Wednesday, Sept. 5, 2012
The Real Paul Ryan
He voted to add $6.8 trillion to the national debt
Wisconsin Congressman Paul Ryan is taking a beating from fact-checkers, who have had to work overtime to try to verify the claims he made last week when accepting the nomination for vice president at the Republican National Convention.
Perhaps Ryan's biggest whopper was this statement:
“Back in 2008,” Ryan said, “candidate Obama called a $10 trillion national debt 'unpatriotic'—serious talk from what looked to be a serious reformer. Yet by his own decisions, President Obama has added more debt than any other president before him, and more than all the troubled governments of Europe combined. One president, one term, $5 trillion in new debt.”
This may make Ryan sound like an earnest, serious budget-cutter, but in reality he sounds like he has amnesia and has forgotten what happened when he was casting votes in Congress when George W. Bush was in the White House.
Paul Ryan entered Congress in 1999. When his first term ended in 2001, outgoing President Bill Clinton handed Bush a budget surplus and a modest national debt of $5.6 trillion, much of it a carry-over from the massive military spending during the Cold War.
Then Bush, along with loyal Republican Ryan, went on a spending spree, which turned the budget surplus into a budget deficit and added to the national debt.
Alleged budget hawk Ryan supported Bush policies that added to the national debt, such as the Bush tax cuts ($1.7 trillion between 2001 and 2008) and their $620 billion extension, the bank bailout ($224 billion), the Iraq war ($853 billion) and Medicare Part D ($180 billion), among them.
Overall, the Center for American Progress found that Ryan voted for “at least 65 separate pieces of deficit and debt-increasing legislation, with the total tab for all these votes a whopping $6.8 trillion in cumulative deficits.”
Bush and Ryan's spending spree and whopping tax cuts almost doubled the national debt from $5.6 trillion to more than $10 trillion, which they handed over to Obama in January 2009. Obama has added almost $5 trillion to the debt because of the existence of the Bush tax cuts (reducing the amount of revenue the government can take in); the weakened economy Obama inherited, which further reduces tax revenue; the interest on the $10 trillion he also inherited from Bush; the final years of the Iraq and Afghan wars; and the increased spending on safety net programs to support those who are jobless as a result of the recession.
So Bush and Ryan were handed a budget surplus, which they turned into a deficit, and they remain blameless in Ryan's eyes, yet Obama inherited the Great Recession, two wars and low tax revenues and Ryan blames him for adding to the national debt.
In addition, Ryan alleged that Obama failed to support the Simpson-Bowles deficit commission. In reality, Ryan was a member of that commission and rejected its recommendations to tackle spending.
Also curiously missing from Ryan's speech was his plan to drastically cut federal spending to eliminate the debt.
What Ryan didn't tell you is that his plan would not balance the budget until 2040 at the earliest. There's a good reason for that. Ryan plans to cut federal spending drastically, especially on programs that aid students, seniors, the poor and the middle class. But instead of using those savings to balance the budget, Ryan plans to hand the wealthiest Americans even bigger tax breaks than they enjoy now.
Another tidbit Ryan left out of his speech: Ronald Reagan's budget director David Stockman assessed Ryan's budget plan as doing “nothing to reverse the nation's economic decline and arrest its fiscal collapse,” adding that Ryan's plan is “devoid of credible math or hard policy choices.”
Perhaps Ryan's biggest whopper was this statement:
“Back in 2008,” Ryan said, “candidate Obama called a $10 trillion national debt 'unpatriotic'—serious talk from what looked to be a serious reformer. Yet by his own decisions, President Obama has added more debt than any other president before him, and more than all the troubled governments of Europe combined. One president, one term, $5 trillion in new debt.”
This may make Ryan sound like an earnest, serious budget-cutter, but in reality he sounds like he has amnesia and has forgotten what happened when he was casting votes in Congress when George W. Bush was in the White House.
Paul Ryan entered Congress in 1999. When his first term ended in 2001, outgoing President Bill Clinton handed Bush a budget surplus and a modest national debt of $5.6 trillion, much of it a carry-over from the massive military spending during the Cold War.
Then Bush, along with loyal Republican Ryan, went on a spending spree, which turned the budget surplus into a budget deficit and added to the national debt.
Alleged budget hawk Ryan supported Bush policies that added to the national debt, such as the Bush tax cuts ($1.7 trillion between 2001 and 2008) and their $620 billion extension, the bank bailout ($224 billion), the Iraq war ($853 billion) and Medicare Part D ($180 billion), among them.
Overall, the Center for American Progress found that Ryan voted for “at least 65 separate pieces of deficit and debt-increasing legislation, with the total tab for all these votes a whopping $6.8 trillion in cumulative deficits.”
Bush and Ryan's spending spree and whopping tax cuts almost doubled the national debt from $5.6 trillion to more than $10 trillion, which they handed over to Obama in January 2009. Obama has added almost $5 trillion to the debt because of the existence of the Bush tax cuts (reducing the amount of revenue the government can take in); the weakened economy Obama inherited, which further reduces tax revenue; the interest on the $10 trillion he also inherited from Bush; the final years of the Iraq and Afghan wars; and the increased spending on safety net programs to support those who are jobless as a result of the recession.
So Bush and Ryan were handed a budget surplus, which they turned into a deficit, and they remain blameless in Ryan's eyes, yet Obama inherited the Great Recession, two wars and low tax revenues and Ryan blames him for adding to the national debt.
In addition, Ryan alleged that Obama failed to support the Simpson-Bowles deficit commission. In reality, Ryan was a member of that commission and rejected its recommendations to tackle spending.
Also curiously missing from Ryan's speech was his plan to drastically cut federal spending to eliminate the debt.
What Ryan didn't tell you is that his plan would not balance the budget until 2040 at the earliest. There's a good reason for that. Ryan plans to cut federal spending drastically, especially on programs that aid students, seniors, the poor and the middle class. But instead of using those savings to balance the budget, Ryan plans to hand the wealthiest Americans even bigger tax breaks than they enjoy now.
Another tidbit Ryan left out of his speech: Ronald Reagan's budget director David Stockman assessed Ryan's budget plan as doing “nothing to reverse the nation's economic decline and arrest its fiscal collapse,” adding that Ryan's plan is “devoid of credible math or hard policy choices.”
But, how many of us know that the American Dream is to get a mortgage on that house in the suburbs where we can raise our 2.3 kids, a dog, and a cat while we are still young, then gradually work and pay off that mortgage, now that house is ours to retire in, can now afford to live on our fixed income, paying only food, utilities, a low property tax, no more mortgage payments.
Are we better off now than 4 years ago? Heck no, but is it Obama's fault, or is that just guilt by association? How about the real fault was private business that used their marketing skills to create the need for a lifestyle that required us to take out the equity we have been building up in our property and re-spend it in the economy to have those goods required to keep up with our neighbors? The profitable players in those private businesses lobbied congress and donated to their campaign funds to make sure the laws were set up to support this re-mortgaging of American private property, tax policy that said "deduct the mortgage, do not deduct the auto loan or credit card interest".
Set up Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and the VA loans to give loans to people that as a rule are not as likely to pay it off to completion. Set them up so they can re-sell those mortgages as bonds to non-US parties, that brings in foreign money to keep our system going... and the one responsible to pay off these are the private US citizens living in those homes, the same people who are tagged as taxpayers to "guarantee" these loans like an insurance. Meanwhile, I can spend more for that same item when it is loan money than if it was money I slaved on a job for, so I can then feed the record profits of the businesses, paying more than what the item costs to make, and accepting a lower paycheck for work I do that is worth more than what I am being paid.
While we thought we were going to work to make goods that we can export to rich foreigners, and be left free and clear, they got the American-made item, we got their cash. Instead, we sold them a bond to get their emerging economy cash today, but will leave us to pay them with interest later! They invested in our bond to make money! Oh, pass that on to future generations, I am only worried 2 years at a time.
Okay, our economy has cycles. Just like the gambling House must kick on more at the roulette table when some lucky SOB is on a winning streak, the streak eventually turns and the House gets more money back than what the winners take away. This is why Obama needed to pump more into the game, as the cycle will come back again. The Bush Republicans agreed to this, they started pumping more in even before Obama was in the Oval Office. The point was to keep the game going, because if the House folded, then the House lost.
Now, another question... this stuff about Paul Ryan and Deneeta Pope. It's amazing that Wikipedia does not have an entry, but TMZ is all over this. Google her, a cute-ass black cheerleader that he was dating not just for a few weeks, but for 5 years. He even brought that up in 2005 himself. Wisely, the mainstream press respects her wishes to "leave me out of this", so it is left up to scandal press like TMZ and the Examiner, just like so many conservatives follow the Drudge Report.
See this link, best I've seen on Deneeta Pope's link to Paul Ruyan...
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2196944/Paul-Ryans-black-ex-girlfriend-Deneeta-Pope-spent-months-prison-77-000-fraud.html
contained within the article...
"Keli Goff, political correspondent for The Root, penned an article entitled ‘Does Paul Ryan’s ex-girlfriend matter?’
"In it, she stated that ‘having a relationship with someone of a different race does not automatically make someone more racially sensitive and enlightened’ and Ryan’s policies did not help black people.
"It was possible, she said, ‘to have a black friend, Asian friend, Hispanic friend or Muslim friend or wife and still exhibit prejudice toward that group’ because ‘the friend or wife is simply viewed as the exception who is not like the others.
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Again, it's not Romney or Ryan, or even Obama I fear so much as the 500 US Congressmen and Senators who cater more to their extreme base in their rhetoric for votes, then turn tail and enact laws to support their financial benefactors.