Wednesday, August 15, 2012
Paul Ryan’s disappointing reality
Ryan seems like the perfect vice presidential candidate for the people who actually want a true-blue, tried and tested conservative on the Republican ticket.
Except for one problem. He’s an imposter.
Ryan’s big talk of small government bears little, if any, resemblance with how he actually votes.
In national politics, where perception is almost always more important than reality, Ryan has managed to perpetrate one of the greatest scams in recent memory by making conservatives believe he’s a glorious mix of Ron Paul, Ayn Rand and Barry Goldwater.
Would a supposed Tea Party darling vote with Hillary Clinton, Jesse Jackson Jr., John Kerry, Barack Obama, Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid and Bernie Sanders on one of the past decade’s most important pieces of legislation? Of course not.
Yet, that’s exactly what Ryan did when he voted in support of TARP, the $700 billion Wall Street bailout bill.
Oh, and Ryan benefitted handily from that reprehensible vote. He recently snagged $12,150 from Wells Fargo, $10,000 from Goldman Sachs and $9,700 from Bank of America for his campaign coffers, according to campaign disclosures published by the website Open Secrets.
The conservative cause’s golden boy has plenty more bad votes where that came from. In 2003, Ryan voted for Medicare Part D, which expanded government control of healthcare to make prescription drugs an entitlement — and cost Americans more than $55 billion annually, according to the Department of Health and Human Services.
Ryan also voted for the auto bailout, No Child Left Behind and ethanol subsidies.
He even opposes repealing the Davis-Bacon Act, which requires federal construction contractors to pay prevailing wages. Davis-Bacon increases construction costs for taxpayers and discriminates against talented non-union workers. As a result of this AFL-CIO brownnosing, Ryan has racked up tens of thousands of dollars in campaign contributions from labor unions, according to Mother Jones.
Even “The Path to Prosperity,” Ryan’s deficit decreasing budget proposal, wasn’t nearly as fiscally conservative as he would have Americans believe.
Ryan’s proposed budget, for example, does nothing to reduce America’s ballooning defense spending, which has doubled in the past decade, according to the White House Office of Management and Budget. The Cato Institute found that “The Path to Prosperity” only modestly decreases nondefense discretionary spending, does little to roll back the size and scope of federal bureaucracies and fails to actually provide for specific ways to trim Social Security — a major component of Ryan’s cost savings.
At first blush, the inclusion of Ryan on the GOP presidential ticket appears to be a win for conservatives — and a welcome attempt by Romney to reach out to those Republicans who distrust him the most.
However, the facts show that Ryan has a schizophrenic voting record on the issues he claims to care about the most — namely spending, entitlement reform and the national debt. His speeches may make him seem like a Tea Party hero, but his voting record has “RINO” and “unprincipled squish” written all over it.
So what are Republican voters really getting with Ryan? In the end, something that not many of them actually want: More of the same old disappointing Republican Party that is unwilling to seriously address entitlement reform or reduce spending.
Full article: http://www.timesfree … ty/?opinionfreepress
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