Libertarian Candidate Bob Barr Discusses Economic Crisis

JUDY WOODRUFF:

And to our interview with Libertarian Party presidential nominee Bob Barr. He served as a Republican congressman from Georgia from 1995 to 2003. He joined the Libertarian Party in 2006.

Congressman Barr, good to see you. Thank you for being with us.

FORMER REP. BOB BARR, Libertarian Party Presidential Candidate:

Judy, thank you for having me.

JUDY WOODRUFF:

Remind us, first of all, what's the philosophy of the Libertarian Party?

BOB BARR:

It's very mainstream. Maximize individual liberty; minimize government power.

JUDY WOODRUFF:

And why do you want to be president?

BOB BARR:

Because neither of the other two candidates or none of the other third-party candidates really are and would move us in that direction.

Both Sen. McCain and Sen. Obama very clearly, as we've seen from this latest bailout nonsense, want to move us dramatically down the road of more government spending, more government power, and that necessarily means less decision-making for the individuals, parents, small businesses, and their communities.

JUDY WOODRUFF:

So we've watched the federal government, as you're reminding us, take this unprecedented series of steps over the last few weeks to help out these financial institutions, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac. What would you do differently?

BOB BARR:

First of all, "bailout" would not be a word that would be mentioned positively in a Barr administration.

The first person, Judy, that I would have called into my office would have been somebody we haven't heard from at all, and that is the attorney general. And as president, I would ask the attorney general, "Where in heck have you been?"

We have massive fraud being perpetrated here among financial institutions, investment houses, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac very likely. Why haven't there been any prosecutions that would reassure the markets, reassure the American people that their investments, their hard-earned dollars are, in fact, being protected?

The second thing, in a Barr administration, we would not see the government competing with private industry and private investment houses. Barely had that process of private investment houses and investors started coming into the marketplace and buying up some of these troubled assets, such as Wells Fargo coming in and buying up Wachovia, then the federal government came in and put a stop to all of that by competing with private industry.