By: Rick Pedraza

Rep. Ron Paul, in a speech delivered to an enthusiastic crowd at the Conservative Political Action Conference, said conservatives “have to be devoted to and willing to stand by and defend the Constitution, and have the position that it is absolutely necessary to get rid of the Federal Reserve system.”

Paul, who ran for president in 2008 championing the Constitution, talked about his bill seeking to abolish the Federal Reserve, which he said is getting bipartisan support in the Congress.

“We’ve gotten ourselves in a mess because the conservative movement, which was designed to bring us back to our roots of limited government, smaller government and more individual liberty, hasn’t happened,” said Paul, R-Texas.

Paul believes that in many ways, the conservative movement has had a struggle defining what and who a true conservative really is.

“After finally getting the House, Senate and White House in 2000, what did we do? We doubled the size of the Department of Education. I thought we were supposed to get rid of the Department of Education!" Paul said.

“Now, since we did not do the job we were supposed to do, the opposition has taken over, and they’re going to double and triple and quadruple spending. Believe me, we’re in serious trouble,” he warned.

“In the past 12 months, our national debt went up $1.5 trillion, and next year it’s going to be more. Young people know what they are getting. They know they are getting a bad deal. They’re getting nothing but debt.

“We’re in an atmosphere now where if we can accept the idea that the taxpayers can bail out the banks and big business, there is nothing that can't be funded. Everything will be appropriated. There will be no cuts.

“Our financial system has come unglued, but the next shoe to drop will be the disintegration of the dollar. We as conservatives and believers in limited government have a tough task to restrain big spenders before that happens because, when that happens, what is threatened is our liberty.”

Paul said the main purpose of a government in a free society should be the preservation of liberty.

“Fortunately, we live in a country that knew something about that and emphasized that in our early years, but we have forgotten it and lost our confidence."

Paul said conservatives today are not determined to present the case for liberty.

"We have chopped liberty up into pieces," he explained. "We have economic liberty, we have social liberty, and we have a foreign policy that is built on total fallacies. We have to put this all back together again and, fortunately, we have something that can pull it back together, and that is the understanding of the Founding Fathers that put it in our Constitution."

"If we followed the rules and did the job right, we wouldn’t have a welfare state.”

Paul said the job ahead for conservatives is “to present this case and still prove that we are the humanitarians. The liberal do-gooders and the big spenders who say, ‘We’re going to give a free house to everybody, free medical care to everybody, free education’ – that’s preposterous.

“If you care about your fellow man, there is only one way you can maximize prosperity and freedom, and that is through the rule of law and making sure that everybody understands that liberty is an individual thing and not a collective right.”