From Driving this Tricked out Ride to sleeping in a congressional office on a cot. That's the modern day Abe Lincoln story of VP candidate Paul Ryan.
Flipping burgers in a paper hat and asking "Would You Like Fries With That?" at McDonald’s. Driving the Oscar Mayer Wienermobile while singing "Oh My Bologna has a first name, its M-I-T-T-E-N-S" and serving cheap margaritas and hanging around the YMCA toning abs and pecs. That’s about the extent of Rep. Paul Ryan’s private sector experience but let me not forget to mention Paul was twice the runnerup for employee of the month at McDonalds and was chosen to dress up like Ronald McDonald for the Janesville fall colors parade.
Hurry Please, I must get to the Janesville Fall Colors Parade said the two time runner-up for employee of the month.
Paul once looked thru a Life Magazine featuring exotic foreign vacations and that along with listening to Canadian radio stations is the total sum of his Foreign Policy experience.
What is the big deal with Paul Ryan? He wants to gut Medicare and mail coupons for insurance to Americas seniors. He calls the cupons vouchers to be fair if the different terminology means anything. Ryan also wants to end educational assistence for future students, No more schooling loans. He used Social Security money to pay his way thru school and now he wants to end that too. Ryan got his, up yours.
Why did Romney choose him? The Romney campaign had hit rock bottom. It was far behind in all the polls, even the FOX Poll. Being behind on FOX is the kiss of death for a republican. Paul Ryan is the darling of the right wing nut crowd, the ultra conservatives and he plays well with the tea party so Romney threw the long pass hoping for something to save his failing effort.
The press will treat Ryan with kid gloves for a few days and then tear him to shreds. The Ryan Budget which Romney must now defend asks nothing, not one damm cent, from the rich top 1% while it raises taxes on the middle class and poor and ends Medicare benefits. Estimates are in the $6,000 range for the additional
expense shifted to seniors.
Here's what Romney got. Before Ryan Romney stood for nothing, offered no specifics on anything, refused to release taxes or explain his out of country tax dodges and refused to sit down with the media for an indepth interview. Now Ryan and his GOP Budget and Ayn Rand ideas over shadow the lack luster Romney who can fade into the background while Paul Ryan fronts the republican ticket. Mitt Romney's only danger is making a mistake at one of the debates but with Paul Ryan carrying the ticket and dealing with the media and questions Mitt has almost unlimited time to practice his lines and prepare for the debates.
Paul Ryan and his guardian angel Ayn Rand
Can Paul Ryan stand up to the pressure of being the brains for a duo he plays second fiddle in? In a few days we will know the answer and so will the GOP.
For all the talk about how the young vice-presidential prospect’s budget blueprint would pose a political risk to Mitt Romney, there’s been little mention about how his résumé would so glaringly clash with the message of the GOP nominee-in-waiting. It is quite possible that on government experience alone Ryan just barely edges out Sarah Palin and her half term as Alaska Governor. In any event Sarah never drove the Oscar Mayer Wienermobile or at least she has never talked about it. Still I can't seem to shake the feeling that the two choices for VP share the same last ditch effort of desperation. McCain and Romney share the same can't
communicate style and feeling of entitlement when it comes to the Presidency.
But as the Ryan-for-veep buzz grows louder some of his rivals are pointing out that it may seem discordant for Romney to choose someone whose adult work experience comes almost completely in the worlds of government and politics. Romney like a drowning man latched on to the first thing his advisers threw at him. When the campaign guru's tell you you don't have a chance of winning on your present path you have to try something.
That something was the burger flipping, Oscar Mayer Wienermobile driving, margarita mixing, YMCA weight room toning boy Paul Ryan and his magic kill off Medicare budget. To be totally fair Ryan worked at a family owned construction business for about 5 months. The 5 months is the total of 2 seperate work experiences for the family business. Never the less Mitt Romney says this man is qualified to be president on a moments notice.
Of course, Ryan wouldn’t be the first vice-presidential pick to have a résumé different from the nominee’s.
Advocates of the budget panel chairman believe he would neatly complement Romney, particularly given the impending fiscal issues surely to dominate much of 2013. Further, they note that Ryan has spent his recent years in the House challenging the bipartisan conventional wisdom about the danger of taking on entitlements.
So there you have it, add these two men together and you in the GOP classroom have the equivelent of one president in most areas with the exception of foreign policy experience and broad appeal to voters. Oh well, you can't have it all.
There is growing concern among Republican professionals, particularly those running House and Senate races, about the ramifications of a Romney-Ryan ticket.
To the anti-Ryan crowd, the specter of a think tank wonk turned congressional budgeteer on the hustings with an ill at ease former management consultant is hardly a dream team.
“He’s an egghead who’s never had a tough election,” said a GOP strategist immersed in the party’s congressional campaigns. “With a No. 1 already having problems connecting with voters, the last thing we should do is pick a No. 2 who is likely to have the same problem.”
A drowning Mitt Romney grabbed what his advisers threw him. Plans are afoot to offer the Secetary of Defense position to Sarah Palin if the Romney-Ryan team captures the white house.
Titled The Path to Prosperity his Budget is a Cruel Joke
Paul Ryan Already Benefited from the Social Security Fund He Now Wants to Gut
From the age of 16, when his 55-year-old father died of a heart attack, until he was 18, Ryan received Social Security payments, which, according to a lengthy profile in WI Magazine, he put away for college. The eventual budget czar attended Miami University in Ohio to earn a B.A. in economics and political science, and landed a congressional internship as a junior.
Ryan’s congressional ascent, all the way to the top spot on the Budget Committee, began with his Social Security-funded college education.
Rep. Paul Ryan, the GOP’s most outspoken advocate for cutting and privatizing Social Security, has already benefited from Social Security himself, in the form of survivor benefits he received after his father’s untimely death.
From the age of 16, when his 55-year-old father died of a heart attack, until he was 18, Ryan received Social Security payments, which, according to a lengthy profile in WI Magazine, he put away for college. The eventual budget czar attended Miami University in Ohio to earn a B.A. in economics and political science, and landed a congressional internship as a junior.
Ryan’s congressional ascent, all the way to the top spot on the Budget Committee, began with his Social Security-funded college education.
Ryan’s so-called Roadmap for America’s Future budget plan proposed machete-like cuts — most notably to social services like Medicare and Social Security. Paul’s idea was to invest portions of Social Security funds in Wall Street, essentially forcing future recipients to make unsecured investments with with money they’ll later need for retirement — and endangering survivor benefits like the ones he received.
“Ryan credits his father’s death and the care of his grandmother as giving him first-hand experience as to how social service programs work,” WI Magazine wrote, referencing his Alzheimer’s-stricken grandmother, also a beneficiary of the social programs Ryan now opposes, who moved in with Ryan and his mother after his father died.
Without the Social Security benefits he received, Ryan would have had more difficulty attending college, and wouldn’t have become “Wisconsin’s fiscal dreamboat,” as the profile dubs him, or, as Democrats nationwide have painted him, the Enemy Number 1 to seniors and social services.
Ryan’s “Roadmap” for Social Security would drive toward privatization of Social Security, and an “eventual modernization of the retirement age.”
Sen. Charles Schumer (D-NY) wagged his finger at Ryan in a statement in January: “Paul Ryan owes it to the national audience tonight to explain why he wants to privatize Social Security and Medicare.”
Ryan’s Social Security reforms didn’t make it into the final draft of the budget the House passed last week, but as the chairman of the Budget Committee, he’s in a position to push the House to adopt his plan at a later date.
The focus in the social entitlements cut conversation has been on seniors, but “survivor benefits,” like the payments that Ryan and his family received, and help for the disabled, account for about a third of Social Security payments.
Rep. Paul Ryan’s office did not respond to requests for comment.
Ayn Rand is My Comfort, I Need No Other
Romney/Ryan 'Homecoming' Rally Not In Ryan's Home Town Janesville; How Come?
Well, you say, Waukesha County has more regular GOP voters than any in Wisconsin, and you can count on the City of Waukesha, formerly Spring City but now a County seat looking for a big fat federal water system earmark from Republican Congressman-for-life Jim Sensenbrenner to give those "R" fellas a rousing welcome.
But don't forget that Janesville's signature but shuttered GM and Parker Pen assembly plants don't exactly offer TV crews the kind of news-at-10 "B-roll" footage that the candidates' handlers are looking for.
And Janesville is where pesky print reporters might encounter everyday folk not caught up on their Ayn Rand, or entirely enamored with the Ryan 'budget,' and Romney's horseu elitism, or Medicare vouchers or cuts to social programs to fund more tax breaks for Paul and Mitt's allies over at ALEC and Americans for Prosperity.
So Waukesha - - or is it Earmark City? - - it is for Ryan's Veepstakes selection victory lap, while Janesville is kept in the background today - - though no doubt Ryan's new campaign biographers will craft some Morning in America images of home - well, not his actual home, known as the Parker Mansion - - to boost a scripted, small town, Midwestern values, regular guy myth.
The two together never served one second of their lives in the military but rush to pose for a picture as if they were somehow connected to that proud tradition.
The Winners / Losers of the Paul Ryan Pick
Mitt recently tabbed Paul Ryan (R- Wall St), so lets take alook at who wins and who loses with this pick.
Winner - Grover Norquist:
“We are not auditioning for fearless leader,” Grover Norquist told conservatives at the CPAC convention in February. “We don’t need a president to tell us in what direction to go. We know what direction to go. We want the Ryan budget. … We just need a president to sign this stuff. We don’t need someone to think it up or design it. The leadership now for the modern conservative movement for the next 20 years will be coming out of the House and the Senate.”
Norquist went on: “Pick a Republican with enough working digits to handle a pen to become president of the United States. This is a change for Republicans: the House and Senate doing the work with the president signing bills. His job is to be captain of the team, to sign the legislation that has already been prepared.”
Loser; The small faction of sanity in the republican party:
The clamor you are hearing for Paul Ryan for VP is not about helping the Romney candidacy. It's about controlling the Romney campaign—and ultimately the Romney presidency. It's about forcing a platform on Romney, and then dictating the agenda for that presidency's first year. The platform happens to be suicidal, and the agenda impossible, but that does not matter to the Ryan advocates. They take the old Tammany Hall point of view:
"Better to lose an agenda than lose control of the party."
In that sense, the Ryan proposal is a test of Romney's leadership. If he accedes, it's a big surrender of control—and a surrender to many of those who most opposed (and who inwardly continue to dislike) his nomination.
Winner: Ayn Rand!
Loser: Conservatism:
The man who solved Mitt Romney’s problems with conservative voters has spent his post-collegiate life in Washington, D.C. political jobs. He voted for the 2008 Troubled Asset Relief Program. He voted for the 2009 auto bailout. He voted for Medicare Part D, and has defended it robustly ever since.
Winner: Comedians:
U.S.S. WISCONSIN (The Borowitz Report)—An exhaustive manhunt that took months and spanned the country came to a
dramatic end today as a less interesting person than Mitt Romney turned up in Wisconsin.
On the deck of the U.S.S. Wisconsin, officials from the Guinness Book of World Records were on hand to certify the result of the search.
“This man is in fact the least interesting person in America,” one Guinness official said, adding that Mr. Romney himself had held that title since 1947.
Losers: Grandma and Grandpa:
Winners: The Koch Brothers:
Losers: His Elderly Constituents:
Winners: Expensive Wine Makers:
Wall Street’s favorite congressman Paul Ryan (R-Koch Brothers), was recently seen at Washington DC’s Bistro Bis drinking $350 bottles of Pinot Noir.
Losers: The rest of his constituents:
Winner: Paul Ryan's Bank Account:
Statements of Economic Interest (SEI) recently released by Congressman Paul Ryan (R-Janesville), when compared to previous years’ SEI show a clear pattern – the more influence he has on the Congressional Budget process, the more stake he (through his wife Janna (nee Little)) has gained in Oklahoma mining interests. This family interest is led by Ryan’s father-in-law, Dan Little; and is currently making millions leasing rights to energy giants engaging in extensive natural gas shale fracking.
Losers: The middle class:
Paul Ryan’s infamous budget — which Romney embraced — replaces “the current tax structure with two brackets — 25 percent and 10 percent — and cut the top rate from 35 percent.” Federal tax collections would fall “by about $4.5 trillion over the next decade” as a result and to avoid increasing the national debt, the budget proposes massive cuts in social programs and “special-interest loopholes and tax shelters that litter the code.” But 62 percent of the savings would come from programs that benefit the lower- and middle-classes, who would also experience a tax increase. That’s because while Ryan “would extend the Bush tax cuts, which are due to expire at the end of this year, he would not extend President Obama’s tax cuts for those with the lowest incomes, which will expire at the same time.” Households “earning more than $1 million a year, meanwhile, could see a net tax cut of about $300,000 annually.”
Winners: Anti Abortion Zealots:
Ryan co-sponsored a “personhood” amendment, an extreme anti-abortion measure. Ryan joined 62 other Republicans in co-sponsoring the Sanctity of Human Life Act, which declares that a fertilized egg “shall have all the legal and constitutional attributes and privileges of personhood.” This would outlaw abortion, some forms of contraception and invitro fertilization.
Losers: Our Military and Veterans:
Looking at the recently released GOP budget, written by Rep. Paul Ryan, it's hard to see how they do. In fact, looking at the nearly 100 page document, the word "veteran" doesn't appear once. Not once....
But, without saying the word "veteran," the budget tells us a lot about what they think about veterans. The budget calls for across the board spending freezes and cuts. If enacted, the Ryan GOP budget would cut $11 billion from veterans spending, or 13 percent from what President Obama proposes in his own plan.
It's unconscionable that they'd do this at a time when so many Iraq veterans have just come home and rely on veterans care. Over 45,000 US troops were wounded in Iraq and Afghanistan, and more will come who will rely on VA services, on top of veterans of other wars and eras who depend on the VA. But, this shortsightedness isn't new.
Winners: anyone who wants free subs!
Losers: Anyone in WIsconsin who thinks their state was redistricted fairly:
For example, there is one email from Andy Speth, who is Paul Ryan's Chief of Staff:
Thank you for being available to participate in the call this afternoon with the Speaker, the Majority Leader and Congressman Ryan. The purpose of the call is to get everyone on the same page as far as the process and timing of the congressional redistricting map is concerned.
What a nice, polite email showing a team working together, right?
Winner; Unregulated Banking System:
Paul Ryan, Mitt Romney’s choice for vice president, is one of the top political fundraisers in Congress, with backing from the employees of banks and insurance companies that would benefit from his actions on financial regulation and Medicare.
Loser: Seamus!
He is dead!
Finally, just because, here is another awesome article by Esquire's Charles Pierce:
Paul Ryan is an authentically dangerous zealot. He does not want to reform entitlements. He wants to eliminate them. He wants to eliminate them because he doesn't believe they are a legitimate function of government. He is a smiling, aw-shucks murderer of opportunity, a creator of dystopias in which he never will have to live. This now is an argument not over what kind of political commonwealth we will have, but rather whether or not we will
have one at all, because Paul Ryan does not believe in the most primary institution of that commonwealth: our government. The first three words of the Preamble to the Constitution make a lie out of every speech he's ever given. He looks at the country and sees its government as something alien that is holding down the individual entrepreneurial genius of 200 million people, and not as their creation, and the vehicle through which that genius can be channelled for the general welfare.
The GOP Team
7 Term Loser
Paul Ryan, vice-presidential hopeful, is a smooth talker who's been a total failure as a doer in Congress.
Elected in 1998, here's what he has to show for his first seven terms -- 14 years! -- in Congress. Two bills he authored have become law. Count 'em, two.
One named the post office in Janesville after the late congressman Les Aspin, the Democrat who represented Ryan's district and went on to serve as Secretary of Defense.
Here's a recap of his dismal record, written in July 2011. Since then, he's managed to get House Republicans to pass some phony budget bills he knew would never pass the Senate, but has not added anything to his record of non-accomplishment.
Have You Kicked an Old Person Today?
Paul Ryan is a Ayn Rand Loving Elitist Sourrounded with Hedge Fund Managers
Cliff Asness is the founder of AQR Capital, a quantitative hedge fund managing around $30 billion in assets.
Cliff Asness is probably a billionaire and he is a huge supporter of the free enterprise system. Interestingly he supported Obama during the 2008 elections probably because Republicans’ free enterprise system brought Asness’ hedge fund to the brink of collapse. AQR’s flagship Absolute Return fund lost more than 50% in 2007 and 2008. We are experts about hedge fund returns. Most hedge funds aren’t absolute return; they are usually around 50% long, so it’s normal for hedge funds to underperform the market in bull markets and outperform them in bear markets. Absolute return funds are different animals. They aren’t supposed to have big losses or gains, and they shouldn’t be highly correlated with the markets.
AQR’s huge losses in 2007 and 2008 are unbelievable. If I were the manager of AQR at that time, I would have probably voted for Karl Marx! Free enterprise is fine as long as you are the one who’s making hundreds of millions of dollars. Free enterprise isn’t fun when you are losing half of your wealth. The government should do something about it!
Mitt Romney picked the best VP candidate he can pick in this election. America is clearly in the middle of a class warfare. Somebody has to pay for the huge deficits that are the result of financial crisis and irresponsible military spending. Obama is on the side of Robin Hood and wants to tax the rich to pay for it.
Mitt Romney seemed to have been on the side of the rich before he announced his VP pick. Now Romney has sent a clear message by picking Paul Ryan: Paul Ryan is a wine-sipping elitist who hangs out with hedge fund managers.
There is nothing wrong with that because he paid $350 for the wine he drank. Now it’s America’s turn to decide how to pay for the Bush tax cuts, military spending, bailouts, and generous social policies.
Do You Know This Man?
Paul Ryan the Intellectual leader of the GOP
NORFOLK, Va. — In the shadow of a military battleship, Mitt Romney formally named Paul Ryan as his running mate Saturday, saying that the 42-year-old Wisconsin congressman was the “intellectual leader” of the Republican Party with the experience to tackle the fiscal crises facing the nation and the temperament to be effective.
“Paul and I are beginning on a journey that will take us to every corner of America,” Romney told thousands of supporters gathered on a muggy morning here, shortly before introducing Ryan and embracing him. “We are offering a positive governing agenda that will lead to economic growth, to widespread and shared prosperity, and that will improve the lives of our fellow citizens. Our plan to strengthen the middle class will get America back to work and get our country back on track.”
The men, dubbed “America’s Comeback Team” by the campaign, appeared together at the USS Wisconsin, a retired battleship whose name was a nod to the state in which Ryan was born and which he has represented in Congress for seven terms. Romney appeared in a light blue tie and no jacket, while Ryan wore a dark jacket and no tie.
Ryan, whose wife, Janna, and their three children accompanied him, said his Washington experience would complement Romney’s business and gubernatorial background.
“I am surrounded by the people I love … and I have been asked by Gov. Romney to serve the country I love,” he said, noting that he still lives in his birthplace of Janesville, Wisc. “For the last 14 years, I have proudly represented Wisconsin in Congress. There, I have focused on solving the problems that confront our country,
and turning ideas into action; and action into solutions. I am committed, in heart and mind, to putting that experience to work in a Romney administration. This is a crucial moment in the life of our nation and it is absolutely vital that we select the right man to lead America back to prosperity and greatness.”
Both men mentioned that Ryan’s father had passed away while Ryan was in high school, an event that shaped him.
“That forced him to grow up earlier than any young man should. But Paul did, with the help of his devoted mother, his brothers and sister, and a supportive community. And as he did, he internalized the virtues and hard-working ethic of the Midwest,” Romney said. “Paul Ryan works in Washington, but his beliefs remain firmly rooted in Janesville, Wisc. He is a person of great steadiness, whose integrity is unquestioned and whose word is good.”
A vice presidential candidate typically serves as the chief tormentor of the opposing team, a skill that Ryan previewed during his roll-out.
After ticking off a list of statistics about the economic difficulties facing Americans, he said that although President Obama inherited a bad economy, he failed to fix it.
“Whatever the explanations, whatever the excuses, this is a record of failure,” Ryan said. “President Obama and too many like him in Washington have refused to make difficult decisions because they are more worried about their next election than they are about the next generation. We might have been able to get away with that before, but not now. We’re in a different and dangerous moment. We're running out of time, and we can't afford four more years of this.”
Despite their characterization as a team running on specifics, neither Romney nor Ryan offered concrete plans, nor did they mention Ryan’s controversial proposal to reform Medicare, which would offer the option of a voucher-like system for the next generation of senior citizens.
Speculation about Romney’s vice presidential pick had been frenzied in recent days, and centered on Ryan, Ohio Sen. Ron Portman and former Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty. Late Friday night, word leaked out that Romney had picked Ryan, who is little known nationally. The campaign made it official Saturday morning when they alerted supporters via a smartphone app.
Few details about how Romney picked Ryan have been revealed. Romney made the decision Aug. 1, just after returning from his overseas trip, and called Ryan soon after.
No question about the results, the margin of error is 2.9 per cent.
President Barack Obama Leads in all the polls.
The charisma, sense of history and giddy hope that propelled Barack Obama’s run in 2008 seem long gone, but even the faded memory of those days still has more dazzle than Mitt Romney’s dull campaign of pandering and negativity. The fact that the president seems to be holding a narrow lead in the presidential race is testimony to the stilted shallowness of Romney’s candidacy.
Obama really should be in big trouble. The economy continues to limp along with more gloom than sunshine on the horizon. His landmark legislative achievement, the healthcare act, is mis-understood and controversial. His foreign policy successes do not count for much in a time when Americans are looking inward. His greatest accomplishment – keeping the American economy from going over a cliff back in 2009 – cannot be easily appreciated, since, when calamity is avoided, it is hard to explain to restive voters just how much worse it could have been.
The most passionate voters are on the Republican side among the tea party activists and social issues voters.
And Republicans have a cadre of billionaire donors with bottomless resources who are funding the Romney campaign and an array of conservative super PACs. They have effectively negated the incumbent president’s traditional advantage in fundraising.
Clearly, Obama would be doing much worse if he faced a more appealing opponent. No one but Romney's loyal wife is all that crazy about poor Mitt, while Obama is still well liked by a majority of voters. That gives Obama a small advantage. Ironically, though, it may be the folks who detest him and invest in him all their fears who actually are giving him even more of a boost. When middle-of-the-road voters hear the right-wing, paranoid talk about a president they have gotten to know as, if nothing else, a calm, decent family man, they may be inclined to put aside their disappointments with Obama’s first term and give him another four years rather than reward Romney who continues to cater to the crazies.
Despite what swing voters might glean from the histrionics of Rick Santorum and the vicious mendacity of Rush Limbaugh, they know America will not become an oppressive socialist nanny state if Barack Obama wins reelection. The fact is, rather than being a radical, most of Obama’s policies are squarely in the Republican
tradition of Eisenhower, Nixon and Ford. Obama is more Nelson Rockefeller than Nelson Mandela.
Not so long ago, several of the political positions Obama now holds were part of the platform of a certain Massachusetts politician named Mitt Romney. Romney may now refute those ideas, but before he changed his mind on healthcare, abortion, gay rights and immigration, no one called Romney a socialist; they called him a
moderate.
The president looks far left to conservative Republicans only because they have moved so far right – or, more precisely, so far back in time. They have reverted to an older GOP philosophy – the slavish devotion to wealthy business interests of William McKinley and Warren G. Harding. They have paired that with a fundamentalist religious outlook that used to be found more commonly in backwoods tent revivals and the musty corners of pre-
Vatican II Catholicism.
So far, Obama’s campaign has been all big-spending political hardball and very little inspiration. In that, it is a mirror image of Romney’s campaign. Sadly, the presidential race may not get much more edifying in the three months remaining. As a result, if Obama wins this, it will not be because voters endorse or even
understand his vision of the future. Rather, it will be because they do not want to revisit the past with Mitt Romney and his backward-looking party.
GOP, Romney Ryan Budget Destroys USA
targets programs that benefit the poor and middle class to find most of its spending cuts, even as it gives the rich and corporations $3 trillion in tax breaks. The budget also would hit America’s middle class in another way: by decimating state and local budgets, as a new report from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities details.
The budget’s cuts to federal discretionary spending would cause reductions in the amount the federal government contributes to state and local governments, causing deep cuts to state programs that deal with transportation, education, housing, public safety, and the environment, according to CBPP. Those decreases would be even bigger than the reductions caused by the Budget Control Act, the bipartisan debt limit deal reached last summer that sets caps on federal spending levels. Under the GOP budget, federal funding to states would be reduced to less than half its historical average, CBPP found:
As difficult as the current spending caps will be for states and localities, the Ryan budget would impose much deeper cutbacks. Since 1976, federal discretionary funding to states and localities has averaged 1.4 percent of the nation’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP). By 2021, the Ryan budget would reduce this funding to about 0.6 percent of GDP, less than half the historical average and well below the BCA caps.
The GOP budget would cut Medicaid funding for states by 34 percent by 2022; it would make 22 percent cuts to state and local budgets in other areas, causing a reduction of $28 billion in state funding by 2014 and a total of $247 billion in cuts by 2022, CBPP found. That would cause decimating cuts to state education programs like Head Start and Title I (high poverty) schools; housing programs that provide rental assistance to the poor; health programs like the Women, Infant, and Children (WIC) grants and Community Health Centers; and public safety programs that help hire police officers and firefighters.
“In theory, policymakers could spare state and local funding and take all of the required cuts from purely federal areas of non-defense discretionary spending,” CBPP writes. “In reality, there is no chance that would occur, as it would entail extremely deep cuts” to programs like veterans’ health benefits and Social Security
that aren’t likely to get the axe.
The Great Recession’s crunch on state and local budgets is already dragging down the American economy: in the last three years, more than 680,000 public sector workers, including hundreds of thousands of teachers and public safety officials, have lost their jobs, the worst three-year period for government job losses on record.
That has increased unemployment and made it harder for states, cities, and their residents to recover from the recession. Rather than providing a “Path to Prosperity” for states, as Ryan asserts his budget will, the GOP’s insistence on deep spending cuts would only exacerbate the pain they are already feeling.
Empathy for the Poor
Top 5 Worst Things About Paul Ryan's Record
By Alison McQuade
It’s a big day in presidential politics. Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney has chosen Wisconsin Congressman Paul Ryan as his running mate. The Vice President pick says a lot about a nominee’s legislative priorities, and with Ryan joining Romney on the ticket, we think there are a few things you should know.
1. Paul Ryan authored budget proposals that would end Medicare as we know it. His budget proposal would repeal health care reform, sticking seniors with the bill and leaving their health care at risk. This is especially problematic for women, who make up fifty-six percent of Medicare beneficiaries.
2. Paul Ryan’s budget plan would have cut SNAP grants by 18%. SNAP (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program) grants, also known as food stamps, has kept 3.9 million Americans (equivalent to the entire population of Oregon), including 1.7 million children, out of poverty, and allowed them to keep their families from going
hungry. This plan also would have drastically cut jobs, leaving 174,000 people out of work.
3. Paul Ryan is bad for women. He voted for a bill that would have effectively banned abortion coverage by insurers who received federal or taxpayer funding. This bill, which Ryan favored, would have allowed anyone involved to refuse to perform an abortion for any reason, even if the life of the woman needing the abortion
was in danger.
4. Paul Ryan is extremely anti-choice. Paul Ryan voted for the Protect Life Act, which grants hospitals far-reaching powers to deny women abortion care, without any exception for emergency situations. US law currently requires hospitals receiving federal funds to provide emergency care to anyone in need up to the point at which they can be stabilized or transferred, if the original hospital is incapable of providing the care they need.
"The misnamed Protect Life Act is about allowing women to die if they need an emergency abortion," said Meghan Rhoad, women’s rights researcher at Human Rights Watch. "It is a vicious attack on women’s rights and on the most basic right to life.’”
5. Paul Ryan wants to defund Planned Parenthood. This ideological attack would only result in more women losing
access to necessary and basic health care. One in five American women have used Planned Parenthood health services.
There you have it. While Mitt Romney parades Paul Ryan around as his pick to be first in the line of succession to the presidency, you now have the facts. Paul Ryan has a long history of voting against affordable health care and women’s health. His legislative priorities leave millions of people at risk of losing their health care and in medical and financial danger. Combined with Mitt Romney’s bad policies, it’s clear: the Romney/Ryan ticket is bad for women and families.
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