The Ledger
Every statement that passed quotation and attribution checks. Mix any filter with any other: certainty 1/5, debate potential 5/5, or both at once.
why aren't all 20 resolved? a statement only gets an assessment when the public record can support or contradict it. opinions and what-ifs never can, and 1 checkable ones are still open, waiting for their date. predictions held up or didn't; assertions are supported or contradicted. on every card: ▮▮▮▮▮ certainty · ▮▮▮▮▮ debate potential. speakers are clickable
Rand Paul: US risks abandoning free-market principles for personality-driven politics
“Right now there's a great danger in our country to losing a movement that represents the free market, trade, and capitalism, and all of those things, because I think we're moving towards a movement that backs a person”
Rand Paul: Claims that trade hollows out middle class are false
“Most people who are for the protectionism say the middle class is being hollowed out and we're being ripped off. They're both absolutely and unequivocally untrue.”
Paul: I would support a 20% tariff to eliminate the income tax
“I don't like tariffs very much, but I'll vote for a 20% tariff. You know, I take a sale. It's a sales tax. I'll take a sales tax over an income tax.”
Paul: Social Security cannot survive without raising the retirement age to 70
“But it's not going to be around unless you raise the age to 70. That's the only way it sticks around.”
Paul: Raising retirement age alone will no longer save Social Security
“The age doesn't fix Social Security anymore. You gotta means test it.”
Paul: The Fed paid $188B in interest to banks not to lend
“We paid a hundred and eighty eight billion, the Fed did, in interest to banks not to loan money. Most of it went to five banks in New York, the big five, but 40% of it went to foreign banks.”
Rand Paul: Fauci privately admitted a 50-50 chance COVID originated from a lab
“In private, Anthony Fauci is saying, I'm fifty-fifty, whether this came from the lab or animals.”
Paul: An NIH foundation holds $1.2 trillion in Big Pharma vaccine revenue
“There's an NIH foundation that has 1.2 trillion dollars in it given from Big Pharma for their share of the COVID vaccine.”
Paul: Trump-style protectionism will make America poorer and risks economic calamity
“I think there will be many heirs and many people competing to be heirs of Donald Trump in the protectionist front. I don't think it's good for our country, and I think it will make us less wealthy, and ultimately could really lead to a calamity.”
Rand Paul: Selecting people by ethnicity over merit is now modern reality
“And they purposely would try to choose people based on the color of their skin or their ethnicity over their merit. Nobody believed that could ever happen. That was such a dystopian sort of Harrison Bergeron. That was all farce. That was dystopian farce. Until…”
Rand Paul: Tea Party failed because partisans tolerated debt under Republicans
“Came, conquered, and nothing happened because, ah, some of the people left, and some of the people decided that debts were okay if you had a Republican in charge, and were bad if a Democrat was.”
Paul: The US middle and lower classes shrank because people got richer
“The middle class, 50 years ago, about 54% of the people were in the middle class, and now it's 51. Everybody's like, aha, the middle class is shrinking. Well, the lower class was like, 37%. It's now 33%. It's like, where did they go? They're being hollowed out…”
Rand Paul projects US will borrow $15 trillion over next decade
“We're going to borrow like 15 trillion dollars over the next 10 years.”
Paul: The new spending bill raises the debt ceiling by $5 trillion
“Increase the debt ceiling by five trillion dollars. This is not only extraordinary, but unheard of. No conservative in their right mind would ever vote for this under Biden.”
Paul: I introduced a bill with Bernie Sanders to end Fed interest
“I've got a bill to eliminate that right now and that bill's co-sponsored by Bernie Sanders.”
Paul: AI impact is overstated and we are overbuilding data centers
“I think it's overstated that how great AI is going to be. I think it's going to be a lot of cool things, and I think some people are going to get caught. We're going to have too many data centers at one point, and I don't care how much electricity they're suck…”
Paul: Private sector leaders at DOGE are a great addition to government
“I think they've been a great addition because one, there are people who know about profit and loss, and there are people who have been successful in business, and the fact that they've been selected by the marketplace as being successful people means they're g…”
Paul: Big spenders in both major parties are pushing back on DOGE
“But the pushback, and it's bipartisan, the pushback. It's the spenders. It's the big spenders in both parties that have pushed back on doge.”
Rand Paul: U.S. annual deficit is currently 6% of GDP
“Well, it's six percent now, so we'd have to be cut in half”
Paul: We need an independent presidential commission to evaluate gain-of-function research
“I don't want to ban it. I want to set up a presidential commission of scientists who are not currently employed by NIH, don't have grants that I can give them bigger grants if they agree with me, and I want them to evaluate this.”