Paul Revere by Cyrus Dallin, North End, Boston

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Monday, August 20, 2012

Paul Ryan Supported Stimulus and Unemployment Benefits Under George W. Bush

UPDATE BELOW ON PAUL RYAN'S CONNECTION TO TODD AKIN.


"I hope you don’t have friends who recommend Ayn Rand to you. The fiction of Ayn Rand is as low as you can get re fiction. I hope you picked it up off the floor of the subway and threw it in the nearest garbage pail. She makes Mickey Spillane look like Dostoevsky," - Flannery O'Connor, in a letter to Maryat Lee, May 1960.


Why is it important to keep talking about Rep. Paul Ryan's double-speak hypocrisy?  Because this is the guy Willard Romney believes is qualified to step into the office of the presidency in the unlikely event something tragic should happen to him.

But even more important, this is the guy beloved and idolized by the Teapublicans--the guy they believe is the real standard bearer for their ideology of tax cuts for the rich, fundamentally changing Medicare and Social Security, and their dislike of federal money being used to bail out auto companies or pumped into an anemic economy struggling with a recession. 

But let's look closely at the real Paul Ryan, not the fantasy the Teapublicans have constructed, and let's look at how dedicated he is to his core principles.

We already know that he eagerly sought stimulus funds, which he argued against but at the same time privately praised, for his congressional district--something he denied before he was reminded of the inconvenient truth--he took the stimulus funds he considered antithetical to his hard-core conservative principles, then blamed his staff for the hypocrisy.

From the Associated Press:  "Ryan’s statement directly counters the evidence of four letters obtained by the AP which the congressman wrote to Energy Secretary Steven Chu, praising energy programs supported by the stimulus and requesting funds for initiatives in his district.

Ryan’s private praise for Department of Energy programs and his written requests for stimulus funds contradict not only his public criticism of the 2009 stimulus bill, but also many of the budget priorities he has laid out, including cuts to investments in green technologies.

Raising further questions about the vice presidential candidate’s claim today that he never sought stimulus money, Ryan spokesman Brendan Buck referred AP to previous explanations by the congressman’s office that by requesting funds Ryan was simply 'providing a legitimate constituent service.' ”



Now comes more uncomfortable reality for the Teapublicans to face.  Their anti-tax, anti-entitlement, anti-stimulus hero, in fact, spoke forcefully in favor of how a stimulus can provide jobs and needed funds to shore up an economy suffering during a recession.  He lobbied his fellow congressmen and women to join him in voting for the very thing he, only a few years later, was forcefully against.

When did this happen? 

During the George W. Bush administration. 

"...when President Obama is pushing for the spending. When it was President George W. Bush arguing for more stimulus to boost a slow economy in the early 2000s, Ryan's economic analysis was entirely different.

RYAN speaking on the floor of the House:   "What we're trying to accomplish today with the passage of this third stimulus package is to create jobs and help the unemployed," Ryan said, in comments unearthed by MSNBC's "Up with Chris Hayes" and provided to HuffPost. "What we're trying to accomplish is to pass the kinds of legislation that when they've passed in the past have grown the economy and gotten people back to work."
Ryan continued:  "In recessions unemployment lags on well after a recovery has taken place," Ryan accurately noted in 2002. "

Ryan called such stimulus a "constructive answer" worked out on "a bipartisan basis." Opponents of stimulus, Ryan said, ought to "drop the demagoguery."

"We've got to get the engine of economic growth growing again because we now know, because of recession, we don't have the revenues that we wanted to, we don't have the revenues we need, to fix Medicare, to fix Social Security, to fix these issues. We've got to get Americans back to work. Then the surpluses come back, then the jobs come back. That is the constructive answer we're trying to accomplish here on, yes, a bipartisan basis. I urge members to drop the demagoguery and to pass this bill to help us work together to get the American people back to work and help those people who've lost their jobs,"

["Bush's stimulus, which included an extension of jobless benefits and resulted in checks being mailed to millions of Americans, was signed in March 2002.']

RYAN again:  "We have a lot of laid off workers, and more layoffs are occurring," the congressman continued. "And we know, as a historical fact, that even if our economy begins to slowly recover, unemployment is going to linger on and on well after that recovery takes place. What we have been trying to do starting in October and into December and now is to try and get people back to work. The things we're trying to pass in this bill are the time-tested, proven, bipartisan solutions to get businesses to stop laying off people, to hire people back, and to help those people who have lost their jobs.

It's more than just giving someone an unemployment check," he said then. "It's also helping those people with their health insurance while they've lost their jobs and more important than just that unemployment check, it's to do what we can to give people a paycheck."

h/tHuffPost


"Ryan has denounced the 2009 Recovery Act signed by President Obama as “a wasteful spending spree” and “failed neo-Keynesian experiment,” and – as The Huffington Post pointed out this morning — dismissed as “sugar-high economics” the idea that government spending, through measures like payroll tax cuts and unemployment benefits, can help shore up a faltering economy.

But in 2002, when then-President Bush was seeking a roughly $120 billion package of tax cuts, tax incentives for business and unemployment benefits to jump-start the economy, Ryan offered a vigorous defense of the plan." --Up with Chris Hayes


How do we respond to this?

How about this way:  We take everything Rep. Paul Ryan has said against President Obama's stimulus package and extending unemployment or any benefit for Americans and ignore them, because it is as plain as the "R" after his name, that he doesn't believe a word of it, and that is evident from the above statements Ryan made during Mr. Bush's administration.

Ryan doesn't mean what he says.  He truly is an embodiment of Randian thought: 

"Rand's explanation of values presents the view that an individual's primary moral obligation is to achieve his own well-being—it is for his life and his self-interest that an individual ought to adhere to a moral code.[49]

Ryan adheres to his own "moral code" that directs him to say whatever he has to say in order to achieve his goal--political power.  His "code" is only a means by which he achieves that power.  A few years ago, he enthusiastically supported a stimulus plan and other policies that he has thoroughly rejected under a Democratic president. 

It is obvious that Paul Ryan is not the courageously brave politician willing to say unpopular things in order to solve our economic problems.  Paul Ryan is a typical ambitious life-long politician willing to say whatever his party wants to hear in order to advance his career.  He's a politician, but not the kind the GOP is trying to sell to the country. 


VIDEO LINK HERE.

UPDATE:

Paul Ryan teamed with Todd Akin on anti-choice legislation. Ryan and Akin were original cosponsors of controversial legislation that would narrow the definition of rape.

The proposal, H.R. 3, “changed the definition of ‘rape’ to ‘forcible rape,’ until public pressure forced the bill’s supporters to remove that unacceptable and narrow definition,” according to a New York Daily News account.
'While Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan are working overtime to distance themselves from Rep. Todd Akin’s comments on rape, they are contradicting their own records. Mr. Romney supports the Human Life Amendment, which would ban abortion in all instances, even in the case of rape and incest. In fact, that amendment is a central part of the Republican Party’s platform that is being voted on tomorrow. And, as a Republican leader in the House, Mr. Ryan worked with Mr. Akin to try to pass laws that would ban abortion in all cases, and even narrow the definition of ‘rape.’ Every day, women across America grapple with difficult and intensely personal health decisions—decisions that should ultimately be between a woman and her doctor. These decisions are not made any easier when Mr. Romney and Mr. Ryan treat women’s health as a matter of partisan politics.”

The GOP war on women continues--and it's getting worse.

Here's a link to Infidel753's blogpost on Todd Akin and his disasterous comments.



22 comments:

Shaw Kenawe said...

skudrunner,

Give us an insight as to how someone can "evolve" from being FOR stiumulus funds for a Republican president, and be AGAINST it for a Democratic president.

Sure pols can change their minds, but Ryan is touted as a true believer on fiscal matters, so how do you explain a "true believer's" core principle flip-flop on this issue?

What could have changed his mind so completely? He went from being passionately FOR stimulus packages to help the US economy to being passionately against it once the guy in the White House changed from being a Republican to a Democrat.

BTW, Mr. Obama was always for civil unions--that's state-recognized marriage, and everyone knows it.

And Mr. Obama wanted to work with the GOP on immigration, but they didn't want to work with him, hence the executive order. Something presidents have used for many, many decades, Republican and Democrat.

Yes. Job creation has definitely improved since Mr. Obama became president. Thanks for acknowledging that fact.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics uses February 2010 as the starting point, because that was the low point for private employment at 106,773,000 jobs.

It’s been going up ever since. Right now, it’s at 111,040,000 — an increase of 4,267,000 jobs, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Also:

[T]he average amount of private sector jobs created during Democratic Presidential terms is 1,463,220 and the average amount during Republican Presidential terms is 642,000.

Starting with FDR's administration.

Anonymous said...

The president cannot do much about hiring people, unless he institutes an FDR like government work program.
It's private business that hires people, and they won't. Ask private companies why they won't invest in America. Ask private companies why they won't hire. Ask banks why they won't loan out the money they are sitting on. Obama has increased the SBA budget.

Anonymous said...

Skudrunner,
That is bullshit

Anonymous said...

Skudrunner wins

Anonymous said...

And under Obama care you will not lose you insurance and can keep your own doctor.



the nice anonymous said...

"Nate Silver thinks that the remarks of Missouri Republican Senate nominee Todd Akin - that "if it's a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down" - could drag him down as much as 10 percentage points. Here's hoping. (In the latest polls, the congressman held a slight lead over Dem incumbent Claire McCaskill.) But what's striking to me is the enduring reality that alleged fiscal conservatives in today's GOP almost uniformly have social views that one normally associates with soft-Islamists. It should be possible to be a total fiscal tightwad and still adopt a live-and-let-live philosophy in government - and yet that is emphatically not the GOP we have today. Akin is a classic Islamist-Republican, seeing women entirely as temptations for men who somehow have responsibility for their fate even when being raped. Women are entirely objects - their lives and crises simply requiring an air-brush to keep the whole neurotic ideology intact."

BB-Idaho said...

I'm still trying to figure out why
Romney would pick Raul Prion...

Shaw Kenawe said...

BB-Idaho,

It was an appeal to the GOP base who never really liked Romney--he isn't extreme enough for them.

In fact, while Romney was running for governor of Massachusetts, he promised never to interfere with a woman's right to choose and said that he gave his word on it, he instituted Romneycare with a mandate, was for gun control, and other liberal-moderate positions.

He had to prove his chops with the base, so he chose a really, really, really conservative pol who's been in government all his life, and owes who he is to government programs and help and contracts and who embraced big government spending and stimulus during the GWB administration.

When you begin to examine it all, one wonders if the GOP really knows what it stands for.

Shaw Kenawe said...

skudrunner: "They all did great things for women didn't they."

They never proposed legislation to deny women the right to control her own body. Not one of them. That's what this is about, not their personal failings.


[BTW, Gore has never done anything to earn inclusion in your silly little list.]

Your attempt to change the subject won't work.

And we are much better off now than we were when George W. Bush left office, when the bleeding of jobs began.

That is fact.

Shaw Kenawe said...

skudrunner,

If you believe Mr. Obama was responsible for job losses in the first 6 months of his presidency, you're dumber than a box of hammers.

Your foolishness won't work here.


Shaw Kenawe said...

"When it comes to job creation, George W. Bush produced the worst results—less than a one percent increase over eight years—of any president since the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) started keeping records in 1939.

This fact was noted by the Wall Street Journal in a Jan. 2009 blog article, “Bush On Jobs: The Worst Track Record On Record,” by the WSJ staff.


By reading of the BLS data (non-farm, seasonally adjusted), total employment was 132,466,000 at the beginning of George W. Bush’s term and 133,561,000 at the end, an increase of 0.83 percent over eight years, or an average of 136,875 per year."

Anonymous said...

Hey Skud,

Do you ever research anything, or do you just get your information from the Republican emails?

BB-Idaho said...

"I wish Romney had chosen someone else. Rice, Christie or Rubio.."
- skudrunner -
I agree, those choices made more sense. Rice might have been the best choice....but she's pro-choice. They probably ran the numbers pick-ups among women voters minus loss of evangelicals.
I hope she stays in GOP politics,
though.

Malcolm said...

The 2002 version of Paul Ryan defended the stimulus probably better than I've heard any Democrat do it. I was curious to see if any conservatives would defend Ryan's hypocrisy in the comments section here. So far, all I've seen is a lot of deflecting.

Shaw Kenawe said...

Malcolm,

They can't defend the indefensible--indefensible to conservatives, that is.

Ryan is a big spending conservative, and until his record was revealed, I don't think the conservatives actually understood that.

S.W. Anderson said...

This makes Ryan no different than the vast majority of conservative Republican politicians. There are some true believers/hard core ideologues. I think Jim DeMint is one. I think there are some tea party crazies who aren't so much ideologues as they are extremists, fanatics and mental cases.

But most of them are self-serving hustlers, just like Palin, Bachmann, Gingrich and, yes, Paul Ryan. They have no concept of public service. They have little interest in or skills for governing.

What they do have is a racket. They say and do what the the rich and corporations, the religious right and gun nuts, the racists and resenters want. In return, conservative Republicans benefit from 24/7/365 propaganda easing their way. They and their campaigns get tons of money and have attack ads against their opponents, thanks to PACs and 401(c)'s.

It's a racket and people like Palin and Ryan are racketeers.

S.W. Anderson said...

"Whatever you do, do not bring up the economy and lack of jobs."

Obama and Biden talk constantly about the economy and jobs. It's a staple of their stump speaking.

Where Obama and Biden fall short is in failing to hammer home, loud and long and clear, why the stimulus was so much less than the country needed for it to be; why some important parts of it were scuttled by Republican governors; and why Obama was forced to set aside those vital concerns for months to try to elicit some cooperation from Republicans so the economy wouldn't slide back into recession, and so the country's credit rating wouldn't suffer.

Obama and Biden have really failed to make clear enough how counterproductive it was to have to repeatedly make budget-cutting deals with Republicans when the glaring need was for more stimulus spending. The bad signals all those cuts sent probably did as much to retard the jobs recovery as the paltry funding for stimulus did.

If Obama is due criticism for lack of job creation, it's for his stubborn insistence on trying to win cooperation from Republicans long after what they were about was clear to everyone else, and for generally being too timid.

Republicans are due condemnation for having sacrificed the interests of millions of unemployed people, thousands of businesses and the whole country in a selfish bid to make Obama a failed one-term president and to regain control of the Senate.

There's the jobs-and-economy truth Obama and Biden ought to driving home. Unfortunately, Obama seems to be trying to avoid charges of blame shifting and trying to keep the rancor down. He learned his lesson to a considerable extent a year ago in July, but still has a few things to learn.

Infidel753 said...

Shaw: Thanks for the link.

Republicans' position on fiscal stimulus, as on most things, tends to "evolve" depending on whether they're in office or not. Ryan and Romney are, as individuals, not stupid enough to believe the anti-Keynesian nonsense they spout for the benefit of the Deliverance-inbred teabagging knuckle-draggers who make up the party base. When they're in office they'll do what everyone knows actually works. When they're trying to get a Democrat out of office, they'll denounce anything that Democrat does or says, even "the sky is blue".

Skudrunner: I wish Romney had chosen someone else. Rice, Christie or Rubio would have at least been a plus

Christie is far too sane for the Republican base -- he accepts the reality of global warming and evolution. Rubio is soft on illegal aliens and is viewed with suspicion by some of the birthers. Rice is pro-choice on abortion, and a lot of the teabaggers might not like her because of, er, some other reason.

Romney belongs to the evil-but-sane faction of Republicans and had to reach out to the flaming-nutball faction. Ryan was probably the least-nutty pick he could have gotten away with.

Shaw Kenawe said...

"In the lame duck Congressional session that followed, Mr. Obama struck a compromise with Republican leaders on extending the Bush-era tax cuts for top earners, in return for a one-year cut in payroll taxes and an extension of unemployment benefits."

"After a new Congress convened in January 2011, the debate in Washington swiftly came to be dominated by the House Republicans.

Spurred by a bloc of 87 largely conservative freshmen, they brought the federal government to the brink of a shutdown in April before Mr. Obama and Speaker John A. Boehner struck a deal to cut $38 billion out of the last six months of the 2011 fiscal year budget."

"While Republicans blocked almost all of the $447 billion jobs bill he put forward in September and refused to consider his proposals to raise taxes on some wealthy households, they found themselves on the defensive over his call to extend the payroll tax cut agreed to in 2010. Late in December, they agreed to leave the extend the tax temporarily. Early the next year, it was extended for all of 2012."

"With a polarized Congress already on the defensive, in May 2012, Mr. Obama outlined a five-point “to do” list for lawmakers that packaged job creation and mortgage relief ideas he had proposed before. He presented the election-year list during a visit to a university science complex in Albany.

The components of his challenge to Congress — and to the Republican-led House in particular — are expected to be a feature of his campaign appearances. For example, while in Reno, Nev., during a trip West to raise campaign money, Mr. Obama plans to push one of the proposals, to allow more families who are current on their mortgages to refinance at lower interest rates. Nevada, a swing state critical to his re-election, is among the places hit hardest by the housing bust.

The president’s pitch aims to underscore the obstructions he has faced from Republicans, and at a time when critics across the political spectrum are assailing a “do-nothing Congress.”

Shaw Kenawe said...

"...they move their money and residences to foreign countries."

You talking about Willard again?



Dave Miller said...

Skud, when your side has some specific ideas on programs they will cut to balance the budget, we'll talk about them.

Obama has been very specific on tax increases... wht are the GOP candidates not just as specific on cuts they support?

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