Ron Paul says to stop the spending

The following appeared on page 3A of the St. Paul Pioneer Press on Monday March 9, 2009.

Remember Congressman Ron Paul, the long-term libertarian-like representative from Texas who sought the Republican presidential nomination last year and come within something like 1,000 delegates of upsetting John McCain?

Paul warned all during his campaign about a looming economic disaster if government just kept growing and growing and printing more money like Republicans and Democrats wanted.

Paul was on Bloomberg TV recently, and he patiently explained that we got into this national financial whirlpool by spending too much government money, and so the solution was probably not to spend even more money.

"We should be cutting spending. We should be trying to live within our means and not just try to spend our way out of a recession that was brought upon us by too much spending and too much borrowing and too much printing-press money," he said.

Paul also said the reason housing prices are falling is that there's too much housing on the market. So, Paul reasons, instead of spending hundreds of billions of deficit dollars to build more houses, making hte supply even larger, politicians should risk unpopularity, cut spending and taxes and let the market settle out.
- New York Times and Los Angeles Times contributed to this report