Tag: Ryan Budget

Ryan Adds Some Loaded Examples to Question of ‘Better Off?’

New York Times

Ryan Adds Some Loaded Examples to Question of ‘Better Off?’

By TRIP GABRIEL and KITTY BENNETT
 
Representative Paul D. Ryan spoke to an overflow crowd at a campaign event on Monday at East Carolina University in Greenville, N.C.
Max Whittaker for The New York TimesRepresentative Paul D. Ryan spoke to an overflow crowd at a campaign event on Monday at East Carolina University in Greenville, N.C.

9:02 p.m. | Updated A revised version of this post is available here.

GREENVILLE, N.C. — Representative Paul D. Ryan compared the struggling economy to Jimmy Carter-era malaise, when a candidate named Ronald Reagan denied a president re-election by asking an unsettling question: “Are you better off than you were four years ago?”

“There’s a little gathering going on over in Charlotte,” Mr. Ryan said here in eastern North Carolina, about a four-hour drive from the site of the Democratic National Convention. “The president can say a lot of things, and he will, but he can’t tell you that you’re better off. Simply put, the Jimmy Carter years look like the good old days compared to where we are right now.”

The Republican National Committee and the Romney-Ryan campaign sounded the charge on Monday morning with a new video, a Web site and a statistics dump attacking President Obama on what they consider his biggest vulnerability, all asking the question: “Are you better off?” Continue reading “Ryan Adds Some Loaded Examples to Question of ‘Better Off?’”

Romney can’t have it both ways on defense spending, tax cuts

Dana Milbank
Dana Milbank
Opinion Writer

Romney can’t have it both ways on defense spending, tax cuts

By , Published: July 25

There have been many mendacious moments in this presidential campaign, but it will be hard to top what Mitt Romney told the Veterans of Foreign Wars conference this week.

President Obama is seeking “an arbitrary, across-the-board budget reduction that would saddle the military with $1 trillion in cuts,” the Republican said. “Strategy is not driving the president’s massive defense cuts. In fact, his own secretary of defense warned that these reductions would be devastating, and he’s right. . . . This is no time for the president’s radical cuts in our military.”

Come again?

Romney is referring to the automatic spending cuts, or “sequestration,” required by the Budget Control Act of 2011. For those suffering memory loss of the sort afflicting Romney, that legislation came about when Republicans threatened to throw the country into default unless Democrats agreed to automatic budget cuts if a “supercommittee” couldn’t reach a bipartisan agreement (which it couldn’t, naturally). Continue reading “Romney can’t have it both ways on defense spending, tax cuts”

Rosie Ruiz Republicans

Rosie Ruiz Republicans

By PAUL KRUGMAN
Published: September 2, 2012 637 Comments

Fred R. Conrad/The New York Times

Remember Rosie Ruiz? In 1980 she was the first woman to cross the finish line at the Boston Marathon — except it turned out that she hadn’t actually run most of the race, that she sneaked onto the course around a mile from the end. Ever since, she has symbolized a particular kind of fraud, in which people claim credit for achieving things they have not, in fact, achieved.

 And these days Paul Ryan is the Rosie Ruiz of American politics.

This would have been an apt comparison even before the curious story of Mr. Ryan’s own marathon came to light. Still, that’s quite a story, so let’s talk about it first.

It started when Hugh Hewitt, a right-wing talk-radio host, interviewed Mr. Ryan. In that interview, the vice-presidential candidate boasted about his fitness, declaring that he had once run a marathon in less than three hours.

This claim piqued the interest of Runner’s World magazine, which noted that marathon times are recorded — and that it was unable to find any evidence of Mr. Ryan’s accomplishment. It eventually transpired that Mr. Ryan had indeed once run a marathon, but that his time was actually more than four hours. Continue reading “Rosie Ruiz Republicans”

Paul Ryan’s Top 10 Falsehoods and Outrages… from Just His First Week on the Campaign Trail

August 22, 2012  |
 

1. Ryan’s position opposing abortion even in cases of rape, and his attempts to define cytoblasts as legal ‘persons’ (which would outlaw all termination of pregnancies and some forms of birth control) came under scrutiny when Republican Todd Akin, running for the Senate in Missouri, provoked a furor. [3] Akin said he opposed abortion even in cases of rape because in ‘legitimate rape’ the woman’s body rejects fertilization. Akin’s insensitivity to a situation that affects a third of a million American women every decade, plus his ignorance of Biology 101, drew widespread condemnation. Mitt Romney put out a statement that both he and Ryan believed abortion was permitted in case of rape. Problem: Ryan has repeatedly opposed that position and appears to agree [4] with Akin more than with his running mate. Continue reading “Paul Ryan’s Top 10 Falsehoods and Outrages… from Just His First Week on the Campaign Trail”

How ‘Government’ Became A Dirty Word

How ‘Government’ Became A Dirty Word

by NPR Staff; September 1, 2012

 President Ronald Reagan and his wife, Nancy Reagan, in the inaugural parade in Washington, D.C., in January 1981. In his speech after being sworn in, Reagan called government "the problem."

Enlarge APPresident Ronald Reagan and his wife, Nancy Reagan, in the inaugural parade in Washington, D.C., in January 1981. In his speech after being sworn in, Reagan called government “the problem.”

The message at the GOP convention this week was clear: Government is too big, too expensive, and it can’t fix our economic problems.

“The choice is whether to put hard limits on economic growth, or hard limits on the size of government. And we choose to limit government,” said Republican vice presidential candidate Paul Ryan.

There’s nothing new about the message. Anti-big government sentiment is practically part of the American DNA, and it has deep roots in the Republican Party. Continue reading “How ‘Government’ Became A Dirty Word”

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