Ron Paul goes Cassandra

Ron Paul weighed in on the fiscal cliff yesterday, issuing a grim prognosis saying the country has already gone over the cliff. 

LOS ANGELES, CA (Catholic Online) - Speaking on Bloomberg Television's "In the Loop" Ron Paul, the congressional representative and former presidential candidate said, "We're so far gone. We're over the cliff. We cannot get enough people in Congress in the next 5-10 years who will do wise things." 

Paul is a 12 time representative from Texas who is retiring this year. Although he is a Republican, he is a Libertarian darling and a hero to many in the Tea Party movement. He has spoken at length about government and individual responsibility. 

Paul is also very pro-life, having served as an obstetrician prior to entering politics. 

Paul spoke about the defeat of Mitt Romney saying, "The people in the Midwest voted against him: 'Oh, we have to be taken care of!' So that vote was sort of like what we are laughing at in Greece," 

"People do not want anything cut," he added. "They want all the bailouts to come. They want the Fed to keep printing the money. And they don't believe that we've gone off the cliff or are close to going off the cliff. They think we can patch it over, that we can somehow come up with some magic solution. But you can't have a budgetary solution if you don't change what the role of government should be. As long as you think we have to police the world and run this welfare state, all we are going to argue about is who will get the loot." 

Ron Paul is likely correct. America has for too long lived beyond its means, justifying its hegemony and entitlements as necessary, and paying only the minimum installment on the debt, leaving the bulk of it to the next generation. 

In reality, many of these purchases on the national credit card are intended to buy the support of key voting blocks. While some foreign presence and international activity is necessary, along with a reasonable safety net, at some point our nation crossed from necessary to wasteful. 

Unless we quickly find that old threshold between what is prudent and what is wasteful, we will continue to careen off the fiscal cliff before us, and Ron Paul, often chided as a Cassandra, will prove himself a prophet. 

As for Congress, it remains virtually the same as it was before the election. The current Congress is the least productive Congress since World War II. In 22 months, they have accomplished very little. It is difficult to expect they will change the nation's course in the last two before we really do hit that fiscal cliff. 

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