Ron Paul Update

This is a transcript of presidential candidate Ron Paul’s appearance on Jay Leno’s Tonight Show on October 30, 2007. A video of the appearance is at the bottom. (If you notice any errors, please post them to the comments and I’ll fix them.)

JAY LENO: Our next guest, a Congressman from Texas also running for President as a Republican, he is definitely not leading in the polls, but he is the most popular GOP candidate on the web. We’ll find out what he’s all about. Please welcome Congressman Ron Paul. (applause, cheers)

JAY LENO: Thank you for coming!

RON PAUL: Thank you for having me.

JAY LENO: I know you’re from Texas now but what’s your background, you didn’t grow up in Texas, did you?

RON PAUL: No, I grew up in Pennsylvania, Pittsburg Pennsylvania.

JAY LENO: OK. And, you’re a physician, and still a physician

RON PAUL: Right.

JAY LENO: How many babies have you delivered?

RON PAUL: About 4,000.

JAY LENO: 4,000? Wow. (cheers, applause)

RON PAUL: Yeah

JAY LENO: And that’s just the NBA stars, that’s not even counting… no (laughter). I know you were also in the airforce as well?

RON PAUL: Right, I spent five years in the airforce as a flight surgeon.

JAY LENO: Okay, so, two noble professions, armed forces, doctor… how did you get into the sleazy one, the politics? (laughter) Now what made you leave being a doctor and then…

RON PAUL: Well, I got fascinated with studying economics and I figured we were on the wrong course about 30 years ago, and I think we still do a lot of things wrong. I’ve been fascinated with Austrian economics, which is free-market economics. It also involves hard money, that is, you shouldn’t be allowed to print money out of thin air, you know, we have a problem with that. (cheers, applause)

JAY LENO: Right. Right.

RON PAUL: We think money should be backed by something.

JAY LENO: Right, exactly. Okay. And you’ve been a Congressman how long?

RON PAUL: This is my tenth term. I was in for four terms, left for 12 years, went back to medicine, then I’ve been back again since 97.

JAY LENO: And this is the second time you’ve run for President?

RON PAUL: Second time, I did it in 88, as a Libertarian.

JAY LENO: Okay, okay. Now what made you become a Republican this time, or run as Republican rather than a Libertarian again?

RON PAUL: Well, I’ve always been a Republican, I took a break within the Libertarian party for that year, and I’ve been elected to Congress for 10 times as a Republican, so I’ve traditionally been a Republican.

JAY LENO: Okay, now, it’s interesting. You’re not in the top tier int he polls, but you’re certainly in the top three, I believe you’re number three in money-raising.

RON PAUL: That’s right.

JAY LENO: What do you attribute that to?

RON PAUL: The views are very popular. We defend the constitution, and very limited government, very popular, young people love it. You know, I say things like, “Would you like to get out of Social Security, you’re not gonna get anything”, young people say “Yeah, get out”.

JAY LENO: Now what do you mean, “get out”, do you mean, just put an end to Social Security?

RON PAUL: No, not put an end to it, as a matter of fact, my program would be the only way you could protect the people who need to get Social Security and they were dependent on it, ah, because, uh, there’s no money in Social Security fund. I’ve never voted to spend any of it so I can’t be blamed for taking care of that fund, but I would save billions, if not hundreds of billions of dollars maintaining our empire around the world. And I’d bring our troops home, and have enough money to cut our deficit, and take care of the people who become dependent on these programs, and allow people who would like to be self-reliant and get out of the heavy-handed government, to be able to do it. (applause)

JAY LENO: Now I know you also wanna do away with the… abolishing the IRS, is that correct?

RON PAUL: Yeah, yeah, it’s a good idea… (laughter)

JAY LENO: I mean, how do you do that, you know don’t you find, I find, no matter what money you give government, they seem to spend twice as much.

RON PAUL: That’s right.

JAY LENO: So you wanna cut it… if you did away with Social Security , how much of it would you be, would you be… three quarters of the income from the…

RON PAUL: If you got rid of the income tax?

JAY LENO: The income tax… the income tax for everybody.

RON PAUL: About 40%… you don’t have to get rid of all the government… if you get rid of the income tax you’d still have enough revenues that we’re about equivalent to what we had in the year 2000

JAY LENO: Really?

RON PAUL: Yeah, it’s not, you know, we lived a good many years without the income tax… you know, up until 1913, and like you said, once you…

JAY LENO: But we didn’t have paved roads, roads, and all the services that we

RON PAUL: Well, I don’t know, we did a lot of good things before 1913, at least we weren’t, we didn’t have an empire to worry about, and we weren’t policing the world, so, we weren’t wasting a lot of money, so… (applause)

JAY LENO: How about… okay… would you be for a flat tax, or a value added like the English have this huge sales tax, value added tax, anything like…

RON PAUL: Well, I lean towards a flat tax but I wanna make it real flat, like zero. (cheers, laughter and applause)

JAY LENO: I mean, I mean it sounds great, but it seems like there would not enough money being raised, I don’t know…

RON PAUL: Well, but people would have the money. When you send it to Washington, and you hope you get it back, then it’s divided up for political reasons, and you know that’s why we have lobbyists, you’ve heard there’s lobbyists coming to Washington…

JAY LENO: Sure, sure, alright…

RON PAUL: You know, they come, and they fight over this pie which is actually shrinking. My idea is, you allow people to work, and keep the fruits of their labor, the money stays in their house or in their state, so you don’t have to go to Washington and fight over this. And, you end up with much smaller government.

JAY LENO: Okay, now your biggest issue is of course Iraq, that’s how I got my attention.

RON PAUL: Right.

JAY LENO: And your plan were, close it down, bring everybody home, and…

RON PAUL: …as quickly as possible. I mean, it was a mistake to go in, we shouldn’t have gone in, we didn’t go in properly. Ah, see, I still believe we should follow the Constitution, as best as we can. (applause)

JAY LENO: But there’s a chance that, you get into these situations, made a mistake whatever, so deeply, that to pull out does more harm than good, I mean, do you…

RON PAUL: I don’t think so.

JAY LENO: No? I mean,

RON PAUL: No, I mean, if I were to make a mistake, in medicine, I made the wrong diagnosis, don’t wanna admit my mistake and I keep giving the patient the wrong medicine, wouldn’t make much sense. But we made a mistake, and we should change it, we should admit it. And we’re in worse shape. Our national defense is in shambles, compared to what it would be if we weren’t so engaged. [scrambled] our troops are disenchanted, the troops are complaining, and, it’s just that we’re overengaged, so I don’t think we’re safer at all. And I think if you look at foreign policy, _I actually think we’re more vulnerable for another attack under the conditions today than we were even before 9/11.

JAY LENO: I mean, would this, would you call yourself an isolationist?

RON PAUL: No, I wouldn’t, I wouldn’t call myself an isolationist. I follow the founders’ admonition, you know, peace and commerce and friendship with all nations, entangling alliances with none. So they were strong believers in free trade, trade and travel and friendship, diplomacy, and.. just bring the weapons home. We can defend this country, nobody is going to touch us militarily, I fear now because the consequences of what’s going on with the war overseas as well as the war on terrorism, that our greatest threat is a threat to our civil liberties here at home. (applause)

JAY LENO: Where do you see your chances as winning? Do you see your chances as winning, or just trying to at least get certain points across, upset the applecart, you know what I’m saying?

RON PAUL: Well, a lot more chance than it was 12 months ago… No, it’s growing by leaps and bounds, if you look at the growth of the supporters, I mean on the Internet and on these, on these meetup groups, we have over a thousand meetup groups and they’re spontaneously organized, the fundraising is growing exponentially, and the message is powerful. You know, I have my shortcomings, but the message has no shortcomings. The message of liberty is what America’s all about, and the more people hear about this and the more they understand the financial trouble we’re in, the trouble the dollar’s in, and the failure of our foreign policy, all of a sudden this has gotten so popular, way beyond what I had conceived, and, so I would say, yes, there probably is a risk I could win (cheers, applause)

JAY LENO: Would you accept a vice-presidency?

RON PAUL: I, I probably wouldn’t be offered one. (laughter) No, it would be real hard for me to accept a vice-presidency in an administration that endorsed everything I didn’t believe in. I wouldn’t be able to do that, and, uh, right now, there aren’t too many on the Republican side who are advocating non-intervention overseas, and yet they had… Republicans in the past used to endorse this issue. Remember in the year 2000, we were supposed to have a humble foreign policy, and don’t go into nation-building, so, it isn’t so long ago that we used to talk about that. But right now I don’t think any of the candidates are likely to endorse that philosophy. If they did and invited me I’d certainly consider it.

JAY LENO: Well I must say, I know, can I ask your age, you’re 72?

RON PAUL: 72.

JAY LENO: And I’m impressed about how many young people have joined on you, I meet young people all the time that enjoy listening to you and believe what you say, so good luck to you Sir.

RON PAUL: Well thank you very much!

JAY LENO: Congratulations. Ron Paul. We’ll be right back with the Sex Pistols.