Anchors Aweigh, my friends! Is association with the Ryan budget enough baggage to sink Romney?
In selecting Paul Ryan, the Mittbot has taken a very Romney-esque position of embracing the man, but trying to
distance himself from the man's actual ideas and plans.
Now, I imagine the way this will work out, is Romney will express support for the general principles of the Ryan plan, as he has many times in the past, so the Tea Party base will see starbursts. But he'll say there are problems, things he'd fix, so he can conveniently have an out—a line-item veto if you will—when challenged on anything that's unpopular, draconian, Dickensian or downright horrific.
And of course, we'll have to play 50 questions with the Romney camp to find out exactly which parts of the Ryan plan Romney does not think are "marvelous!" That's ok, we have 80 some days, the more we talk about the Ryan Pathway to Poverty, the better.
Of course, the way things are going it's doubtful Romney will answer 50 questions before the election. So, let's start with Ryan's plan for the veteran's spending, shall we?
Suddenly relevant again is a piece that Jon Stoltz, co-founder of Vote Vets posted to Huffington Post in March in response to the Ryan Plan.
GOP Budget Doesn't Even Say the Word "Veteran"
Do Republicans care about keeping our promise to 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.
The Veterans Administration has historically been underfunded, as anyone paying attention can tell you. Now that the neo-cons have managed to play rock-em-sock-em on a global scale, recklessly waging war here, there and everywhere, are they really going to just walk away from our men and women in uniform as they are now returning? Now that they need the support to rebuild their bodies, their minds, their lives?
I wish I could say I'd be surprised, but Republican's support for our troops has always been a mile wide and and inch deep. The backdrop of a Navy battleship serving to obfuscate that neither Romney nor Ryan ever actually served in the military is the perfect metaphor for much of the GOP's relationship with troops. Yeah, they're there to wave the flag, when the election's 80 days away. How about when you need a diagnosis of post-traumatic stress disorder to collect benefits. Are they around then?
More from Stoltz:
Yet, here we are. A budget from the GOP that short changes veterans, horribly. And where does that money go? Not to reducing the debt. The debt as a share of GDP would actually increase under the Ryan plan. The money doesn't go towards anything, really. But it does go towards some people. As in $3 trillion in tax giveaways to the richest Americans and corporations. People like Mitt Romney, who already pays a tax rate lower than most of our troops.
That's the choice the Ryan plan presents to America -- do we want to fund the wealthiest Americans and corporations, or keep our promise to our veterans? Ryan and the GOP say the former. I can't believe that most Americans wouldn't say the latter.
In the absence of a detailed plan coming out of the Romney campaign, we're forced to assume Ryan's addition to the ticket signals Romney's agreement with Ryan's spending priorities.
I'd very much like to know if Paul Ryan's plan for the veterans spending was the part Romney found "marvelous."