1. Ryan said Obama failed to save a General Motors plant in Ryan’s hometown of Janesville, Wisconsin:
Here’s what Ryan said:
President Barack Obama came to office during an economic crisis, as he has reminded us a time or two. Those were very tough days, and any fair measure of his record has to take that into account. My home state voted for President Obama. When he talked about change, many people liked the sound of it, especially in Janesville, where we were about to lose a major factory.
A lot of guys I went to high school with worked at that G.M. 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.” 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. And that’s how it is in so many towns today, where the recovery that was promised is nowhere in sight.
Actually, Obama’s speech in Janesville happened in February 2008. In June of that same year, G.M. announced the plant would close. Most of it was shuttered in December; it continued producing medium-duty trucks until June 2009, when that, too, stopped, in accordance with the plan announced in 2008. While it’s ludicrous to criticize a politician for a plant closing that predated his time in office, Ryan himself stands accused of not helping to save the factory.
As I reported recently, when I asked pro-Ryan Republican John Beckord, the leader of the local Janesville business-development organization, if there was some project where Ryan’s anti-government views conflicted with the needs of local business, he hesitated before saying, “I suppose there could have been a full-court press to just cobble together as much federal money as possible on our behalf to make it irresistible for G.M. to keep this plant open.”
2. Ryan pilloried Obama’s stimulus bill:
The first troubling sign came with the stimulus. It was President Obama’s first and best shot at fixing the economy, at a time when he got everything he wanted under one-party rule. It cost eight hundred and thirty-one billion dollars—the largest one-time expenditure ever by our federal government.
It went to companies like Solyndra, with their gold-plated connections, subsidized jobs, and make-believe markets. The stimulus was a case of political patronage, corporate welfare, and cronyism at their worst. You, the working men and women of this country, were cut out of the deal.
What did the taxpayers get out of the Obama stimulus? More debt. That money wasn’t just spent and wasted—it was borrowed, spent, and wasted.
But as has by now been well documented, Ryan lobbied for stimulus money for his district. Furthermore, as I reported, the major economic success stories in Janesville—a business incubator, a new medical manufacturer, and a new highway project that will benefit local warehousing businesses—are all linked to federal money, including money from Obama’s 2009 stimulus.
3. Ryan criticized Obama for cutting seven hundred billion dollars from 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.
Ryan’s famous budget plan, the Path to Prosperity, repealed every aspect of Obamacare except the changes to Medicare.
(Also, it’s not entirely accurate to say that the money was “funneled.”)
4. Ryan hit Obama for arguing that it was his message and not his policy that failed:
President Obama was asked not long ago to reflect on any mistakes he might have made. He said, well, “I haven’t communicated enough.” He said his job is to “tell a story to the American people”—as if that’s the whole problem here? He needs to talk more, and we need to be better listeners?
Here’s the section from my piece in the magazine about Ryan’s response when I asked him why his Social Security reform plan failed in 2005:
“The Administration did a bad job of selling it,” he told me. Bush had campaigned on national-security issues, only to pitch Social Security reform after reëlection. “And … thud,” Ryan said. “You’ve got to prepare the country for these things. You can’t just spring it on them after you win.” The lesson: “Don’t let the engineers run the marketing department.”
5. Finally, Ryan attacked Obama for ignoring the recommendations of the Simpson-Bowles debt commission:
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.
Guess who the leading Republican budget wonk on that commission was? Yes, Paul Ryan. When “the urgent report” came up for a vote, Ryan voted against it.
Ryan started this race with a reputation for honesty. He’s on his way to losing it.
Original Article
Source: new yorker
Author: Ryan Lizza
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