Democracy Has Prevailed.

August 30, 2012

More On Paul Ryan's Speech Last Night

There's only one thing to say about the GOP's Vice-Presidential nominee.

You can read a transcript here.

I want to focus on this part:
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.
What debt commission was that?

That would be the so called "Bowles-Simpson" commission or more officially, the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform - but more on that in a little bit.

Implied in Ryan's criticism of Obama, is the notion that the president should have acted on the recommendations of the report, right?

Looking at the details shows Ryan's dishonesty.  For example, guess who was one of the commissioners?

Representative Paul Ryan.

And guess how he voted on the final report?  From CNN:
Ryan was one of eight Republicans on the 18-member National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform, which Obama established in 2010. The commission was led by Erskine Bowles, who served as White House chief of staff in the Clinton administration, and former Wyoming Sen. Alan Simpson.

Bowles and Simpson proposed a sweeping program of spending cuts and a radical overhaul of the U.S. tax code, aimed at cutting projected budget deficits by a total of $4 trillion by 2020. The plan included changes to Social Security and substantial cuts in defense and discretionary spending.

But for their proposal to be adopted as official recommendations to Congress, the Bowles-Simpson commission needed 14 of the 18 votes. It failed on an 11-7 vote, with four Democrats and three Republicans, including Ryan, voting no. [emhasis added]
Huh.  He kinda left something important out, didn't he?

2 comments:

.The Village Elliot. said...

Yes that is a minor detail, isn't it. I am glad that Ryan gave as an overall target for spending at 20% of the GDP. That's about what we had at the end of the Clinton Administration, when we had a balanced budget and economic growth. I never could figure out what was so horrible about that.

.The Village Elliot. said...

By the way do you want people to post comments to your blog? The CAPTCHA thing is almost impossible to dicipher. I needed 5 tries.