Congressman Ron Paul often declares himself a critic of federal spending, and touts himself as a Libertarian. It appears however, that Congressman Paul, as with the man many consider to be America’s first libertarian, Thomas Jefferson, do not always practice what they openly preached. The Congressman conveniently sets aside his strict construction of the constitution for earmarks, just as Jefferson did so for territory.
The Wall Street Journal, The Congressional Quarterly, The Liberty Papers, The Cable News Network, and The Fox News Channel have all researched the Representative's "fiscal frugalness". Unfortunately for Representative Paul, he is neither frugal nor libertarian in his earmarking.
According to The Wall Street Journal, Congressman Paul is planning to request an astronomical $400 million dollars worth of earmarks this Congressional year. The libertarian Congressman has requested $8 million for the marketing of wild American shrimp and $2.3 million to pay for research into shrimp fishing. That just scraps the surface of the proposed spending.
According to David Nather of The Congressional Quarterly, Paul is decrying irresponsible and unconstitutional Federal spending, while he requests earmarks for his district that:" includes two projects to improve the Gulf Intracoastal Waterway, at a combined federal cost of roughly $32 million. There’s also the sunken ship Paul wants the feds to remove from Freeport Harbor. And he wants the feds to take charge of maintaining the Pix Bayou Navigation Channel. There’s also a feasibility study for flood, hurricane and storm damage control projects along the coast. And there’s the mysterious “project in the vicinity of Galveston Bay.” (The bill provided no other details.)"
Congressman Paul doesn't see a conflict between libertarian ideals and rampant earmark requests for spending. As he put it in a floor speech last year, “earmarks . . . are a symptom of the problem, not the cause. The real problem is that the United States government is too big, spends too much, and has too much power.”
The Congressman goes on to justify his spending propensity as an offsetting action against executive power:" a crackdown on earmarks, he says, would only grant the executive branch more control over where the money goes. The total amount of spending wouldn’t change. “There’s nothing wrong with designating where the money goes,” Paul says — so long as the earmark is “up front and everyone knows about it,” rather than having it slipped in at the last minute with no scrutiny."The Congressman claims that in an ideal world there wouldn't be a federal income tax, however, as long as there is one, he has a responsibility to help his constituents recover some of the tax dollars the government has taken from them. Whether or not his constituents want that reclaimed money going to the marketing of wild American shrimp and shrimp fishing research is not clear.
Representative Paul has a unique approach when throwing his support behind certain earmarks. He sponsored ten earmarks for a particular bill and then sat out the vote when the bill came to the floor of the House. This is clever of the Congressman, even if it is less than libertarian of him. This technique ensures that he will bring home the bacon to his constituents, when he feels the bill will pass anyway with his earmarks, while pacifying his anti-tax supporters who helped him get elected to Congress.
This reminds one of Thomas Jefferson and the Louisiana Purchase of 1803. Jefferson, like Paul, had always been a strong and unyielding advocate of a strict interpretation of the constitution to ensure limited government both in scope and size. According to Dunn’s Jefferson’s Second Revolution, Jefferson confided to his closest advisers that he realized the Louisiana Purchase was unconstitutional:
To his closest advisers the president confided his understanding that the Constitution had not given the government the necessary authority to acquire and incorporate new territory into the union.
This reminds one of Thomas Jefferson and the Louisiana Purchase of 1803. Jefferson, like Paul, had always been a strong and unyielding advocate of a strict interpretation of the constitution to ensure limited government both in scope and size. According to Dunn’s Jefferson’s Second Revolution, Jefferson confided to his closest advisers that he realized the Louisiana Purchase was unconstitutional:
To his closest advisers the president confided his understanding that the Constitution had not given the government the necessary authority to acquire and incorporate new territory into the union.
President Jefferson toyed with the idea of a constitutional amendment but ultimately set the idea aside. He would later write that although the Purchase was “beyond the constitution” it was in such the national interest that he urged Congress to “cast behind them metaphysical subtleties” and approve the Louisiana Purchase. President Jefferson would later indicate that the constitution just had to yield to pragmatism in acquiring the vast territory. The powers of the federal government would expand right along with the new territory that the nation had acquired. Sometimes even to constitutionalists such as President Jefferson and Congressman Paul, the ends do justify the means.
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