I just listened to Ryan's speech and it was a great speech... the only problem was that this snake oil salesman was selling lies to the true believers.
It took every ounce of willpower I had to listen to that pile of steaming reichwing crap, which while masterfully delivered by Ryan with his baby blues staring right into the camera with that so sincere look of his... and tell one blatant lie after another.
So forgive me... follow me under the magic squiggle while I vent so I can get some sleep!
let's start with Medicare...
1. Ryan said that Obamacare cuts Medicare by over $716 Billion dollars and takes money out of the fund.
Obama's cuts were to insurance companies and hospitals who were gouging the system and not to patient care... in fact they just expanded patient care with free diagnostic services for the elderly and used the money to close the "doughnut hole" in the prescription drug plan.
Obamacare put the money back into the medicare fund and the Medicare trustees noted in their annual report that Obamacare actually has extended the life of Medicare by more than 8 years.
And then there is the hypocrisy factor... Ryan's own plan took the same cuts that Obama's did... but Ryan's plan ends Medicare as we know it by turning it inot a voucher system where caps are removed and the elderly have to buy insurance on an exchange from a soon to be deregulated insurance company!
Paul Krugman's assessment of Ryan's plan was significantly more harsh in this interview with Ryan...
CNN Re-Airs Paul Krugman Saying Ryan's Budget Will 'Kill People,' Shows No Outrage
Excerpt:
RYAN: And so if we're going to keep that promise, you have to change it for our generation. You have to change it for those of us in the x-generation.
PAUL KRUGMAN, Princeton University economist: To be a little melodramatic, the budget would kill people, no question.
BORGER (voice-over): His ideas infuriate liberals like Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman.
KRUGMAN: The cuts in Medicare that he's proposing, the replacement of Medicare by a voucher system, would, in the end, mean that tens of millions of older Americans would not be able to afford essential health care. So that counts as cruelty to me.
Video at the link:
http://www.mrctv.org/...
2. Ryan made his "compassionate conservative" pitch saying we need to protect societies most vulnerable... and yet his biggest cuts are to the poor
The real Romney-Ryan budgets cuts aren’t to Medicare. They’re to programs for the poor.
Excerpt:
Take Medicaid. Ryan cuts nearly $1.4 trillion from Medicaid over the next 10 years. That’s a 34 percent cut to the program’s expected spending over the next decade. Those cuts, unlike the cuts to Medicare, are specific, and they begin immediately. Estimates from the Urban Institute suggest that if those cuts are made, about 30 million people could lose their health insurance.
Oh, and Ryan repeals the Affordable Care Act. That’s where some of his Medicaid cuts come from, but that also knocks out all the subsidies for lower-income Americans to get health insurance. So that’s another 15 million people without health insurance. So under Ryan’s budget, about 45 million people would lose health insurance they otherwise would’ve gotten.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/...
3. Ryan claimed that the the Janesville GM plant closed under Obama.
The Washington Post noted that the plant closed in December of 2008 under the Bush administration... Obama had not even been inaugurated at that time!
When Gov. Scott Walker was called on the lie in Ryan's speech he claimed that GM would have been better handled by a private bankruptcy as Mitt Romney suggested... except As Arthur Gonzalez, the federal judge who presided over Chrysler's bankruptcy hearings, said during a recent ABC News interview, "One thing is clear, without government support in one fashion or another, there were no sources of funding" for Chrysler.
4. Ryan Chastised Obama for not following the Simpson-Bowles Commission report on deficit reduction.
There is only one little tiny problem for Ryan... Okay more than one... use this article for starts...
Ryan Helped Derail Simpson-Bowles Plan Romney Now Sees as Model
"Representative Paul Ryan was a pivotal figure in killing the 2010 Bowles-Simpson agreement, which Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney now holds out as a model for putting America’s fiscal house in order."
http://www.businessweek.com/...
Ryan also seems to have fiscal amnesia!
Now the Grand Teabagger Deficit Hawk Du Jour also has to explain that he voted for the two unfunded wars that Bush started, The Medicare part D Extension, and the Bush Tax Cuts... all of which were unfunded and created the deficit problem in the first place and he said Bupkis! Nada!
Ryan claimed that the stimulus didn't work
Sorry Paul... but the CBO sees it differently...
CBO: Stimulus added up to 3.3M jobs
"The economy would have been in much worse shape without the 2009 stimulus — which increased employment in the third quarter of this year by as many as 3.3 million full-time jobs, according to a report by the Congressional Budget Office."
http://www.politico.com/...
5. Ryan claimed that Obama was out of ideas and his policies didn't work.
President Obama pushed for the Infrastructure Bill as part of his 2011 American jobs act... which Ryan and the teabagger contingent refused to even consider... while they were passing anti-abortion act #9 since 2010.
When pressed on it in an interview on Morning Joe, Ryan replied with GOP talking points BS
Rep. Paul Ryan: "Obviously Infrastructure Does Create Jobs," But Businesses Need "Certainty"
http://politicalcorrection.org...
After 11 months of partisan partisan bickering congress, in particular delays in the House, congress did reach a compromise in conference and pass a stripped down version of the transportation bill that combined transportation with student loan support and flood insurance, but the vast number of initiatives to help the economy and create jobs as proposed by the President Obama have yet to be acted on.
I spoke with a Transportation Committee representative in the House and while the bill did pass and it is estimated by the CBO to create over a million jobs and cut the deficit by $16.3 billion dollars over ten years.
The Act won't take effect however until 2013... after the election.
As one hill watcher summed up the differences:
The American Jobs Act Still Exists
Excerpt:
The political world has all but forgotten the American Jobs Act, but it remains on the table as Obama’s plan for juicing the economy. If passed in full, the Jobs Act would cut payroll taxes for businesses, double the size of the payroll tax cut for individuals, give aid to states to prevent public sector layoffs, and increase infrastructure spending. All together, the Jobs Act would create 1.9 million jobs over the next year.
Romney, on the other hand, doesn’t have a plan for generating demand and creating short-term economic growth. What he has is a plan designed for long-term problems; he wants to expand domestic energy production, sign new trade agreements, cut the corporate tax rate and confront China over currency manipulation. What’s more, he wants to dramatically reduce the size of government and shrink the federal workforce. As Greg Sargent pointed out last month, this agenda—particularly the plans to cut federal spending—would have a negative shock on the economy. If you assume Romney intends to implement the Ryan budget—which he has said on multiple occasions—his plan would cost the economy 1.3 million jobs, according to the Economic Policy Institute.
http://prospect.org/....
You can read the American Jobs act proposals here:
Fact Sheet: The American Jobs Act
http://www.whitehouse.gov/....