Paul Ryan spoke of wanting Republicans to be the party of ideas, but once again he acted as a representative of the party of lies. His speech was far more notable for false claims as opposed to ideas. Here’s the gist of his CPAC speech:
The way I see it, let the other side be the party of personalities. We’ll be the party of ideas.
And I’m optimistic about our chances—because the Left? The Left isn’t just out of ideas. It’s out of touch. Take Obamacare. We now know that this law will discourage millions of people from working. And the Left thinks this is a good thing. They say, “Hey, this is a new freedom—the freedom not to work.”But I don’t think the problem is too many people are working—I think the problem is not enough people can find work. And if people leave the workforce, our economy will shrink—there will be less opportunity, not more. So the Left is making a big mistake here. What they’re offering people is a full stomach—and an empty soul. The American people want more than that.
This reminds me of a story I heard from Eloise Anderson. She serves in the cabinet of my friend Governor Scott Walker. She once met a young boy from a poor family. And every day at school, he would get a free lunch from a government program. But he told Eloise he didn’t want a free lunch. He wanted his own lunch—one in a brown-paper bag just like the other kids’. He wanted one, he said, because he knew a kid with a brown-paper bag had someone who cared for him.
Here he lied about Obamacare discouraging millions of people from working–a gross distortion of the CBO report which showed that the Affordable Care Act frees people from the “insurance trap.” It does not discourage people who should be working from working so they can sit home on welfare, as Republicans suggest. It ends the days of people who otherwise would not need to work to support themselves from having to work because of this being the only way they could obtain health insurance. Up until this year, people who otherwise were financially ready to retire to in their 60’s would often continue working because if they stopped working they would be uninsured until they qualified for Medicare at age 65. Often the spouses of affluent professionals work at jobs for the health insurance when they otherwise do not need the money because someone in their family has preexisting medical conditions which kept them from purchasing insurance on the individual market. Leaving a job because they can now keep their insurance after leaving does not necessarily mean they will not work. It is anticipated that many people will leave jobs with large companies to work for smaller companies, or perhaps start their own small companies and become, in Republican language, job creators.
This lie about Obamacare came after Paul Ryan lied earlier in the speech denying Obama’s record of promoting economic growth. It has become the mantra of conservatives to deny the success of the stimulus, but their claims are untrue. We have had economic growth under Obama despite Republicans working hard to block his economic policies. Corporate profits and the stock market are doing exceptionally well under Obama, as is generally the case under Democrats. The problem now is that this prosperity isn’t always working its way to the middle class–demonstrating that Republican ideas about trickle down economics are wrong.
So what is Ryan’s big idea? He wants to take free lunches away from school kids. His story is hardly convincing. Generally when kids do not come to school with a lunch in a brown-paper-bag it is because they do not have parents who can afford to send them to school with a nutritious lunch. Of course in this case the story Paul Ryan told isn’t even true. He told this story presumably because it would sure be hard to come up with a real story to justify taking lunches away from children.
As Rand Paul once said, “This is a great tactic. Misinformation can be very important.”
Correction: I tried to get a post out too quickly while working and I messed up the Pauls, originally attributing Paul Ryan’s speech to Rand Paul. That is why it the post ends with a quote from Rand Paul which remains pertinent, with other references to Rand Paul removed in correcting the post.
