Though the word was out much earlier, Mitt Romney made it official of who his pick for his running mate will be this year. He announced Wisconsin Rep. Paul Ryan on Saturday. The two plan to make the nation’s spiraling debt a centerpiece of its attacks on Barack Obama.
Fox News reports,
Romney made the selection official during a campaign stop Saturday morning in Norfolk, Va., before launching a four-day bus tour.
The Republican presidential candidate called his new running mate a man of “steadiness” and “integrity.” Speaking Saturday morning, Romney praised Ryan as an “intellectual leader” of the party, one who understands the toll the debt is taking on the country but is optimistic about the future.
“He doesn’t demonize his opponents. He understands that honorable people can have honest differences and he appeals to the better angels of our nature,” Romney said. “He’s never been content to just curse the darkness. He’d rather light candles.”
Ryan has been held up as a leader in the GOP, especially after his budget was put to the forefront. But the facts broken down by CATO present that the Paul Ryan budget, while demonstrating less spending than Obama over the next decade, still needed more cuts in it to bring in a balanced budget. His budget also does not take into account the doubling of military spending, which Romney wants, and the $2 trillion it will cost over the next decade in additional spending. Ryan will also not even think of cutting military spending at all. CATO writes,
To summarize, Ryan’s budget plan would make crucial reforms to federal health care programs, and it would limit the size of the federal government over the long term. However, his plan would be improved by adopting more cuts and eliminations of agencies in short term, such as those proposed by Senator Rand Paul.
While Ryan favors tax cuts, and so do I, it is the spending that continues to not be brought into balance. He keeps Social Security at the level Obama does. He also begins to cut in other areas like Medicaid and Medicare. Cuts were applied to with other entitlements, which should be done and eventually eliminated.
The problem is that we, as a society, have entrenched in our minds that welfare must exist. When anyone tries to tamper with that they are demonized and the party good at demonization is the Democrat party. Ryan has already been demonized over the budget, which did make cuts, but they weren’t huge cuts in the big scheme of things. You can bet that the Democrats are going after those entitlement cuts and will have a field day with that. Personally I’d like to see the cuts much deeper and the budget brought into balance rather than continue in deficit spending. After all, I’m a conservative, and conservatives spend within their means, balance their budgets and cut taxes all at the same time.
As I previously wrote concerning Ryan’s proposal on healthcare,
Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI.), the architect of the current Republican budget proposal, wants to make sure everyone is covered no matter what age or health status and is willing to use tax credits to subsidize the program. Those individuals that do not sign up for a plan, would be automatically enrolled in one when they seek care.
Ryan, like Romney, also supports the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), but unlike Romney he actually voted for it. This is the bill Barack Obama signed into law which allows the federal government to illegally (now legally) arrest Americans, detain them, ship them to prisons abroad indefinitely without trial, or proof, simply because they say they are a terrorist.
There are some problems with the choice,no doubt, but apparently this is what the establishment GOP is putting on the plate.
In any case, we’ll see just how Team Romney plays all this out.
