Rep. Ron Paul R-TX, will announce Tuesday he is formally exploring the possibility of running for the U.S. presidency in 2012 and says Washington's leaders are not realistically trying to pay down the United States' $14.3 trillion debt.

He is expected to make the announcement that he is forming an Exploratory Committee at an event in Des Moines, Iowa on Tuesday afternoon.

That might lead to the next decision. It depends on what kind of reaction I get on your show tonight, he said in an interview with Sean Hannity on the Fox News Channel on Monday. If I get booed, maybe I shouldn't do it.

In a blog post to a campaign site on Tuesday, Paul said no one leading the U.S. government has any real intention of dealing with the nation's spending problems or reducing the debt.

A budget bill passed by the Republican-controlled House of Representatives recently expects that the proper U.S. debt limit will be $23.1 trillion in 2021, about $9 trillion higher than the current $14.3 trillion limit. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner said recently that the U.S. would reach that limit on May 16 and he could take extraordinary efforts to prevent U.S. defaults until July 8.

Even the most conservative budget that has been proposed by Republican leadership requires raising the debt ceiling by an additional $9 trillion by 2021. This demonstrates absolutely that no one in power right now has any real intention of addressing our spending problems or paying down the debt, Paul said in a statement addressing last week's warning by credit rating service Standard & Poor's that it could raise the United States' pristine credit rating in the next two years, if Washington did not reach a deal on addressing the nation's long term deficit problems.

They simply expect to continue to borrow and run up more debt forever, without limit. Yet they always imagine our dollar will have value no matter how many we print. This expectation is foolish and naïve. I guarantee that those buying our debt are not foolish and naïve enough to go along with this charade forever, he said.

Republicans have called for President Barack Obama to agree to significant spending cuts before lawmakers vote on increasing the debt limit.

The hard thing is not to raise the debt limit, because Congress will always do that, and they recognize that, Geithner said last week. He warned that U.S. creditworthiness was at stake if the limit was not increased.

The hard thing is to try to take advantage of this moment, and get Republicans and Democrats to come together and lock in some reforms that will reduce our long term deficits.

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