Watching Morning Joe yesterday, when the hosts and panelists were discussing the possibility that GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney would choose Rep. Paul Ryan as his running mate, I was thinking - YESSSSS!!! Pleeeease pick Paul Ryan! But then I thought Mitt was too smart to do that. My thinking was that he would pick someone boring like Rob Portman or Tim Pawlenty.
Clearly I overestimated Mitt Romney. According to news outlets, he has in fact made just about the most ridiculous veep choice he could have made (outside of Sarah Palin) in choosing Ryan.
For those who may not know Rep. Ryan, he is the much-heralded -- on the right, anyway -- architect of the Ryan Budget Plan. The plan that eliminates Medicare as we know it, privatizes it and replaces it with a voucher system (there goes the senior vote). The so-called Bush tax cuts which went almost entirely to the wealthy -- and, we must remember, were put in place because Bill Clinton left behind a budget surplus -- would be made permanent. The plan would actually increase defense spending, even though we are winding down Bush's two unpaid-for wars. It would repeal the Dodd-Frank bank regulation measures, because who needs pesky government regulation anyway?
Ryan's budget would slash the top tax rates from 35 to 25 percent for individuals and corporations (most large corporations pay little or no income tax now, btw). Pell grants, which many students rely on to help pay for their college education, would be cut back to 2008 levels. Food stamps and low-income housing for the poor would be cut drastically (but then, according to Romney, the poor are doing fine anyway. Someone please give Romney a definition for the word 'poor'.) And you can guess what he'd like to do to things like the Obama health care plan and environmental protections.
But wait, it gets better! Ryan is Catholic. Bishops, nuns, and other leaders of the Catholic Church have ripped Ryan a new one about this budget, calling it, among other things, downright immoral. Immoral! His own church has pointed out that it's very non-Christian to take money from the poor and the middle class to give it to people who are already wealthy, not to mention downright stupid if you want to get this economy moving again. But that's exactly what Ryan's budget plan does. But then again, Ryan is a devotee of Ayn Rand, who was famously an atheist. Oops. That's sure to piss off the Church.
Romney, Ryan and other members of the GOP are out to do one thing and one thing only - destroy the middle class in order to give even more to the wealthy.
Congratulations, President Obama. Your ad writers can take a vacation. The ads will now write themselves.
Information about Ryan's plan, called "The Path to Prosperity," can be viewed here and here. A .pdf of it is here.
