Vice Presidential nominee Paul Ryan’s headlining
speech at the GOP convention in Tampa Wednesday night touched on many of the
election’s defining issues. But it was also filled with prevarications — not
just recitations of the conventions “you didn’t build that” theme, but on the
very policy matters that have endeared him to the political establishment in
Washington.
The speech effectively rallied his supporters in
the audience. But on the merits it was chock full of misstatements of fact that
undermine his reputation for brave, big ideas — which has hastened his rise
through the ranks of the GOP.
Here are the top five examples:
Medicare
Ryan forged his
reputation in large part by drafting and advancing an unpopular plan to
dramatically cut and privatize Medicare. Though he didn’t mention that plan
once on Wednesday, he included it in his last two budgets, both of which
preserved the Affordable Care Acts cuts to Medicare — taken mostly from
overpayments to private insurers and hospitals.
Instead, Ryan once again
dubiously accused President Obama of being the true threat to Medicare.
“You see, even with
all the hidden taxes to pay for the health care takeover, even with new taxes
on nearly a million small businesses, the planners in Washington still didn’t
have enough money. They needed more. They needed hundreds of billions more. So,
they just took it all away from Medicare. Seven hundred and sixteen billion
dollars, funneled out of Medicare by President Obama. An obligation we have to
our parents and grandparents is being sacrificed, all to pay for a new
entitlement we didn’t even ask for. The greatest threat to Medicare is
Obamacare, and we’re going to stop it.”
Obama did use those
Medicare savings — in the form of targeted cuts in payments to providers, not
in benefits to seniors — to pay for the health care law. Ryan’s budget calls
for using them to finance tax cuts for wealthy Americans, and deficit
reduction. But by now calling to restore that spending commitment to Medicare,
Ryan and Romney are pledging to hasten Medicare’s
insolvency by many years.
U.S. Credit Rating
Ryan said the Obama
presidency, “began with a perfect Triple-A credit rating for the United States;
it ends with a downgraded America.”
Standard & Poors
downgraded the country’s sovereign debt rating in 2011 because congressional
Republicans, of which Ryan is a key leader, threatened not to increase the
country’s borrowing authority — risking a default on the debt — unless
Democrats agreed to slash trillions of dollars from domestic social programs
and investments. Ryan even briefly toyed with the idea
that the country’s creditors would forgive default for “a day or two or three
or four” as long as Democrats ultimately agreed to GOP demands.
• Janesville
GM Plant Ryan criticized Obama for — yes — not using
government funds to prop up an auto plant in his district.
“A lot of guys I
went to high school with worked at that GM plant. Right there at that plant,
candidate Obama said: ‘I believe that if our government is there to support you
… this plant will be here for another hundred years,’” Ryan recalled. “That’s
what he said in 2008. Well, as it turned out, that plant didn’t last another
year. It is locked up and empty to this day.”
Ignoring the inconsistency of a
Republican chastising Obama for not bailing out more auto manufacturers, the
plant in question closed before Obama’s inauguration
in 2009.
• Bowles-Simpson
Debt Commission
Ryan chastised Obama: “He created a bipartisan
debt commission. They came back with an urgent report. He thanked them, sent
them on their way, and then did exactly nothing.”
Ryan sat on that commission.
He voted against it. Following his lead, so did the panel’s other House
Republicans.
Protecting the Poor
Near
the end of his speech, Ryan claimed the campaign’s top priority is protecting
the poor. “We have responsibilities, one to another — we do not each face the
world alone,” he said. “And the greatest of all responsibilities, is that of
the strong to protect the weak.”
Just under two thirds of the dramatic spending
cuts in Ryan’s budget target programs that benefit low-income people. That plan
also calls for large tax cuts for high-income earners.
From. Talking Points Memo.
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