On the “Psycho Talk” segment of his MSNBC show tonight, Ed Schultz turned his attention to Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX) who has suggested that the United States government should cut all funding that isn’t in the Constitution. Schultz pointed out that eliminating Departments like Education and Agriculture, would mean getting rid of food standards and safety.
Here is the video:
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Paul said, “How about getting rid of the Department of Education, the Department of Agriculture, just go down the list, get rid of it, cut the budget in half, everything that is not constitutional, that’s a good place to start.” Schultz pointed out that there are a lot things that aren’t in the Constitution that people like such as traffic lights, food safety, and the FAA. Plus, I want to see how popular Republicans would be if they cut out programs like Social Security and Medicare.
It must be pointed out that Ed Schultz was wrong about something here. He defended the Department of Education by claiming that it was needed to help districts that are underfunded. This isn’t correct, as 91% of all education funding comes from state and local government, and most of the federal government’s 9% is spent on higher education. The debate over whether or not the nation actually needs a Department of Education has been raging on since the day it was created, and shows no signs of slowing down.
People on the left agree with much of Rep. Paul’s foreign policy, and his calls for personal and civil rights, but domestic policy is where they part ways with him. As much as Ron Paul would like to, he can’t drag the United States back to the 19th Century. Paul was advocating the old conservative myth that we can our way out of debt. We can’t.
In an ideal non-political world, we could spend less, but as the recent failure to get rid of subsidies for the big agribusiness firms illustrated, Republicans and Democrats won’t cut programs, because the American people love their big spending government. Americans always want to cut the deficit, but they don’t want their programs cut. This is a reality of American politics.
Of course Ron Paul, as President (or anything else) wouldn’t be able to cut all of those things, but if we had someone who *wanted* to do so then maybe government power would shrink along with the spending, leaving us citizens more free than we’ve been in a long long time.
Lets quit the bickering between us (dems and repubs) and UNITE. Then we could shrink the government by default and run things ourselves(!)
Get this guy off the air. Never heard of him. Who is he? The Psycho Talk show host is more appropriate.
Ron Paul’s main proposal for cutting the deficit is to seriously trim the one trillion dollar defense budget. Curious this fellow would go off on some out-of-context comments on what would be needed to completely get rid of the deficit. One might just think he was trying to make some propaganda. One might think that he wasn’t serious about the discussing the actual issue.
Curious how many people watched this piece of trash and were seriously influenced by it. Some one, I suppose, unfortunately.
The states did better with the schools than the Feds do because on MOST issues, individuals can best impact policy over their diverse lives and circumstances in their localities. For one thing, they simply have the opportunity to show up at a local school board meeting after work whereas it takes paid lobbiests to get your voice heard in DC.
Cutting this from the federal budget says nothing about how states may fund their programs, it just eliminates the waste and misdirection caused by having a federal agency above the state agencies, which started, disasterously, in the 70s. Our schools were better before then.
Ed Schultz thinks the Federal government is responsible for traffic lights too? Is there any aspect of American society that he believes does not require the direct personal involvement and approval of Pelosi, Reid, et. al.?
I suggest Mr. psychobabble statist Ed Schultz read the 10th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution which states:
“The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.”
Why does Mr. Schultz hate the U.S. Constitution?
What a snake. Putting Ron Paul on “psycho talk.”
Dr. Paul is the only honest politician of modern days, and his policies are everything that we need to instate. We’ve strayed so far from the Constitution and our fundamental liberties that alleged “political experts” are calling everything that our founding fathers intended for this country CRAZY.
WAKE UP!!!!!!!!
I’ve noticed a pattern among Cons: A liberal could say 100 truths and a con will always try to find the one place where he or she didn’t get a minor point correct, and that con will rant on for hours on how wrong that liberal is and conveniently miss the entire point that the liberal was making…. (like the Ed Schultz Hates the Constitution post). You people are pathetic. If you want to follow dolts like Paul, then I suggest you start talking about privatizing the police force, fire departments, and schools because that’s SOCIALISM and is against your core values. Oh by the way, have Mom, Dad, Grandpa, and Grandma mail back those Social Security checks too while you’re at it. That’s SOCIALISM. To hell with the seniors and their Medicare…….according to you and Paul, let ‘em rot, right? Better be dead than red, huh? ~shakes head~
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Yea, yeah. Our Founding Fathers called “nuts” too and you know what came of them. I don’t know why Schultz hates the Constitution so much, maybe he’s scared of real freedom, like the slacker teenager forced to move out on his own. Down with the nanny-federal state. Ron Paul rocks!!!