“We need to understand the more government spends, the more freedom is lost...Instead of simply debating spending levels, we ought to be debating whether the departments, agencies, and programs funded by the budget should exist at all.”

American author, activist, medical doctor, and former politician

Ron Paul is an American author, activist, medical doctor, and former politician. He served in the U.S. House of Representatives for Texas in two stretches, from 1976 to 1977 and from 1979 to 1985, and again from 1997 to 2013. He is known for a long public career that moved between medicine and politics, and for three presidential runs. He was the Libertarian Party nominee in 1988, then sought the Republican nomination in 2008 and 2012.