HS 377 - Time for Term Limits? Why Change in America is Hard with Dr Paul Broun

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It's my pleasure to welcome Dr. Congressman Paul Brown. He is a former U.S. representative for Georgia's 10th congressional district, serving from 2007 until 2015. He is a free market thinker and he, like me, believes in free people and free markets and is concerned about our bloated government and spending and so forth on both sides of the aisle. You know, this is not a really a left or right thing anymore. It's just everybody in politics is making government so much larger and so much more intrusive. So we're going to dive into some of these issues today and talk about some solutions. Paul, welcome. How are you?

I'm blessed to be with you. Thank you so much for having me.

It's good to have you on the show. So talk to us about the major areas. We know that this is just a challenge in every area of life. And we've got politicians out there on both sides, sides of the aisle that will just do nothing more than increase the size of government, increase the spending of government. And one of the interesting things I think that I've always said and believed is that both parties, both sides of the aisle, agree that government is inefficient, it's wasteful and it's corrupt. And it just seems to me that if you make the size of government larger, you're just going to increase those negative things that really both sides seem to agree with. You're going to increase in efficiency. There's just going to be more of it because the size will be bigger. As the size of the hole grows, the size of the problems grow, the corruption grows. And if it's smaller, that will shrink. It'll always be there. There always be ways, there always be inefficiency, there always be corruption. That's just because of the nature of human organizations. Right. But it'll be smaller. So why wouldn't we want to just make the whole thing smaller, you know?

Well, I'll tell you. Most members of Congress in the House and the Senate, Democrats and Republicans alike, have one major principle that they're going to stick firm to, and that's their own reelection bid. They want more power, they want more money so that they can buy their way back into office. And that's unfortunate, but that's the facts that I saw while I was in Congress. The reality is I tried to send powers back to the states or to the people as the 10th Amendment demands. And in fact, as a primary care family doctor, if Congress and the government was operating according to the original intent of the Constitution that our founding fathers meant for government to be, I'd be practicing medicine in Georgia most of the time. Go to Washington every now and then to make sure that we, we have a strong national defense, that our foreign policy is in the best interest of this nation, that we have a strong, vibrant economy and make sure that we're secure as a nation and coming back home and practicing medicine and seeing patients. That's what it should be. That's what our founding fathers meant for it to be. But the politicians in Washington don't want that. They become professional politicians. They are just fighting for more and more money, more and more power. And it's unfortunate. And the American people are going to have to stand up and, and say, no, we're not going to have this anymore. And it's going to take a revolution at the ballot box to change things.

I mean, are term limits the answer?

I don't think so. The problem is if you have a big government politician in office, you term limit them out, put another big government philosophy politician in their place. You just replace one bomb with another bomb. So the solution is we are going to have to have a revolution at the ballot box to throw these people out. I used to call myself conservative, but what's that mean anymore? You have these Republicans who call themselves conservative who continue to vote for more spending, more government, more taxes, more intrusion into our lives. It's going to lead us to an economic collapse of this nation if it does not stop. So what? One term is too many for that kind of politician. We've got to replace those kind of politicians with folks who, who truly believe in the Constitution as our Founding fathers meant for it to be. You see, in Article 1, Section 8 of the U.S. constitution, there are only 18 enumerated powers that Congress has to vote on. Eighteen things. And that's all the courts only have 11 things that they can vote upon and most of what that entails is just the 18 things in Article 1, Section 8. And the President should be just carrying out the orders of the Congress and not creating new law themselves. So we've got to turn things around. People absolutely need to hold their politicians accountable. We've got to throw people out who want to continue spending the kind of money that politicians in both parties are doing today. And it's going to take maybe several elections for this to occur. But we've got to put a stop to this or we are headed to an economic collapse. This nation, it just has to cease. And it's up to we the people to make it do so by having that revolution at the ballot box.

Well, okay, so a couple comments on that. First of all, I definitely want to give you the chance to just outline for the listeners a few of those 18 things just so people will have some understanding of that. But also, you know, everybody just, they just vote selfishly. They vote their own pocketbook. For some, that means voting their own pocketbook in terms of lowering taxes, seeing less regulation, because that's expensive to comply with if you're a business owner on the handout side. On the welfare side, people just vote for more goodies. And we have this whole segment of the population, this is just voting the treasury in their favor. I mean, people aren't going to do that. They're not going to change to do the right thing. They're going to do the immediate gratification thing. So it just seems to me that if we had term limits, that would be a, an answer. I mean, we've got these career politicians, they stay in there forever and like you started off saying, they're just committed to their own reelection. And how do you get reelected? Free goodies, you know, give out goodies. And that's how you're going to get reelected.

Well, the free goodies go not only to the recipients of food stamps and government housing, but it also goes to big business as well.

That's what I, well, I did mention that, you know, the regulation and taxes.

And so the thing is, if you change from one politicians going to act like Santa Claus to another Santa Claus type politician, you haven't changed anything. And that's what term limits would do, is just exchange one hat from one person to the hat on another person that's doing the same thing. So that's, that's the reason the American people need to start truly voting their pocketbooks. And that means vote for a strong Economy, vote for good jobs. We've got to get the regulatory burden and tax burden off of business and industry so that we can have a vibrant economy. We've got to go to a sound money policy. I want to get rid of the Federal Reserve. In fact, I introduced a bill to do that, passed one in the US House to have an open, totally transparent, full audit of the Federal Reserve, but also introduced one to get rid of the Federal Reserve and go to another bill to go to sound money policy, a gold standard or silver standard or something of the like. We've got to get the tax burden off of business and industry. In fact, I introduced the jobs bill, which is an acronym for jump Starting our business sector. And what it would do is it would permanently lower corporate taxes, capital gain taxes, as well as death taxes to zero, and would allow all businesses, small businesses as well as large businesses, to do an immediate write off of any capital expenditure that would bring a tremendous amount of manufacturing back to America. It would bring jobs back to this country. We would have a very vibrant economy. People would be better off. But the thing is, this big government philosophy, all it's doing is actually hurting poor people and senior citizens on limited income because the more regulations that you put on energy companies, for instance, gasoline prices go up, electricity goes up, food goes up, everything goes up. And people who are poor, people who are on a limited fixed income, hurt the most. And the best way to change all that, the way for people to truly vote their pocketbook as well as to vote for the future generations of this country, is to reduce the size and scope of government. Let's get our business sector going. Let's pass that bill. Let's get the regulatory burden off of business and industry, particularly small businesses, and we can have a very vibrant economy and people have more money in their pocket. Plus I believe very firmly in a retail sales tax. So let's pass the fair tax and that will get our economy going as well.

What do you mean about the retail sales tax? Just quickly, and then I want to comment on your other remarks. You're talking about a national sales tax.

Well, a national retail sales tax is one of the proposals that I supported when I was in Congress. It's called the fair tax. But the problem is whether we go to our national retail sales tax, whether we go to a flat tax like my friend Steve Forbes has proposed, or whether we just.

And we've had Steve on the show. Yeah, I agree.

Well, he's a great guy and I've had long discussions about retail sales tax versus the fair tax and a flat tax. But whether we reform our current tax system, it really does not matter about how they get our taxes. What really matters is how much of our money they're getting and how big government continues to grow and both parties continue to grow it. So it's just got to stop. And the only way that's going to happen is if freedom loving Americans who believe in the free market system, who believe in an economy that is strong and vibrant, will go to the polls and throw out these big government bums in both parties and, and put people in Congress who truly believe in limited government as our founding fathers meant for government to be under the original intent of the Constitution. So that's the kind of change that we must make here in this country. And that's what I'll continue to fight for.

Well, I certainly agree with you. However, you know, I want to ask you, how are you going to get people to understand that supply chain or cause and effect reality of things? Of course it makes complete sense, but most people, they have no concept. I mean, you talk to people on the left and they say, well, you know, we just got to stick it to these big companies. We need to raise the minimum wage to $15. Or you know, why don't they just say raise the minimum wage to a million dollars an hour? I mean, you know, if that's the solution. They don't seem to understand the concept of pass through that. It's not like these companies, these businesses, small, big, medium, any size business, it's not like they don't react to things. They get to make choices too. I mean, this girl came up to me last week and she had a petition she wanted people to sign, you know, getting paid three bucks a signature to collect signatures. And she clearly knew nothing whatsoever about what she was doing, right? Not that she cared. I mean, maybe it's just a job to her, right? But, but she said, these healthcare executives, these CEOs of healthcare companies, do you realize they make a million and a half dollars a year? They make more than the President. And I said, well look, first of all, the President doesn't go into it for the salary because when the President leaves office, he'll make a million bucks a speech for a 30 minute speech, okay? And there's all sorts of power and prestige that goes with that. So that's a totally faulty comparison. First of all, I said, look, okay, so lots of CEOs make tens of millions of dollars a year, not a million five. That's really no big deal for an Ivy League, high powered CEO person at a big company that the million five isn't any big deal at all. I said, don't you think they'll react, you know, as soon as their salary is capped at a million five, won't they go looking elsewhere? Won't headhunters call them and say, hey, you know, this company, you've got management skills. This company will pay you two million dollars. This company will pay you two and a half million. Don't you think they're going to make a choice too? They seem to have no understanding whatsoever that the marketplace reacts. Take for example, the comparison of Zimbabwe. Even right when they had that rampant, insane inflation caused by mismanaged government and their dumb little central bank and government spending so the prices would rise so quickly as they were creating money out of thin air, that the merchants finally decided that they couldn't keep up with raising prices. So they would, they would literally raise the prices by the hour. So the government, in all its wisdom in Zimbabwe, said, okay, well look, there's a law now that you can't raise prices so quickly and if you do raise prices will put you in jail. That's what the government's reaction was. So the merchants just said, okay, well, we can't be merchants anymore, so we're going to stop selling stuff. And then there are shortages. Where do people think that this actually works? I mean, you look at Venezuela, you look at everybody who's tried this kind of central planning stupidity, it's a massive failure. Don't you think the prices will go up at McDonald's if they have to pay everybody $15 an hour? Or they'll just replace people with robots and automate everything? I mean, how do people not understand that?

Absolutely, you're just dead on correct with all that. And that's exactly the direction we're headed here in the United States if we don't stop what's going on in Washington D.C. as well. But you're correct.

Of course we agree on that. But what I'm asking you is this, how do we get people to understand that the 47%, as it's been referred to, will never want to comprehend that. They want the instant gratification of, hey, look, if I'm getting $9 today and I can get $15 by voting for Bernie Sanders, why not do that? They have no concept of the fact that all their prices of everything they buy will go up. They don't understand that.

And those people who are going from the current minimum wage and want it to double the $15 an hour are going to be out of a job. So they're not going to be making anything whatsoever as well. Just as you mentioned, McDonald's and Burger King are going to go to automated robot types of cooking and sandwich delivery as well because business will react. It's going to be really a matter of trying to get folks cognizant of economic realities. And that's the thing that is exciting about shows like yours is that it helps people to start understanding what the reality is and start demanding a different kind of governance. Of the roughly 47% that you referred to, a lot of those people actually do not vote as well. So if we can get enough people.

And they don't listen to my show either, just so you know.

Well, that's true too. But people who do listen to your show, if they say, hey, we do need to have a revolution at the ballot box. We need to go back to constitutionally limited government. We've got to stop this out of control spending and we've got to pass some bills like Dr. Brown's patient option act, which is one that repeals Obamacare and is the only Republican bill that is market based and puts you and your doctor in charge of making all your healthcare decisions. Pass my JOBS act which would bring manufacturing back to this country. And just little things that you just mentioned are absolutely correct. People think about these corporations and we've got tax corporations that make all this money. But who actually pays corporate taxes? It's the consumer, it's not the corporation themselves. It's just passed through to the ultimate consumer or it's taken out of the hands of the stockholders, out of their dividends or whatever.

People do not understand that businesses are just pass through entities. Look, I'll give you an example. Here's one. On another side of the economy, we help in my real estate investment company, we help people invest in properties nationwide.

In markets that we like.

And there's a big difference when someone purchases a property in say Tennessee or Indiana, Georgia versus Texas. Texas has no state income tax, but it has much higher property taxes, right? Well, Tennessee doesn't have state income tax either. But you know, there's a lot of dynamics that go into this stuff too complicated for this discussion. However, just suffice it to say that the rents are higher in like if you took the same apples to apples house in an apples to apples comparison type of neighborhood, Georgia versus Texas, you would see higher property taxes in Texas, but you'd also see higher rent because the owners that own those houses simply pass the rent cost through to the tenant. Now the tenant probably thinks they're getting away with murder. They think hey I live in a state where there's no state income tax, isn't that awesome? And I'm not an owner so I don't pay property taxes. Look at me, I got away with murder. Everything's free for me. I got a free ride, but not really. They're paying higher rent to offset the owner's taxes and the same is true in every business on earth. But people do not understand that. I don't know, I'm. I wish they would think the way you mentioned but I just, I don't have a lot of hope that they will.

Well it's frustrating and I understand the feelings that you have there because I'm frustrated as well. In Hosea 4. 6 God says my people are destroyed for lack of knowledge. And we've had a concerted effort to dumb down Americans through the Department of Education and this government controlled school system with Common Core, no child left behind etc.

Otherwise known as communist core.

Well I call no Child Left behind, no teacher left unshackled. I wrote a bill actually that was difficult to write that would get rid of the Department of Education totally. We've got to leave money in people's pockets. I think it's going to be a step by step process. Let me tell you. Go back to my jobs bill. Jump starting the business sector.

To remind you it permanently reduces corporate taxes, capital gains taxes and death taxes to zero and allows an immediate write off of all capital expenditures. I was talking to the manager of a manufacturing plant here in Georgia that's an a multinational corporation and I asked him if we lowered the corporate taxes from 35% which we have now in this country which is the highest in the industrialized world down to about 27 or 25%. That's what the Republicans in Washington have been talking about for several years. What would be his response as a businessman? And he said Dr. Brown if you do that I've got about 400 employees in this plant here. We'll probably expand by about 10% so we'd hire another 25 to 50. So what if we reduced your taxes to zero? What would be your response? He said Dr. Brown I'd be looking all over America to build new plants to bring jobs back here to America. We need to pass bills like my jobs act and get people to see what the response business wise economically will be. I talked to Art Laffer, the famous economist that works with, worked with Ronald Reagan about my.

Yeah, the Laffer Company, of course, I've met Art Laffer.

Right. And ARTO, he said, Dr. Brown, there's really no economic model to even guess how big the economy would be under your bill. And we've got to get the regulatory burden off of business as well. And what that will do is it will make everybody wealthier, it will provide good high paying jobs for all Americans. And then we need to get the government regulatory burden off of innovators so that they can develop these high skill, high paying jobs so that people that graduate from technical colleges or even high school have the ability to make a great living for themselves and their family and not have the government take so much money away from them. And what we need to do is a step by step process to pass that kind of legislation. Once we do that, we'll see the economy grow in tremendous leaps and bounds and folks will start saying, hey, we need more of this. I need more of a job, I need to be paid more. And I think you'll see a change in the attitude of the American people. But it's going to require having a majority of Republicans in the House and the Senate who truly believe in limited government and are not going to continue to vote for more regulation and more taxes and more government and more spending.

How are we going to get that? Yeah, how are we going to get that to happen? You know, that's the big question, of course, Absolutely. Everything you say. Absolutely. But making it go from idea to reality is very, very difficult, obviously, because, you know, really we've been struggling with this. I mean, everything's been going to the left for the better part of 50 years, if not longer. I don't know.

Just let me tell you. The good news is that when I was first elected to Congress in 2007, there were two of us in the US House that truly believed in the Constitution as it was intended by the writers of the document. That was me and Dr. Ron Paul from Texas. There was one over in the US Senate and it was my good friend Jim Dement from South Carolina. The good news is there are more today and we're getting more and more. But we can't just look at party labels because we've got to. There are people who are big government Republicans just like all the Democrats are big government folks that believe in a socialistic style of governance. But there are candidates out there that we need to identify. We need to get money to them, we need to support them so that they can run and be successful, so that they can go to Washington and start working to pass my jobs bill, pass option act, pass my get rid of the Department of Education act and other bills like that or others that they would come up with. You see, I want to get rid of the Department of Labor, I want to get rid of the Department of Commerce, I want to get rid of the Department of Energy, I want to get rid of the EPA as well. And while we're at it, let's get rid of the IRS too and let's go to fair tax or national sales tax. Those are the kind of policies that there are politicians, candidates all across this country that they espouse and if they can get the support that they need to win an election, because the establishment in Washington are not going to support that kind of candidate. The big government interest businesses aren't going to support that kind of candidate. So we the people are going to have to, we can have that revolution at the ballot box. We can have people in Washington who are going to stand firm on the Constitution and are going to believe in the oath that they take to uphold and defend the Constitution against enemies both foreign and domestic. We have domestic enemies of the Constitution. Today they're the leadership of the U.S. house of Representatives, the U.S. senate, whether it's under Democrat or Republican control. Today we have enemies of the Constitution. That is 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. And that's true whether they're Republican or Democrat. We've got black robe enemies of the Constitution sitting on federal benches all over this country as well as the U.S. supreme Court. And the American people just need to stand up and say, no, we're not going to do this anymore. We're through with it. We're going to have that revolution at the ballot box. If we don't, I think we're going to have a revolution in the streets.

Well, appreciate your enthusiasm. I just say good luck making it happen, you know, but that's, I'm not too optimistic about that. But let me ask you a question if I can. I am intrigued by the idea, and I always have been for really a couple decades now, of getting rid of income tax entirely. I mean you really don't have income tax when you have fee, you don't need it at all. When you have fiat money, when you have a central bank because you can just tax through inflation. You know, we have two taxes and it's no coincidence whatsoever that the IRS came into being right after the Federal Reserve. I mean that is an obvious conspiracy to me. And I just visited, I took my mastermind group, the Venture alliance to Jekyll Island, Georgia, the birthplace of the Federal Reserve. It was fascinating. We did that just a few weeks ago.

And spend more money.

Yeah, we need.

We need the economy.

Well, actually, that leads to my question. Okay, so I've been intrigued by this idea of, you know, let's just get rid of the income tax completely and let's just have a national sales tax or some sort of a VAT system, a value added tax. But my concern with that idea is that, look, what gets rewarded gets repeated. What gets discouraged gets minimized. And with an economy that is really based on 72% of the economy is based on the concept of consumption. If you discourage consumption by taxing it, maybe people will just become really frugal and they won't buy things and that might lead to a big economic slowdown. We gotta wrap up. But I'd just like to maybe have you close with speaking to that for just a moment because although I do like the idea in a lot of ways, it's certainly a simple idea. The complexity of our tax returns is absurd beyond belief. Our tax code, nobody can possibly understand it. I sign my returns every year and I don't know what the heck I'm signing. It scares me that I. I might be breaking a law that I don't even know exists. You know, that's what we have. So I like the idea, but I don't know. I'm afraid that it might lead to a slowdown because it would discourage consumption.

Economic slowdown. Actually, we headed to the total economic collapse, that the collapse is going to be even worse than it was in the Great depression of the 30s if we don't stop what's going on in Washington today, we've got to make a major change. You talked about Zimbabwe and the hyperinflation that occurred there. We've seen that over and over again. We had to do that here in this country. So the question is, do we do stuff now or do we wait till the total collapse comes before we actually start trying to fix things? I'm optimistic enough to believe that we can fix things before that collapse comes. There are a lot of economists that think we're already off the cliff, that we're already in a free fall, and that a total collapse of our economy is pending and unavoidable. I don't believe that. But if Congress doesn't stop spending money it doesn't have, if we don't get our economy going, leave dollars in people's pockets, create jobs in this country and start paying down this debt that is almost, if not outright. Well, it's unsustainable, but it may or may not be one that we can deal with. And we've got to go back to sound money policy. That's the reason I introduced those kinds of bills. And we've got to get politicians elected, candidates elected who believe in those things that I do. And it's absolutely critical for folks all across this country to support individuals who will take power away from themselves and other politicians in Washington, D.C. and leave that power in the hands of the states or the people, as the 10th Amendment demands, and leave money in people's pockets. Let's create jobs, let's create strong economy. And I'm going to fight for that as long as I have a breath to do so. And that's exactly what I'll continue to do.

Well, Congressman Brown, give out your website. Tell people where they can find out more about you.

Well, my website is PaulBrown.com it's P, a U, L, B R, O U N. It's Brown with a U instead of a W. My family either can't spell or can't pronounce. I'm not sure which, but it's B, r o u n. Paulbrown.com they can write me at Paul Brown, P.O. box 3301, Gainesville, GA 30503. If they want to help me to stay in this fight, they can send me a check.

There you go.

So I need some help so I can stand the fight. So I'd appreciate that.

Congressman Dr. Paul Brown, thank you so much for joining us.

God bless you. Thank you.

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