Posted by AzBlueMeanie:
The American Bridge Super PAC has published an opposition research book (scribd) on Rep. Paul Ryan, at a web site it has set up at MeetPaulRyan.com, which features exhaustive research and numerous tracking videos.
You will want to read Ryan Lizza's profile of Paul Ryan in the New Yorker Fussbudget: How Paul Ryan captured the G.O.P. (August 6, 2012).
And you will also want to read Jonathan Chait's profile of Paul Ryan in New York Magazine The Legendary Paul Ryan (April 29, 2012).
UPDATE: Ezra Klein adds Wonkbook: Everything you need to know about Paul Ryan.
There will be a test, class.
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I know…you’ll be shocked, his words don’t match his deeds!
We know for sure that Ryan will be an attack dog on the president’s record regarding the stimulus, government spending, the deficit and the debt. But as a member of the House, it’s extraordinarily difficult for him to justify the fact that part of his job — written into the Constitution, in fact — is to vote on appropriations (one of the reasons why hardly any members of the House are successful presidential candidates). So he has a considerable record of voting for legislation and policies that literally created the current deficit and debt.
TARP. Surely the Republicans will continue to demonize the “bailout” in 2008, otherwise known as the Troubled Asset Relief Program (part of the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008) and inexplicably blame it on the Democrats even though it was the Bush White House that proposed the bailout. Paul Ryan voted yes for the bill
AUTO BAILOUT Paul Ryan also voted for President Bush’s 2008 $14 billion bailout
THE 2008 BUSH STIMULUS. What the hell? You mean Bush passed a stimulus? Why, I thought “stimulus” was horrible trespass against conservatism! Oh, and Paul Ryan voted for that one, too.
MEDICARE PART-D. Ryan also voted for President Bush’s Medicare Part-D prescription drug program, which, like most of Bush’s policies, wasn’t paid for — the fiscally responsible thing to do. Instead, he voted for $16 trillion in unfunded spending added to the national debt.
THE IRAQ and AFGHANISTAN WARS. Yes, Paul Ryan voted for both wars and all of the various supplemental spending bills along the way. At least $1.5 trillion in deficit spending without any budget offset or pay-as-you-go legislation that ultimately accounts for around 10 percent of our long-term national debt. Paul Ryan voted yes all along the way.
THE BUSH TAX CUTS. And of course Paul Ryan voted for the Bush tax cuts. As of last year, the tax cuts for the wealthiest five percent of Americans cost the government $1,034,424,338,581 in revenue, thus significantly contributing to deficit and the debt.
Everything here, minus President Obama’s stimulus, has contributed to most of the current deficit and national debt. And regarding the president’s stimulus package, Paul Ryan voted against it, and yet by every economic indicator (short of the slow-to-recover unemployment rate) it absolutely worked. GDP, job creation, the stock market, housing and so forth have all rebounded as a direct result of the economic recovery sparked by the stimulus.
Don’t forget THIS little nugget…http://www.the-richmonder.com/2012/08/paul-ryan-traded-on-insider-information.html
How does the Ryan Budget compare to the Senate budget?
You might want to take a look at this. http://www.democracycorps.com/National-Surveys/serious-attack-on-ryan-budget-takes-toll-on-mitt-romney/
And may I also add, that BECAUSE Paul Ryan sat in that Treason Meeting (and that’s what it was)his presence and agreement at this meeting should disqualify him from ANY office!
Those were great comments, Richard.With regards to the 55 and over…I am NOT in that group, and what would happen to me, and others like me, is those that will be 65 or 66 in 2022, will be WITHOUT ANY HEALTHCARE. Imagine that. One of the most vulnerable times in life and no healthcare. They want to repeal the ACA, so if they do that, there would be literally no where to turn. What private health insurance company is going to insure a person of that age with private insurance, that wouldn’t bankrupt them? They could lose their homes and life savings just trying to pay for a catastrophic illness.Medicare is a promise that we made as a nation, and I don’t think that seniors today, as long as they understand the truth, will allow their family members to bear that kind of suffering.At least I’m hoping that they won’t.
While we’re on the topic…there are a few other things that you can find out about Mr Ryan. http://www.ontheissues.org/House/Paul_Ryan.htm/
You may also want to remind those that you talk to that this fake deficit hawk had no problem voting for the Bush Tax Cuts @1.7 Trillion, or extending of the Bush Tax Cuts @ 620 Billion,TARP @224 Billion, Invading Iraq @853 Billion and Medicare Part D @180 Billion. Remind them also that he had no problem costing taxpayers $1.3 Billion when he fought against the US not paying the bills that it had already incurred in the debt ceiling fight. The false narrative that Republicans care at all about money spent and the debt and deficit of this country is a complete and utter falsehood. When they are in control, they spend like drunken sailors and the Dems have to clean up their mess.
Take a good look at his votes with the link I posted. Oh, and one more thing..He sat in a meeting on the night of the inauguration of President Obama, along with Jon Kyl and others, and systematically plotted the destruction of a duly elected President of the US by the people of this country.I’d say that was damn near treasonous.
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/06/08/1098434/-Eric-Cantor-Paul-Ryan-Kevin-McCarthy-Plot-To-Sabotage-US-Economy-with-Frank-Luntz
This chart compares the share of Arizonans who are non-Hispanic white and those who are Hispanic by age: http://arizonaindicators.org/content/age-race-and-ethnicity
Everyone 65 and over is on Medicare, and they are so overwhelmingly white, and so much of Medicaid money goes to elderly people in nursing homes who can’t be cared for at home, and so much more federal spending goes to the elderly than the young, in a state like Arizona, with the starkest differences among old and young by ethnic group, it can be argued that the Ryan budget disproportionately affects whites negatively.
Now of course, they’ve said everyone 55 and over will be covered by current Medicare. (I’m in that group.) Will this placate those voters? Are they that selfish? We know some of us aren’t.
This election will tell us a lot, and I can’t be unique in that nothing this year has energized me as much as Ryan’s being on the GOP ticket to support Obama/Biden. Hopefully, it will stir others who’ve been disappointed in the administration to realize what a clear choice this is.
A fascinating aside in Thomas Edsall’s blog post about Ryan in The New York Times tonight:
“The Ryan budget, however, tackles a broad array of domestic social spending, and in slicing Medicare and Medicaid, Ryan’s plan imposes harsh costs on a very large proportion of white voters. An overwhelming majority of Medicare recipients, 78 percent, are white. Just 9 percent are black, 8 percent Hispanic, 2 percent Asian-American and 3 percent “other.” A solid plurality, 43 percent, of Medicaid recipients is white, 22 percent are black, 28 percent Hispanic and the rest are “other.”
A February 2012 study by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities of all federal entitlement programs — Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, Children’s Health Insurance Program, unemployment insurance, food stamps, Supplemental Security Income, Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (welfare), the school lunch program, Earned Income Tax Credit, and the refundable Child Tax Credit – finds that non-Hispanic whites, who make up 64 percent of the nation’s population, received 69 percent of the total benefits. Hispanics, who make up 16 percent of the population, received 12 percent of the payments, and blacks, who account for 12 percent of the population, received 14 percent of the benefits.”
Of course, the uneducated and often racist white voters who are today’s most enthusiastic voters will refuse to believe these statistics.
Sort of like the polling data which shows voters, told about the Ryan plan, remained sanguine about it because they simply could not believe any politician would support the kind of cuts explained accurately to them.
This election may prove, not how conservative or liberal American voters are, but how dumb they are.