Paul Ryan

What we really need.

Florida’s a crucial swing state that presidential candidates go out of their way to woo. So expect political shockwaves from Ai??new studyAi??by the nonpartisan Kaiser Family Foundation that shows that Florida’s seniors would be devastated by Paul Ryan’s plan to privatize Medicare.

The study finds that Florida’s seniors would actually be hit the worst out of seniors in any state by the increase in costs associated with Ryan’s plan. Kaiser estimates that 77 percent of seniors would have to pay $200 or more per month in order to afford health care if Ryan’s Medicare voucher scheme were to be enacted. The study also estimates that 89 percent of Floridans would be subject to at least $50 more in premiums each month.

Help us hold Paul Ryan accountable. Click here to chip in a few dollars for his Democratic opponent Rob Zerban.

Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) is running scared from his bold progressive opponent Rob Zerban. Despite Zerban’s strong candidacy —he actually out-raised Ryan in the third quarter — Ryan has not agreed to a single debate with him, in a huge disservice to voters.

But it isn’t just Democrats who are upset about Members of Congress like Ryan who won’t debate their opponent.

At a recent town hall, Rep. Joe Walsh (R-IL) complained about how his Democratic opponent, Tammy Duckworth, only agreed to one debate with him. He then went on to imply that voters should not cast a vote for anyone who isn’t willing to take part in debates:

WALSH:Ai??We had the one debate last week, the one debate where she’ll get in front of people with me, she’s turned down 13 debates…. I’m a Republican, but I would say the same thing if i was running against a Republican, nobody in this country, this year should vote for any candidate that doesn’t get in front of people and find out what’s going on in your lives and tell you where they stand on issues.

Watch it:

So don’t take it from us — take it from far-right Republican Joe Walsh. Candidates like Paul Ryan who duck their ownAi??constituentsAi??and refuse to debate with their opponents don’t deserve votes.

Help us hold Paul Ryan accountable. Click here to chip in a few dollars for his Democratic opponent Rob Zerban.

Will Obama and Romney be asked about any of these issues? (Photo credit: Flickr user DonkeyHotey)

Last night’s vice presidential debate marked the second debate between the Romney-Ryan ticket and the Obama-Biden campaign. There are two presidential debates left to go, and both will be between Obama and Romney.

These debates are supposed to serve to educate Americans about the differences between the candidates. But we’ve done a review of the questions asked at the debates and we’ve found five important issues that have yet to come up at all. Here’s the list, in no particular order:

Labor Unions: In the three hours of debate so far between the two campaigns, labor unions have not come up once. In a question related to education, Romney didn’t even resort to his normal teacher-bashing by attacking teachers unions. The absence of unions from the debate is stunning, given that research shows that the decline of unions in America has corresponded with the decline of the middle class.
Economic Inequality: The word “inequality” didn’t arise once during the two debates. The moderators did not ask about the growing class divide in America nor the candidates’ solution to the problem.
Climate Change: There hasn’t been a single question asked about global warming. This is at a time when scientists are predicting that entire island nations like the Maldives will disappear thanks to rising sea levels.
The Drug War: The drug war is one of America’s greatest failings, and it’s estimated that half of our prison population is nonviolent drug offenders. But the issue simply didn’t arise during the debates.
LGBT Equality: President Obama was the first sitting president ever to endorse marriage equality, but you wouldn’t know it by watching the debates. The Obama-Biden ticket was …

Ryan is flat out lying about Social Security and Medicare. (Photo credit: Flickr user monkeyz_uncle)

Last night, during the vice presidential debate with Joe Biden, Republican vice presidential nominee Paul Ryan lied to the American people. He said, “Medicare and Social Security are going bankrupt. These are indisputable facts.”

Watch it:

This statement was a bald-faced lie. Neither program is going bankrupt any time soon. Here’s our quick explainer why:

Social Security: It’s currently projected to beAi??fully solventAi??until the year 2037. After that, it is expected to be able to pay out 75 percent of benefits until 2084, which basically equals full benefits, once inflation isAi??accounted for. There is no threat of the program running out of money any time soon.Ai??Ai??We could make it solvent far into the future if we simply raised the payroll tax cap — meaning that income above $106,000 would be taxed just like income below that amount is. Lifting the cap would require the wealthy to pay a tiny bit more so that the program would be safe and secure. Even a majority of self-identified Tea Partiers find this to be a good idea versus cutting Social Security by raising the retirement age.
Medicare: According to the Medicare Trustees’ annual report that was released in April 2012, “the Hospital Insurance (Part A) Trust Fund has sufficient reserves to pay out the full amount of Medicare Part A benefits until 2024 ai??i?? the same projection made in last year’s report.Ai?? Should nothing else change, and the Trust Fund reserves be depleted in 2024, the Trust Fund would still receive sufficient income from the payroll taxes and other revenue through which it is funded to pay 87% of anticipated Part A expenses.” And all of …

Tonight, Vice President Joe Biden will be facing off with Republican vice presidential candidate Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI). But while Ryan is willing to debate with Biden tonight, there is another man he’s been running from.

See, Ryan has an unusually strong congressional challenger this year named Rob Zerban. Zerban is a successful and socially-conscious businessman who also has been involved in the community and local activism for years. He’s well-liked, and polling shows that Zerban is within single-digits of Ryan.

Their policy differences couldn’t be more stark, especially on one of the most important issues: protecting Medicare. Ryan is the author of the “Medicare For None” plan that would turn the entire program over to private insurers, while Zerban is campaigning for Medicare For All.Ai?? In his recent television ad, Zerban criticizes RyanAi?? for spearheading this plan to end Medicare, and he promises that he will “never cut Medicare benefits. Ever.” Watch it:

But Ryan has refused to attend a single debate with Zerban. From his perspective, if he just ignores Zerban, voters won’t be able to learn about the alternative. The Republican congressman has committed, however, $2 million to a huge ad buy to defend his congressional seat.

We’re not willing to stand by and let Paul Ryan dodge his responsibility to give voters a fair choice. Chip in $3 to Zerban’s campaign and help him educate voters about the fact that they have a great alternative to Ryan in November.

During his debate with President Obama last week, Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney said that although he likes Big Bird, he would cut off all federal funding to PBS. (He would, however, advocate for corporate tax cuts that would cost 238 times as much as all federal subsidies for public broadcasting put together.)

This brought understandable outrage from most Americans, who treasure public goods like CBS. During a visit to Detroit today, Republican vice presidential nominee Paul Ryan was greeted by a cadre of protesters, including Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-IL) and a man dressed as Big Bird. Watch a local news report about the protest:

Show your support for public priorities like PBS. Donate today and we’ll send you a “Save Big Bird” bumper sticker!

Ryan is now campaigning for the vice presidency, putting himself first in line to be president, a job he says he didn’t want. (Photo credit: Flickr user monkeyz_uncle)

The vice presidential pick is often viewed as more about politics than substance, but as the Americans who groaned at the choice of Sarah Palin in 2008 know, the vice president is just a heartbeat away from the presidency and must be ready to serve.

Is Paul Ryan ready for the presidency? He certainly didn’t think so in 2010. He even explicitly ruled it out. In an interview with The Weekly Standard, he said he wanted to be a “normal person” and that it would be too taxing to run for and serve as president:

But the 40-year-old congressman hasAi??consistently tried to quashAi??the notion that he might run for president and did so again last night during the $50 per person fundraising cruise on Lake Geneva. “No, no there isnai??i??t,” Ryan replied when asked if there’s any chance he would run for president.

“I want to be a normal person,” Ryan continued. “Other people can run for that thing. Other people canai??i??t do this,” he said, pointing to one of his three young children sipping a kiddie cocktail.

What changed Ryan’s mind? Does he really think he’s ready for the presidency when as little as two years ago he was much more interested in being, as he called it, a “normal person”?

Interestingly, Ryan may not be qualified for the presidency if you look at criteria laid out by his running mate earlier this year. Romney said at a campaign event in May that a “president has to spend at least three years working in business before he can become president of …

(Photo credit: Flickr user Cletch)

GOP vice presidential nominee Paul Ryan took to the stage of the Republican National Convention last night to blast Barack Obama and promote the presidency of Mitt Romney. (Here’s a transcript of that speech.)

But in doing so, Ryan repeatedly distorted the truth and misled Americans. Here’s a roundup of the top five lies in his speech:

Ryan And Romney Will Protect Medicare: “A Romney-Ryan Administration will protect andAi??strengthen Medicare for my mom’s generation, for my generationAi??and for my kids and yours.”Ai??Why it’s a lie:Ai??Ryan’s infamous plan ends Medicare by handing it over to the insurance companies. The Center for American Progress estimates that future seniors would pay $60,000 more for their healthcare under the Romney-Ryan plan.
Obama Is To Blame For The Closure Of A GM Plant In Ryan’s District: “At that plant [in Janesville], candidate ObamaAi??said, ‘I believe that if our government is there to support you,Ai??this plant will be here for another 100 years.’Ai??That’s what he said in 2008. Ai??Well, as it turned out, thatAi??plant didn’t last another year.” Why it’s a lie:Ai??Talking Points Memo’s Benjy Sarlin notes that the plant actually “closed in 2008, under President George W. Bush.”Ai??Here’s an excerpt from a letter Ryan wrote in June of 2008 protesting the closure of the plant.
Obama Cut Medicare By $716 Billion:Ai??”They needed hundreds of billions [of dollars to fund the Affordable Care Act]. Ai??So theyAi??just took it all away from Medicare, $716 billion funneled outAi??of Medicare by President Obama.” Why it’s a lie: The Affordable Care Act cut Medicare waste — including useless payments to private insurance companies to administer the program under Medicare Advantage. Medicare benefits “will not change,”Ai??notes Time Magazine’s Kate Pickert.Ai??(It is important to …

(Photo credit: Flickr user Spencer T.)

Here’s an interesting tidbit from a 2008 interview with Republican vice presidential nominee Paul Ryan. TheAi??Walworth County Week asked Ryan about alternative energy, and the congressman blasted ethanol:

RYAN: On ethanol, and that’s, you’re going to hear a lot about this. Turning food into fuel is not a good long-term energy policy. I think there are better renewable energy policies like cellulostic ethanol, where you turn corn stalks, switch grass, into fuel instead of food into fuel. Because if you turn food into fuel as your energy policy that makes both more expensive. Food and fuel become more expensive. And I’m also fearful that this is going to produce a backlash against our farmers. You’re already seeing this. […]

INTERVIEWER: Now in the last, it was the farm bill or the energy bill they kept the subsidies for corn ethanol, but haven’t been able to pass subsidies for wind —

RYAN: Congress quintupled the ethanol mandate. I did not support that. Because I thought that’s what happening now was going to happen when we were goin to have dramatic price increases.

 

Watch the interview (the relevant section is at 3:13)

Both conservatives and progressives have good reason to be skeptical of ethanol. The lobby for this fuel has invested well in politicians and has worked to downplay the potential disastrous consequences on food prices. As former vice presidential nominee Al Gore admitted, politicians of both parties have pandered to the lobby and put aside legitimate concerns.

But while Ryan deserves some credit for his ethanol skepticism in 2008, it’s ironic his running mate Mitt Romney is a huge supporter of the mandate the congressman opposed. Romney supports the Renewable Fuel Standards that include ethanol, “a mandate several …

(Photo credit: Flickr user monkeyz_uncle)

Tonight, Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) blasted President Obama for failing to save a GM factory in his district. The problem with this is that the plant actually closed under George W. Bush.

In June 2008, Ryan sent a letter along with his Wisconsin colleagues Senators Russ Feingold (D) and Herb Kohl (D) protesting the closure of General Motors plant in Janesville, Wisconsin.

“We ask that you reconsider the decision to close the Janesville GM plant and request a meeting with youAi??as soon as possible to discuss OM’s plans for the Janesville plant, including the possibility of retoolingAi??the plant for different production lines,” said the letter from the three lawmakers to GM CEO Rick Wagoner.

As Talking Points Memo’s Benjy Sarlin notes, Ryan actually voted for a Bush-era effort to expand government loans to GM, a plan that failed to save the Janesville plant.

Ryan also went on to support Obama’s GM restructuring plan, which earned him the rebuke of Michelle Malkin, who grouped him with “pro-bailout, anti-free market Republicans.”

Tonight, Rachel Maddow and Ed Schultz aggressively questioned Gov. Scott Walker (R-WI) about Ryan’s claim that the closure under Bush could be blamed on Obama. “It had nothing to do with Barack Obama’s economic policy,” said Schultz about the Janesville closure. “You can’t get away from that fact!”

The Republican vice presidential nominee is playing fast and loose with the facts. He knows that this plant closed before President Obama even took office, and he also knows that he supported both Bush and Obama’s plans to assist the auto industry. This letter shows that Ryan knew the plant was failing despite Bush policies and that he recognized the need for intervention then.

ABC News’ Michael Falcone reports that just as Tropical Storm Isaac is on the verge strengthening into a full-fledged hurricane, a liberal advocacy group is attempting to turn the bad weather into an attack on Republicans as they kick off their convention on Monday. This morning the Progressive Change Campaign Committee unveiled a series of web ads that they intend hundreds of thousands of Floridians to see during the week of the convention. Those who click on the ads will be directed to a site that accuses GOP leaders, including Mitt Romney’s running mate, Paul Ryan, of voting to curtail funding for disaster relief.

A new online ad campaign launched Monday targets Republicans for proposed cuts to disaster relief funding and weather monitoring systems. The ads, launched by the Progressive Change Campaign Committee, coincided with Tropical Storm Isaac’s pass over the southwest of the state, where it caused widespread power outages and forced the GOP to cancel the first day of the Republican National Convention.

Tropical Storm Isaac hasn’t yet made landfall on the Gulf Coast, but the Progressive Change Campaign Committee is already using the could-be hurricane as a cudgel against Republicans. The liberal advocacy group is starting to run Web ads in Florida criticizing congressional Republicans for having voted in the past against disaster relief.

Did Paul Ryan actually float the idea of using government spending to kill an industry that bankrolls his party? (Photo credit: Flickr user JD Hancock)

In 2008, Republican vice presidential candidate Paul Ryan gave a floor speech in favor of drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Reserve (ANRW). He boasted that this could generate $191 billion in revenue. What did he want to do with this revenue? He suggested that it could be used for a new “Manhattan Project” to put “fossil fuels out of business”:

RYAN: If we just did ANWR, according to the CRS, the federal government would see a surge in revenues. No new taxes, not even cutting spending. $191 billion. $191 billion, according to the CRS from just doing ANWR, that’s the smallest of all our reserves. Think of all we could do with $191 billion. We could cut the deficit, we could create a Manhattan project for research and development of renewables to put fossil fuels out of business. But no, we’re doing none of this.

Watch Ryan’s remarks (the pertinent section starts at around 0:49):

Drilling in ANWR is not actually a good way to create revenue or save the earth. It would destroy a precious environmental reserve and it would take more than a decade to produce oil that would do little to dislodge our addiction to fossil fuels.

Yet it’s interesting that Ryan would endorse the idea of spending up to $191 billion on a Manhattan Project (referencing the public works project that created nuclear technology) Ai??to put “fossil fuels out of business.” Those aren’t exactly the words you’d expect from an Ayn Rand acolyte like Ryan. But now he’s a standard-bearer for a party that relies on Big Oil for …

Paul Ryan isn’t a budget hawk, he’s just saving spending on Corporate America and cutting programs for the rest of us. (Photo credit: Flickr user monkeyz_uncle)

Among Beltway media, Republican vice presidential nominee Paul Ryan’s budget plan — which privatizes Medicare, slashes Medicaid, and guts the safety net — was viewed as “courageous.” Ryan himself has been praised as being “well-known for his fiscal conservatism” and as a “budget hawk.”

But all of this presupposes that Paul Ryan and the national Republican Party he has come to represent is most concerned with reining in the budget deficit. A closer look at Ryan’s budget proposal finds that while attacking Medicare and other social insurance programs, it actually preserves spending and other deficit-busting measures for some of Ryan and the GOP’s biggest corporate donors. Here’s are some examples:

– Big Insurers: Privatizing Medicare means handing it over to the insurance industry, which would create a windfall of billions of dollars previously used to finance an American-owned public program to instead line the pockets of executives at companies like Aetna and UnitedHealth Group. The insurance industry is Ryan’s second-largest career donor, having given him $815,328, slightly edging out the banking industry. Positioning themselves against health reform, health insurers like Blue Cross/Blue Shield haveAi??funneled aAi??larger portion of their dollars to Republicans over the past two cycles.

– The Drug Industry:Ai??One very easy way to quickly cut the deficit without spending a dime would actually be to cut government — that is, a massive government embargo on cheap Canadian drugs. The U.S. government, at the behest of American pharmaceutical companies, currently bars Americans from freely purchasing re-imported Canadian drugs. These drugs range from 20-80 percent cheaper. Re-importing drugs would save …

Ayn Rand devotee Paul Ryan is often praised as being a mainstream and serious leader.

But the centerpiece of Ryan’s ideology — his budget plan that hands over seniors’ health care to insurance companies that we’ve dubbed “Medicare for None” — is anything but moderate.

A July 2011 CNN/Opinion Research Corporation poll found that just 35 percent of American adults supported Ryan’s plan (even 54 percent of self-described conservative voters disapproved).

Let’s put that into perspective by looking at some progressive policies that have much more support. Take, for example, marijuana legalization. Although the issue is often portrayed as fringe in the mainstream media, an October 2011 poll found that half of Americans support legalizing the use of marijuana. You’d have to go back to 2003 to find the cause to be as unpopular as Ryan’s budget plan is today.

Here are a few other progressive policies that are much more popular than Ryan’s proposal:

Ai??Medicare for All:Ai??Ryan wants to end Medicare as we know it by eliminating itsAi??guaranteedAi??benefit and handing it over to the insurance companies. But Americans actually really like this single-payer health care system for theAi??elderly and want to expand it to everyone. In 2007, the Associated Press and Yahoo asked Americans if we should “adopt a universal health insurance program in which everyone is covered under a program like Medicare that is run by the government and financed by taxpayers.” 65 percent of Americans agreed that we should. Majorities of Americans have continued to support the idea since then.
Marriage Equality:Ai??Romney and Ryan oppose marriage equality, but Americans back it. A June 2012 CNN/Opinion Research Corporation poll found that 54 percent of Americans want the government to recognize gay and lesbian marriages as valid.
Public …

Since Romney’s VP announcement on Saturday morning, the progressives have raised over $75,000 for the Rob Zerban, the progressive Democrat running against Paul Ryan in Wisconsin’s 1st District, the Progressive Campaign Change Committee announced Monday. PCCC members’ contributions made up almost half of the total raised.

Adam Green, the co-founder of the liberal group Progressive Change Campaign Committee, released a statement Saturday, saying: “Paul Ryan is a right-wing extremist who wants to end Medicare. This is a major unforced error by Mitt Romney. National exposure of Paul Ryan’s extreme plan to end Medicare will make him more vulnerable back home in Wisconsin.” The group says it will begin running online ads nationally, including targeting millions of people in swing states such as Florida and Wisconsin.

In addition to the Medicare debate, liberal groups lashed out against Ryan as hostile to women for voting to end funding of Planned Parenthood and veterans for backing cuts to the Department of Veterans of Affairs. Adam Green, co-founder of the liberal Progressive Change Campaign Committee, called the pick a “major unforced error.” “It gives President Obama and Democrats a chance to draw a clear contrast in 2012 by promising not to cut one penny from Medicare or Social Security benefits,” Green said. “If Democrats win in a landslide, this was the game-changer.”