Straight-Up Bullshit From Paul Ryan

During his speech last night to delegates at the Republican National Convention, Paul Ryan made some astoundingly misleading and fraudulent claims about President Barack Obama’s previous 4 years in office. So misleading and deceitful was his speech that the Associated Press released a fact check article this morning titled, ”Ryan takes factual shortcuts in speech,” that calls out Ryan for his fraudulent claims. One of the most mendacious claims that Ryan made was that President Obama refused to tackle the national debt when given a plan by a congressional debt commission (8/29/2012):

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

By any standard, this statement is highly hypocritical and misleading. As Greg Sargent at the Plum Line points out,”…Paul Ryan, a member of the commission, voted it down and successfully convinced the other House Republicans on the commission to vote it down.” That’s to say that Ryan is now blaming his own actions on President Obama. In fact, look at what Ryan told reporters prior to the debt commissions vote (12/2/2010):

Congressman Ryan, one of 12 members of Congress on the 18-member bipartisan debt commission, had telegraphed a no vote on Wednesday, but stated straight-up at a Monitor breakfast for reporters Thursday that that is his decision.

“Obviously, I’m not going to vote for it,” said Congressman Ryan, who is an important voice on the commission as incoming chairman of the House Budget Committee come January.

And this is the guy who just had the cheekiness to face the American public and say that President Obama did “exactly nothing” with the debt commissions findings. If this doesn’t give you a window into Paul Ryan’s character and the way he defines the concept of Responsibility, I don’t know what will.

Comments

Mark says:

August 30, 2012 at 3:13 pm

Santorum’s comments are particularly damning and evident of a major fallacy in the GOP’s message. One would think that Republicans would be for putting welfare control in the hands of state governments. But the GOP is running on an anti-Obama platform instead of providing an kind of real leadership for the party, despite their many claims to the contrary. The belief that welfare recipients are creating a drag on the economy is laughable when you consider the amount of overseas tax-evasion practiced by larger corporations.
The brilliance of the GOP is they have managed to constipate the legislative process and almost every bill Obama has pushed though Congress while simultaneously painting him as an all-powerful dictator.
nathan says:

August 30, 2012 at 6:29 pm

Thanks for the comment Mark. The welfare requirement attack that was started by the Romney campaign a few weeks ago and now being spread by Santorum is particularly ridiculous and dishonest. But of course that doesn’t matter since the campaign has voiced that theyre not going to let their “campaign be dictated by fact checkers.”