Ron Paul Biography
Summary
"Ronald Ernest 'Ron' Paul" (born August 20 1935) is a Republican United States Congressman from Lake Jackson, Texas, a physician, and a 2008 U.S. presidential candidate.
Originally from the Pittsburgh suburb of Green Tree, Pennsylvania, he has represented Texas districts in the U.S. House of Representatives (1976-1977, 1979-1985, and 1997-present). Paul placed a distant third in the 1988 presidential election, running as the Libertarian nominee while remaining a registered Republican. After his 1961 graduation from Duke University School of Medicine and a residency in obstetrics and gynecology, he became a U.S. Air Force flight surgeon, serving outside the Vietnam War zone.
Paul has been described as conservative, Constitutionalist, and libertarian.He advocates a non-interventionist foreign policy, having voted against actions such as the Iraq War Resolution, but in favor of force against terrorists in Afghanistan. He is against partisan politics and favors withdrawal from NATO and the United Nations, instead supporting the idea of strong national sovereignty citing the dangers of 'foreign entanglements' as expressed in the wishes of George Washington's farewell address. Having pledged never to raise taxes, he has long advocated ending the federal income tax and reducing government spending by abolishing most federal agencies; he favors hard money and opposes the Federal Reserve. He also opposes the Patriot Act, the federal War on Drugs, and gun control. Paul is pro-life, but opposes a Federal ban on abortion, advocating overturning "Roe v. Wade" to let states determine the legality of abortion.Throughout his 2008 presidential campaign, Paul has been a leading candidate in Republican straw polls, though he has had substantially lower numbers in landline opinion polls. He has strong Internet support, leading in web searches and YouTube subscriptions. On December 16 2007, Paul had the largest one-day fundraiser in U.S. political history, raising over $6 million in 24 hours through a grassroots effort, organized independently from the official campaign.==Early life and education==
Paul was born in Green Tree, Pennsylvania, to Margaret 'Peggy' Paul (née Dumont)and Howard Caspar Paul,the second son of a German immigrant.With an eighth-grade education, Howard co-owned Green Tree Dairy with his brothers Lewis and Arthur; the small-town truck farm stood just outside Pittsburgh. Paul was the third of five sons born during seven years in the Great Depression, and he shared one bedroom of their four-room house with his brothers William (the oldest), David, Jerrold, and Wayne. Paul began working at Harold's dairy at age five,and later delivered newspapers, worked in a drugstore, and became a milkman upon reaching driving age.One customer on his milk route was baseball legend Honus Wagner.Excelling in track and field, he graduated from Dormont High School in 1953 with honors. He had a best mark in the 100-yard dash of 9.7 secondsat a time when the national high school record for that event was 9.4 seconds;as a junior, he was the 220-yard dash state championhe served as pledge class president, house manager, and kitchen steward, planning and supervising cooks for all meals.By his senior year, he was running track again; he set the then-third-best marks in college history in the 100-yard dash (9.9 seconds) and 220-yard dash (21.8 seconds).He received his baccalaureate in 1957, majoring in biology.==Marriage and family==
While at Dormont, schoolmate Carol Wells had asked Paul to escort her to a sweet-16 Sadie Hawkins party, which was their first date. They kept in touch while attending colleges in different states. Over a 1956 park picnic before his senior year at Gettysburg, Paul proposed marriage to Wells; the couple were wedded on February 1 1957, at Dormont Presbyterian Church before 300 guests.They have five children, who were baptized Episcopalian:Robert specializes in family practice, Joy in ob/gyn like her father, and Rand in eye surgery, in Bowling Green, Kentucky. Rand is also founder of Kentucky Taxpayers United and often speaks in Paul's behalf.Paul supported his children during their undergraduate and medical school years, preventing their participation in federal student loans because the program was taxpayer-subsidized. He has rejected a Congressional pension for the same reason.Carol compiled recipes and photos from the large Paul family into a cookbook, originally for 14th district constituents.He usually goes home to Lake Jackson on weekends to avoid 'Potomac fever.'Instead he decided to pursue a medical doctorate at Duke University School of Medicine in Durham, North Carolina, attaining it in 1961. He interned and began residency training, both in internal medicine, at Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit (1961-1962);Carol meanwhile ran a dance school in their basement and raised collies.He remained in the military during the early years of the Vietnam War.He served active duty as a flight surgeon from 1963 to 1965, attending to the ear, nose, and throat problems of pilots in South Korea, Iran, Ethiopia, and Turkey, but was never sent to Vietnam. Based out of Kelly Air Force Base in San Antonio, Paul achieved the rank of captainand obtained his private pilot's license.he joked that he was 'fantastically rich.'His residency research into causes of pregnancy toxemia was subsequently published in the journal "Obstetrics and Gynecology". He moved to Surfside Beach, Texas, on July 3 1968, and eventually delivered more than 4,000 babies.==Early Congressional career==
During his early days, Paul was influenced by Friedrich Hayek's "Road to Serfdom", which led him to read many works of Ayn Rand and Ludwig von Mises while still a medical resident in the 1960s. He came to know economists Hans Sennholz and Murray Rothbard well and credits them with his fascination with the study of economics. On August 15 1971, when President Richard Nixon closed the 'gold window' by implementing the U.S. dollar's complete departure from the gold standard, he says he realized what the Austrian School economists wrote was coming true.his successful campaign against Gammage surprised local Democrats who had expected to retain the seat easily in the wake of the Watergate scandal. Gammage underestimated Paul's support among local mothers: 'I had real difficulty down in Brazoria County, where he practiced, because he'd delivered half the babies in the county. There were only two obstetricians in the county, and the other one was his partner.'
Paul continued to deliver babies on Mondays and Saturdays during his entire term as the 22nd district representative.where he also declined to attend junkets or register for a Congressional pension while serving four terms.He proposed legislation to decrease Congressional pay by the rate of inflation. In 1980, when a majority of Republicans favored President Jimmy Carter's proposal to reinstate draft registration, he pointed out their views as inconsistent, stating they were more interested in registering their children than they were their guns.it is now available from the Mises Institute, to which Paul is a distinguished counselor.Paul's chief of staff from 1978 to 1982 was Lew Rockwell.Paul was a regular participant in the annual Congressional baseball game.He returned to full-time medical practiceIn his House farewell address, Paul said, 'Special interests have replaced the concern that the Founders had for general welfare. Vote trading is seen as good politics. The errand-boy mentality is ordinary, the defender of liberty is seen as bizarre. It's difficult for one who loves true liberty and utterly detests the power of the state to come to Washington for a period of time and not leave a true cynic.'Paul placed third in the popular vote with 431,750 votes (0.47%), behind Republican Bush and Democrat Michael Dukakis.Paul was kept off the ballot in Missouri, and received votes there only when written in, due to what the "St. Louis Post-Dispatch" called a 'technicality'.As the Libertarian Party standard bearer,Paul gained supporters nationwide who agreed with him on many positions-gun rights, fiscal conservatism, homeschooling, and abortion-and won approval from many who thought the federal government was misdirected elsewhere. This nationwide support base encouraged and donated to his later campaigns.After the election, Paul had a coin business,began his own think tank (the Foundation for Rational Economics and Education), published an investment newsletter,but he quickly concluded 'there was no sincere effort' toward his goals.It became the third time Paul had been elected to Congress as a non-incumbent.Between 2001 and 2003, an online grassroots petition to draft Ron Paul for the 2004 presidential election garnered several thousand signatures.On December 11 2001, Paul told the independent movement that he was encouraged by the fact that the petition had spread the message of Constitutionalism, but did not expect a White House win at that time.Further prompting in early 2007 led Paul to enter the 2008 race.
Paul continued to be re-elected to Congress, starting his 10th term in 2007.In the 2008 Congressional primary, he has been challenged by Chris Peden, a Friendswood city councilman,and by NASA contractor Andy Mann.===Relationship with district===
After 2003 Texas redistricting, Paul's district is larger than Massachusetts,with 675 miles (1,100 kilometers) of Gulf of Mexico coastline between Houston and Corpus Christi, Texas, covering some 22 counties. Even so, Paul opposes programs like federally funded flood insurance (typically supported by coastal and rural representatives) because it requires those outside flood zones to subsidize those within, but prohibits those within from choosing their own insurers. In an overwhelmingly rural region known for ranching and rice farms,Despite his voting against heavily supported legislation like farm bills, Paul's devotion to reducing government resonates with 14th district voters:While Paul votes against most spending bills, he has diverted funds that have already been authorized by other bills into his own district.Paul also spends extra time in the district to compensate for 'violating almost every rule of political survival you can think of'.He has sponsored successful legislation to prevent the Department of Housing and Urban Development from seizing a church in New York through eminent domain, and a bill transferring ownership of the Lake Texana dam project from the federal government to Texas.Paul has introduced bills that would apply a $5,000 tax credit per child towards spending on any type of children's education-related expenses, public, private, or homeschool. He has introduced the Family Education Freedom Act in every Congressional session since 1997; the bill currently has six co-sponsors.He has also introduced companion legislation in the form of the Teacher Tax Cut Act, which would provide all elementary and secondary school teachers with a $1,000 tax cut, and the Professional Educators Tax Relief Act, which would give all K-12 school librarians, counselors, and other personnel the same $1,000 tax credit.He has also introduced the Education Improvement Tax Cut Act, which would allow $5,000 deductions for any type of donations to scholarships or to benefit academics at any school.In March 2001, Paul introduced the 'Constitutional War Powers Resolution of 2001,' which would repeal the 1973 War Powers Resolution (WPR) and thus prohibit presidents from initiating a war without a formal declaration of war by Congress.Later in 2001, Paul voted for the Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Terrorists, which authorized the president, pursuant to WPR, to respond to those responsible for the September 11, 2001, attacks.was translated and published in German, French, Russian, Italian, and Swiss periodicals before the Iraq War began.Paul said that between 2001 and early 2004 he had voted against more than 700 bills intended to expand government.Paul charged his fellow legislators with voting for the Patriot Act without reading it first; more than 300 pages long, it was enacted into law less than 24 hours after being introduced. In response to such Congressional actions, Paul introduced 'Sunlight Rule' legislation, which would not allow votes on legislation to occur until ten days after its introduction, with the intent of giving lawmakers enough time to read bills before voting on them. The bill requires allotting 72 hours for House members and staff to examine the contents of amendments.In 2005 and 2007, Paul introduced the Sanctity of Life Act, which would remove federal court jurisdiction over abortion cases arising from state laws and effectively negate "Roe v. Wade" as binding legal precedent. Also, for the purposes of statutory construction over the jurisdictional limitation imposed, the bill declares that 'human life shall be deemed to exist from conception.'and would forbid federal courts from spending money to enforce their judgments.On October 15 2007, Paul introduced the American Freedom Agenda Act of 2007, which would 'bar the use of evidence obtained through torture; require that federal intelligence gathering is conducted in accordance with the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA); create a mechanism for challenging presidential signing statements; repeal the Military Commissions Act, which, among other things, denies habeas corpus to certain detainees; prohibit kidnapping, detentions, and torture abroad; protect journalists who publish information received from the executive branch; and ensure that secret evidence is not used to designate individuals or organizations with a presence in the U.S. as foreign terrorists.'===Affiliations===
Paul serves on the House Foreign Affairs Committee (having been on the Western Hemisphere and the Asia and Pacific subcommittees); the Joint Economic Committee; and the Committee on Financial Services (as Ranking Member of the Domestic and International Monetary Policy, Trade and Technology subcommittee, and Vice-Chair of the Oversight and Investigations subcommittee).Paul served as honorary chair of, and is a current member of, the Republican Liberty Caucus, a political action organization dedicated to promoting the ideals of individual rights, limited government and free enterprise within the Republican Party.He also hosts a luncheon every Thursday for the Liberty Committee, a group of liberty-minded representatives from both sides of the aisle.In 2005 and 2006, individuals contributed 96.8% of the funds he raised. Federal Election Commission (FEC) records show Paul accepts money from political action committees (PAC's), although much less than most of his counterparts in Congress. Paul received PAC money during the 1998 (5.7%), 2000 (4.5%), 2002 (1.8%), 2004 (5.8%), and 2006 (2.1%) Congressional electoral cycles.In a special report, the group Clean Up Washington listed Paul as taking the seventh-lowest amount of PAC money of all House members, as well as accepting one of the lowest amounts of lobbyist money and taking the fourth-highest percentage of contributions from small donors. Their data studied contributions from the 2000 election cycle to midway through 2006.Of the 2008 Republican presidential candidates, he has accepted the lowest percentage of PAC money.Paul remains on good terms with the Libertarian Party and addressed its 2004 convention.He also was endorsed by the Constitution Party's 2004 presidential candidate, Michael Peroutka. Paul is a potential nominee of both parties, independent of the Republican National Convention's nomination.===Actions in Congress===
Paul was on a bipartisan coalition of 17 members of Congress that sued President Bill Clinton in 1999 over his conduct of the Kosovo war. They accused Clinton of failing to inform Congress of the action's status within 48 hours as required by WPR, and of failing to obtain Congressional declaration of war as specifically required in the Constitution. Congress had voted 427-2 against a declaration of war with Yugoslavia, and had voted to deny support for the air campaign in Kosovo. A federal judge dismissed the lawsuit, ruling that since Congress had voted for funding after Clinton had actively engaged troops in the war with Kosovo, legislators had sent a confusing message about whether they approved of the war. Paul said that the judge's decision attempted to circumvent the Constitution and to authorize the president to conduct a war without approval from Congress.=='Ron Paul Report' newsletter controversy==
Paul's newsletters, which date back to 1978 and has been variously titled 'Ron Paul's Freedom Report', 'Ron Paul Political Report', 'The Ron Paul Survival Report', and 'The Ron Paul Investment Letter',first became an issue in his 1996 run for Congress against Charles Morris. Morris ran numerous attack ads about Paul's newsletters, which included derogatory comments concerning race and other politicians.Alluding to a 1992 study finding that 'of black men in Washington ... about 85 percent are arrested at some point in their lives',the newsletter proposed assuming that '95% of the black males in Washington DC are semi-criminal or entirely criminal', and stated that 'the criminals who terrorize our cities ... largely are' young black males, who commit crimes 'all out of proportion to their numbers'.In 2001, Paul took 'moral responsibility' for the comments printed in his newsletter under his name, telling "Texas Monthly" magazine that the comments were written by an unnamed ghostwriter and did not represent his views. He said newsletter remarks referring to U.S. Representative Barbara Jordan (calling her a 'fraud' and a 'half-educated victimologist') were 'the saddest thing, because Barbara and I served together and actually she was a delightful lady.'The magazine defended Paul's decision to protect the writer's confidence in 1996, concluding, 'In four terms as a U.S. congressman and one presidential race, Paul had never uttered anything remotely like this.'A 1990 issue of the "Ron Paul Political Report" stated that 'Homosexuals, not to speak of the rest of society, were far better off when social pressure forced them to hide their activities'. After the 1992 Los Angeles riots, the newsletter referred to African-American rioters as 'barbarians' and suggested that the riots only stopped when it came time for 'blacks to pick up their welfare checks'. Other issues gave tactical advice to right-wing militia groups and advanced various conspiracy theories. While the newsletters were published under Paul's name, he disavowed the writings in a response to the New Republic article. Paul said that the quotations do not represent his beliefs, and that 'I have never uttered such words and denounce such small-minded thoughts.' He did not indicate whether he knew who wrote the articles, but again noted that he accepts 'moral responsibility' for not paying closer attention to writings published under his name.==2008 presidential campaign==
On February 19 2007, Paul formed an exploratory committee to gauge support for a run in the 2008 U.S. presidential election.Prior to his campaign, in a February 2007 CNN telephone poll, Paul was the candidate with the least name recognition besides John Cox.Paul has received record-breaking financial contributions in support of his campaign, largely from individual donors.His successful fundraising has been due in no small part to Paul's robust online presence, thanks to his supporters' creative use of 'viral marketing,' as a means of informing the public about their candidate.He remains a top web search term as ranked by Technorati.A fundraising drive in the last week of September 2007 raised an unexpected $1.2 million in one week and a supporter-organized one-day (November 5 2007) fundraiser raised a net $4.3 million, the largest documented one-day online fundraising record in political history at that time.On December 16th Ron Paul broke his own fundraising record for total one-day contributions exceeding $6 million.reflects both his medical degree and his consistent insistencethat he will 'never vote for legislation unless the proposed measure is expressly authorized by the Constitution.'Paul adheres deeply to Austrian school economics and libertarian criticism of fractional-reserve banking, opposing fiat increases to money in circulation;he has authored six books on the subjects, and has pictures of classical liberal economists Friedrich Hayek, Murray Rothbard, and Ludwig von Mises hanging on his office wall.
The only candidate to earn an A+ rating from Gun Owners of America, Paul has been a lead sponsor of legislation in congress attempting to restore individual Second Amendment rights.
Paul's foreign policy of noninterventionmade him the only 2008 Republican presidential candidate to have voted against the Iraq War Resolution in 2002.He advocates withdrawal from the UN and NATO for reasons of maintaining strong national sovereignty.He supports free trade, rejecting membership in NAFTA and the World Trade Organization as 'managed trade'. He supports tighter border security and ending welfare benefits for illegal aliens,and opposes birthright citizenship and amnesty; he voted for the Secure Fence Act of 2006. He voted for the Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Terrorists in response to the September 11, 2001, attacks,but suggested war alternatives such as authorizing the president to grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal targeting specific terrorists.
Paul regularly votes against almost all proposals for new government spending, initiatives, or taxes.He has pledged never to raise taxes,and states he has never voted to approve a deficit budget. Paul would abolish the individual income tax by scaling back the federal budget to its 2000 spending levels.Rather than taxing personal income, which he says assumes that the government owns individuals' lives and labor, he prefers the federal government to be funded through excise taxes and/or uniform, non-protectionist tariffs.He would eliminate most federal government agencies, calling them unnecessary bureaucracies.Paul is also vocal in his opposition to inflation, arguing that the longterm erosion of the dollar's purchasing power arises from its lack of commodity (such as gold) backing, which would restrain excess 'printing' of money and consequent devaluation. Paul says he 'wouldn't exactly go back on the gold standard,'but would push to legalize gold and silver as legal tender and remove the sales tax on them, so that gold-backed notes (or other types of hard money) and digital gold currenciescan compete on a level playing field with fiat Federal Reserve notes, allowing individuals a choice whether to use 'sound money' to protect their purchasing power or to continue using fiat money.He advocates gradual elimination of the Federal Reserve central bank for many reasons, believing that economic volatility is decreased when the free market determines interest rates and money supply.He favors allowing workers to opt out of Social Security to 'protect the system for everyone.'Paul strongly supports Constitutional rights, the right to bear arms, freedom of the Internet,jury nullification,and "habeas corpus" for political detainees.Civil liberties concerns have led him to oppose the Patriot Act, a national ID card, federal government use of torture, domestic surveillance, presidential autonomy, and the draft. Citing the Ninth and Tenth Amendments, Paul defers to states' rights to decide how to regulate social matters not directly found in the Constitution.Paul calls himself 'strongly pro-life,"an unshakable foe of abortion,'and believes regulation of medical decisions about maternal or fetal health is 'best handled at the state level.'(He says his years as an obstetrician lead him to believe life begins at conception;his pro-life legislation, like the Sanctity of Life Act, is intended to negate "Roe v. Wade" for ethical reasons and to get 'the federal government completely out of the business of regulating state matters.')He also opposes federal regulation of the death penalty,of education,and of marriage. He has voted against federal funding of joint adoption by unmarried couples (including same-sex adoption); he also supports revising enforcement of the military 'don't ask, don't tell' policy to focus on disruptive behavior and include members with heterosexual as well as homosexual behavior issues.He defers to private property rights in relation to environmental protection and pollution prevention.He also opposes the federal War on Drugs, wishing to leave the decision on whether to regulate or deregulate drugs, including medical marijuana, to the states. Paul advocates for the elimination of federal involvement and management of health care, which he argues would allow prices to drop due to the fundamental dynamics of a free market.
External links
(2008 Presidential Campaign Website)
(U.S. House of Representatives Office of Ron Paul)
(Ron Paul Library) , more than 800 articles and speeches by Ron Paul
(OpenSecrets.org presidential) campaign contributions (from the Center for Responsive Politics)
(PBS NewsHour with Jim Lehrer - Vote 2008: Ron Paul)
Credit
This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article about Ron Paul.
