There are many things that you could say about Paul Ryan and be spot on. You could say that he is ardently pro-life and his record bears that out.
“I’m as pro-life as a person gets,” Ryan, who is Roman Catholic, told the conservative magazine the Weekly Standard in 2010. The National Right to Life Committee, a nationwide federation opposed to abortion rights, has given Ryan a 100 percent “pro-life” voting record.
Ryan was one of several dozen Republicans to co-sponsor a particularly controversial bill last year that never made it to the House floor called the Sanctity of Human Life Act. It stated that the “life of each human being begins with fertilization, cloning or its functional equivalent … at which time every human being shall have all the legal and constitutional attributes and privileges of personhood.”
So to say that Ryan is firmly in the pro-life camp can not be construed as a misconception or a mischaracterization – every vote he’s taken on abortion-related issues since joining the House of Representatives in 1999 has been on the anti-abortion side.
His record on abortion is not a value assessment on my part, just a statement of fact – I leave it to you to make whatever political or social appraisal of his record you choose.
One could also say of Ryan that he stands as the seminal voice in articulating the stated conservative fiscal ideology. He is the chairman of the House Budget Committee and the architect of the House GOP’s budget proposal, The Path to Prosperity.
Critics (this includes non-partisan groups as well) say his proposal is poised to end Medicare as we know it and places an onerous burden on the most vulnerable in society. Once again, depending on one’s political and personal preferences, an individual may be led to varying conclusions.
There are some things that can’t be, honestly, said about Ryan, nevertheless, there are things that can’t be, truthfully, forwarded regarding his record and pass the smell test. What is widely believed about Ryan is more about beltway media construction and less about his actual voting and policy record.
Deficit in reason
You can’t say that Paul Ryan’s budget proposal actually balances the budget (or even reduces the deficit in a reasonable amount of time).
The Ryan budget proposes to cut the budget deficit (as a share of the economy) from 8.7 percent of Gross Domestic Product, known as GDP, last year to 1.2 percent in 2022. That’s the same 2022 deficit that the Congressional Budget Office estimates we would reach anyway if we made no significant legislative changes affecting the budget for the next 10 years.
Ryan says his plan would not increase the debt. In reality, under his plan the public debt would increase from $10 trillion in 2011 to $16 trillion in 2021, by his own figures. The non-partisan Tax Policy Center says that major tax cuts included in the Ryan budget would reduce federal revenue by $418 billion in 2015 alone; by 2019, revenue losses would exceed half a trillion dollars each and every year. That will make the deficit worse, not better.
Even Rand Paul, hardly a paragon of liberal thought, said that Paul Ryan’s plan takes too long to balance the budget — he puts the estimate at about 26 years.
You can say you like the cuts he makes; you can even say you like those he targets, but you cannot call a proposal that promises to reduce the deficit, but actually increases the deficit … a deficit-reduction plan.
Government express: Privilege pays
You can’t say that Paul Ryan is an anti-big government spending, fiscal conservative. We have been told a great deal over the last few years about Ryan’s fiscal conservative bona fides, but does that match the reality of the record?
Paul Ryan backed and voted for the Wall Street bailout when the economic collapse was occurring in the fall of 2008; he voted for every spending bill regarding the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars; and voted for the (unpaid) Bush Prescription Drug Plan in 2003, without a peep about it adding to the national debt.
Tad DeHaven, Budget Analyst for the CATO Institute, had this to say about Ryan as fiscal conservative champion: “Ryan voted for TARP, the auto bailouts, No Child Left Behind, the Medicare prescription drug benefit, the Bush stimulus, the Patriot Act and military adventurism abroad. No policymaker is perfect, but no one with a libertarian bone in their body could have supported these policies.”
Many of the policies that Ryan voted for, he is now actively campaigning against. Under any metric of judgment that has to be considered duplicitous at the very least. You cannot support and vote for programs that effectively added $6.8 trillion to the deficit and then decry government spending — at least not if you want to be taken seriously.
Stimulus animus?
You can’t say that Paul Ryan is an anti-stimulus crusader. “The stimulus failed to stimulate the economy …” “The stimulus did not create jobs.” These are just a couple of the statements that Ryan made in regard to the various efforts by the Obama administration to jumpstart the economy.
Ryan, while he was deriding the stimulus into every microphone and camera he could find, locked-up nearly $21 million for energy companies in his district. Records show that Ryan wrote four letters in 2009 to Energy Secretary Steven Chu. He offered support for Wisconsin projects and urged Chu to give “prompt and full consideration” to those stimulus proposals.
Most incredibly, Ryan even stated that the funds would “stimulate the local and area economy by creating new jobs,” as well as “create or retain approximately 7,600 jobs…” – the very things that he adamantly avowed the stimulus did not do. Try to make this a partisan issue if you wish, but calling out this level of rank hypocrisy should transcend politics and ideology.
Mind you, this isn’t about whether you agree or disagree with the president’s efforts, it is about Ryan’s much publicized statements regarding the stimulus and his now-revealed paradoxical endeavors to secure those same funds for his district.
Conclusion
To be sure, Paul Ryan is certainly not the first politician (of any party) to be guilty of the transgression of double-dealing and not being exactly what their slick packaging suggests (nor will he be the last), but until very recently, his record has escaped close examination and scrutiny. I don’t think he needs me to tell him this, but those days are over.
Obama and Biden have been placed under the political microscope; Romney’s record has been (and will continue to be) dissected; and now Ryan stands as the latest entry into this presidential election campaign and so this intensified analysis should be expected.
To anyone clearly paying attention, you will see that in this writing what has been exposed is not so much a betrayal of this writer’s principles; nor a disassembling of conservative ideology in favor of a progressive or liberal vision. What it is, however, is an examination of how one politician’s stated values are at odds with his own record.
You can say that you like Ryan’s affable nature or his ability to articulate the conservative vision (ladies, you can even feel free to like his washboard abs). You can say that you agree with the cuts he makes in his budget and his plans for Medicare.
Nevertheless, what you can’t say is that budgets that don’t balance are balanced; what you can’t say is that a record of voting for things that add trillions to the deficit makes someone a deficit hawk.
And lastly, what you can’t say is that years of publicly disparaging a policy initiative, while privately singing its praises in order to obtain those “cursed” funds for your constituents isn’t worthy of the designation of bold that has been so liberally bandied about.
It is a given that politicians will tell us what we want to hear, we can set our watches by it. And it won’t change until we change what we want to hear.