REP. PAUL: Charlie, you really answered the question — you answered it in your question, because you said how can we afford a trillion-dollar war and we can’t afford health care? Well, that’s the reason. The resources are going overseas. We’re fighting a trillion- dollar war, and we shouldn’t be doing it. Those resources should be spent back here at home.
There is an inflationary factor. We can’t afford it. We do have good medical care, but the costs are so high now that our people in this country are actually going to India and getting their heart surgery done. They pay the plane ticket, the hospital, and the hotel and they get it for half price. So it’s inflation.
But if you don’t understand how inflation comes, we can’t solve this problem. It comes from deficit financing with this war-mongering foreign policy we have.
We run up the deficits. We tax. We borrow. We borrow from the Chinese. We can’t borrow enough. Then what do we do? We print the money, and then you wonder where the inflation comes? The value of the dollar goes down and prices go up where the government gets involved in certain things, like housing or medical care or education. Prices are skyrocketing. So you have to deal with the monetary issue to solve the problem of the medical issue.
MR. GIBSON: Senator Thompson.
MR. THOMPSON: Hmm. (Laughter.)
REP. PAUL: Don’t print any more money. We don’t need any more money.
MR. THOMPSON: So if we would stop printing so much money, we could get out of the war and provide health care to everybody? (Laughter.)
REP. PAUL: If we get out of the war, we wouldn’t have to print the money.
MR. THOMPSON: Okay. I just wanted to make — I just wanted to —
REP. PAUL: What’s wrong with backing the money by something —
MR. GIBSON: All right, let him go. Let him —
MR. THOMPSON: I wanted to make sure — I wanted to make sure I had this right.
Let me — let me break it down a little bit so I can understand it a little bit better.
REP. PAUL: Keep trying.
1:02 am on January 6, 2008
