Ronald Ernest "Ron" Paul, born August 20, 1935 is an American medical doctor, author, Republican U.S. Congressman of the House of Representatives and candidate for the 2012 Republican Party presidential nomination. Paul is currently the U.S. Congressman for the 14th congressional district of Texas, which comprises the area south and southwest of the Greater Houston region, including Galveston. Paul serves on the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, the Joint Economic Committee, and the House Committee on Financial Services, and is Chairman of the House Financial Services Subcommittee on Domestic Monetary Policy and Technology, where he has been an outspoken critic of current American foreign and monetary policy.
A native of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Paul is a graduate of Gettysburg College and the Duke University School of Medicine, where he earned his medical degree. Paul served as a flight surgeon in the United States Air Force from 1963 until 1968, during the Vietnam War. He worked as an obstetrician and gynecologist during the 1960s and 1970s, delivering more than 4,000 babies, before entering politics during 1976.
Paul is the initiator of the advocacy group Campaign for Liberty and his ideas have been expressed in numerous published articles and books, including Liberty Defined: 50 Essential Issues That Affect Our Freedom (2011), End The Fed (2009), The Revolution: A Manifesto (2008), Pillars of Prosperity (2008), A Foreign Policy of Freedom: Peace, Commerce, and Honest Friendship (2007), and The Case for Gold (1982). According to University of Georgia political scientist Keith Poole, Paul had the most conservative voting record of any member of Congress since 1937. His son Rand Paul was elected to the United States Senate for Kentucky in 2010, making the elder Paul the first Representative in history to serve concurrently with a child of his in the Senate.
Paul has been termed the "intellectual godfather" of the Tea Party philosophy. He has become well-known for his libertarian ideas for many political issues, often differing from both Republican and Democratic Party directors. Paul has campaigned for President of the United States twice before, first during 1988 as the nominee of the Libertarian Party and again during 2008 as a candidate for the Republican nomination. On May 13, 2011, he announced formally that he would campaign again during 2012 for the Republican presidential nomination. On July 12, 2011, Paul announced that he would not seek another term in Congress in order to concentrate on his presidential bid.
Personal life and medical career
Paul was born in Pittsburgh, the son of Howard Caspar Paul and Margaret (née Dumont) Paul. His paternal great-grandparents emigrated from Germany, and his mother was of German and Irish ancestry. As a junior at suburban Dormont High School, he was the 220-yard dash state champion. He received a B.S. degree in biology at Gettysburg College during 1957. He was a member of the fraternity Lambda Chi Alpha. After earning a Doctor of Medicine degree from the Duke University School of Medicine during 1961, Paul relocated with his wife to Michigan, where he completed his medical internship at the Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit. He then served as a flight surgeon of the United States Air Force from 1963 to 1965 and then of the United States Air National Guard from 1965 to 1968.
During 1968, Paul and his wife relocated to Texas, where he continued his medical work. Trained in obstetrics and gynaecology, Paul then began his own private practice.
Paul has been married to Carol Wells since 1957.They have five children, who were baptized Episcopalian: Ronald, Lori, Rand, Robert, and Joy. Paul's son Rand is the junior senator from the state of Kentucky. Raised a Lutheran, Paul later became a Baptist.
As a medical doctor, Ron Paul routinely lowered fees or worked for free in order to refuse to accept Medicaid or Medicare payments. As a member of Congress, he continues to refuse to sign up for the government pension that he would be entitled to in order to avoid receiving government money.
Early congressional career
While still a medical resident during the 1960s, Paul was influenced by Friedrich Hayek’s The Road to Serfdom, which caused him to read many publications by Ludwig von Mises and Ayn Rand. He came to know economists Hans Sennholz and Murray Rothbard well, and credits to them his interest in the study of economics. He came to believe that what the Austrian school economists wrote was becoming true on August 15, 1971, when President Richard Nixon "closed the gold window" by implementing the U.S. dollar's complete departure from the gold standard.That same day, the young physician decided to enter politics, saying later, "After that day, all money would be political money rather than money of real value. I was astounded.
First campaigns
Inspired by his belief that the monetary crisis of the 1970s was predicted by the Austrian School and caused by excessive government spending on the Vietnam War and welfare, Paul became a delegate to the Texas Republican convention and a Republican candidate for the United States Congress. During 1974, incumbent Robert R. Casey defeated him for the 22nd district. When President Gerald Ford appointed Casey to direct the Federal Maritime Commission, Paul won an April 1976 special election to the vacant office. Paul lost some months later in the general election, to Democrat Robert Gammage, by fewer than 300 votes (0.2%), but defeated Gammage in a 1978 rematch, and was reelected during 1980 and 1982.
Paul was the first Republican representative from the area; he also headed the Texas Reagan delegation at the national Republican convention. His successful campaign against Gammage surprised local Democrats, who had expected to retain the seat easily due to the Watergate scandal. Gammage underestimated Paul's popularity among local mothers: "I had real difficulty down in Brazoria County, where he practiced, because he'd delivered half the babies in the county. There were only two obstetricians in the county, and the other one was his partner.
House of Representatives
Paul proposed term-limit legislation multiple times, at first during the 1970s in the House of Representatives where he also declined to attend junkets or register for a Congressional pension while serving four terms. His chief of staff (1978–1982) was Lew Rockwell. During 1980, when a majority of Republicans favored President Jimmy Carter's proposal to reinstate draft registration, Paul argued that their views were inconsistent, stating they were more interested in registering their children than they were their guns. He also proposed legislation to decrease Congressional pay by the rate of inflation; he was a regular participant of the annual Congressional Baseball Game; and he continued to deliver babies on Mondays and Saturdays during his entire 22nd district career.
During his first term, Paul initiated a "think tank", the Foundation for Rational Economics and Education (FREE). Also during 1976, the foundation began publication of the first monthly newsletter associated with Paul, Dr. Ron Paul's Freedom Report (or Special Report). It also publishes radio advertisements, monographs, books, and (since 1997) a new series of the monthly newsletter, Ron Paul's Freedom Report, which promote the principles of limited government.
On the House Banking Committee, Paul blamed the Federal Reserve for inflation, and spoke against the banking mismanagement that resulted in the savings and loan crisis. The U.S. Gold Commission created by Congress during 1982 was his and Jesse Helms's idea, and Paul's commission minority report was published by the Cato Institute in The Case for Gold; it is now available from the Ludwig von Mises Institute, to which Paul is a distinguished counselor.
During 1984, Paul chose to campaign for the U.S. Senate instead of re-election to the House, but lost the Republican primary to Phil Gramm. Another candidate of the senatorial primary was Henry Grover, a conservative former state legislator who had lost the 1972 gubernatorial general election to the Democrat Dolph Briscoe, Jr. Paul then resumed his full-time medical practice and was succeeded by former state representative Tom DeLay.
Legislation
Paul authors more bills than the average representative, such as those that impose term limits, or abolish the income tax[84] or the Federal Reserve; many do not escape committee review. He has written successful legislation to prevent eminent domain seizure of a church in New York, and a bill transferring ownership of the Lake Texana dam project from the federal government to Texas. By amending other legislation, he has helped prohibit funding for national identification numbers, funding for federal teacher certification,International Criminal Court jurisdiction over the U.S. military, American participation with any U.N. global tax, and surveillance of peaceful First Amendment activities by citizens.
During March 2001, Paul introduced a bill to repeal the 1973 War Powers Resolution (WPR) and reinstate the process of formal declaration of war by Congress. Later during 2001, Paul voted to authorize the president, pursuant to WPR, to respond to those responsible for the September 11, 2001, attacks. He also introduced "Sunlight Rule" legislation, which requires lawmakers to take enough time to read bills before voting on them, after the Patriot Act was passed within 24 hours of its introduction. Paul was one of six Republicans to vote against the Iraq War Resolution, and (with Oregon representative Peter DeFazio) sponsored a resolution to repeal the war authorization during February 2003. Paul's speech, 35 "Questions That Won't Be Asked About Iraq", was translated and published in German, French, Russian, Italian, and Swiss periodicals before the Iraq War began.
Paul says his fellow members of Congress have increased government spending by 75 percent during the presidency of George W. Bush. After a 2005 bill was touted as "slashing" government waste, Paul wrote that it decreased spending by a fraction of one percent and that "Congress couldn't slash spending if the members' lives depended on it. He said that during three years he had voted against more than 700 bills intended to expand government.
Paul has introduced several bills to apply tax credits to education, including credits for parental spending on public, private, or homeschool students (Family Education Freedom Act); for salaries for all K–12 teachers, librarians, counselors, and other school personnel; and for donations to scholarships or to benefit academics (Education Improvement Tax Cut Act). In accord with his political opinions, he has also introduced the Sanctity of Life Act, the We the People Act, and the American Freedom Agenda Act.
During June 2011, Paul co-sponsored a bill with U.S. Representative Barney Frank that is intended to end the federal prohibition of marijuana.
2012 presidential campaign
Beginning during 2010 there was speculation among pundits and journalists regarding the prospect of Paul campaigning for president again during 2012. When Paul's wife, Carol, was asked if he would campaign during 2012 her response was "If you would ask him now he would probably say 'no', but he did say... things are happening so quickly and fast in our country, if we're at a crisis period and they need someone... with the knowledge he has... then he would do it.
Paul won several early straw polls and began raising funds for an exploratory committee. In mid-April, 2011, Paul announced the formation of a "testing-the-waters" account, and stated that he will make a decision on whether to enter the campaign officially no later than May.In late April, he formed an official exploratory committee to campaign for the 2012 Republican presidential nomination. He participated with the first Republican presidential debate on May 5, 2011. and on May 13, 2011, Paul formally announced his candidacy in an interview on ABC's Good Morning America.
Political positions
Paul has been described as conservative, Constitutionalist, and libertarian. He has been nicknamed "Dr. No", representing both his medical degree and his insistence that he will "never vote for legislation unless the proposed measure is expressly authorized by the Constitution", and "Mr. Republican". One scoring method published in the American Journal of Political Science found Paul the most conservative of all 3,320 members of Congress from 1937 to 2002. Paul's foreign policy of nonintervention made him the only 2008 Republican presidential candidate to have voted against the Iraq War Resolution during 2002. He advocates withdrawal from the United Nations, and from the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, for reasons of maintaining strong national sovereignty. He endorses free trade, rejecting membership in the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and the World Trade Organization as "managed trade". He endorses increased border security and opposes welfare for illegal aliens, birthright citizenship and amnesty; he voted for the Secure Fence Act of 2006. He voted for the Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Terrorists in response to the September 11, 2001, attacks, but suggested war alternatives such as authorizing the president to grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal targeting specific terrorists. An opponent of the Iraq War and potential war with Iran, he has also criticized neoconservatism and U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East, arguing that both inadvertently cause terrorist reprisals against Americans. Paul has stated that "Israel is our close friend" and that it is not the place of the United States to "dictate how Israel runs her affairs".
Paul is a proponent of Austrian school economics; he has authored six books on the subject, and displays pictures of Austrian school economists Friedrich Hayek, Murray Rothbard, and Ludwig von Mises (as well as of Grover Cleveland) on his office wall. He regularly votes against almost all proposals for new government spending, initiatives, or taxes; he cast two thirds of all the lone negative votes in the House during a 1995–1997 period. He has pledged never to raise taxes and states he has never voted to approve a budget deficit. Paul believes that the country could abolish the individual income tax by scaling back federal spending to its fiscal year 2000 levels; financing government operations would be primarily by the corporate income tax, excise taxes and tariffs. He endorses eliminating most federal government agencies, terming them unnecessary bureaucracies. Paul also believes the longterm decrease of the U.S. dollar's purchasing power by inflation is attributable to its lack of any commodity backing. However, Paul does not endorse a "return" to a gold standard, as the U.S. government has established during the past, but instead prefers to eliminate legal tender laws and to remove the sales tax on gold and silver, so that the market may freely decide what type of monetary standard(s) there shall be. He also advocates gradual elimination of the Federal Reserve System.
Paul endorses constitutional rights, such as the right to keep and bear arms, and habeas corpus for political detainees. He opposes the Patriot Act, federal use of torture, presidential autonomy, a national identification card, warrantless domestic surveillance, and the draft. Citing the Ninth and Tenth Amendments, Paul advocates states' rights to decide how to regulate social matters not cited directly by the Constitution. Paul terms himself "strongly pro-life", "an unshakable foe of abortion", and believes regulation or ban on medical decisions about maternal or fetal health is "best handled at the state level". He says his years as an obstetrician led him to believe life begins at conception; his abortion-related legislation, like the Sanctity of Life Act, is intended to negate Roe v. Wade and to get "the federal government completely out of the business of regulating state matters. Paul also believes that the notion of the separation of church and state is currently misused by the court system: "In case after case, the Supreme Court has used the infamous 'separation of church and state' metaphor to uphold court decisions that allow the federal government to intrude upon and deprive citizens of their religious liberty.
He opposes federal regulation of the death penalty (although he opposes capital punishment), of education,and of marriage, and endorses revising the military's "don't ask, don't tell" policy to concern mainly disruptive sexual behavior (whether heterosexual or homosexual). As a free-market environmentalist, he asserts private property rights in relation to environmental protection and pollution prevention.He also opposes the federal War on Drugs, and believes the states should decide whether to regulate or deregulate drugs such as medical marijuana. Paul pushes to eliminate federal involvement with and management of health care, which he argues would allow prices to decrease due to the fundamental dynamics of a free market. He is an outspoken proponent for increased ballot access for 3rd party candidates and numerous election law reforms which he believes would allow more voter control. Referring to the federal government, Ron Paul has also stated that “The government shouldn't be in the medical business." He is also opposed to federal government influenza inoculation programs.
Paul was critical of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, arguing that it was unconstitutional and did not improve race relations. He once remarked: "The Civil Rights Act of 1964 not only violated the Constitution and reduced individual liberty; it also failed to achieve its stated goals of promoting racial harmony and a color-blind society".
On April 15, 2011, Paul was one of four Republican members of congress to vote against "The Path to Prosperity".
