{"id":22976,"date":"2011-04-16T01:02:04","date_gmt":"2011-04-16T05:02:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/?p=22976"},"modified":"2011-04-16T11:21:48","modified_gmt":"2011-04-16T15:21:48","slug":"before-he-was-the-solution-he-was-part-of-the-problem","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=22976","title":{"rendered":"Before He Was “The Solution” He Was “Part of the Problem”"},"content":{"rendered":"

House Republicans today voted overwhelmingly in favor Paul Ryan’s deficit reduction plan<\/a>. Ever since he released it, many in the conservative punditry world have been heaping praise on the Congressmen, calling him things like “bold” and “courageous”. Additionally, President Obama’s direct attack on his plan likewise bolstered his credibility among many fiscal conservatives and even libertarian groups like the CATO Institute<\/a>. Indeed, it appears that Paul Ryan is becoming the new face of fiscal conservatism for many.<\/p>\n

However, even a cursory look at Ryan’s twelve-year record in the House reveals that he has been anything but a fiscal hawk. It wasn’t just one bad vote here and there either. Time after time, Ryan voted for legislation that expanded the size of the federal government and increased our debt and deficit. In 2001, he voted for No Child Left Behind and the accompanying increase in federal education spending. In 2003, he voted for the Medicare Prescription Drug Benefit, expanding the entitlement which he now seeks to rein in. In 2005, during the debate over privatizing Social Security, Paul Ryan and John Sununu proposed legislation which would guarantee that no future <\/em>Social Security recipient would receive lower benefits than which the current system offered. While some argued that this would actually save money over the long run by changing the rate of growth, in reality it would make it more difficult to reform Social Security by guaranteeing an unsustainable level of benefits. \u00a0In 2008, he voted for TARP and then later for the auto-company bailouts. Most recently, he voted for caps on CEO compensation. For someone like Ryan who is a self-professed Ayn Rand fan, some of these things seem like they are straight out of Atlas Shrugged<\/em>. Now, I am not naive enough to think that there are droves of Republican congressmen with perfect voting records. But for someone who is supposed to be the new face of fiscal conservatism, Paul Ryan’s voting record demonstrates that he has been anything but a fiscal conservative, especially when it comes to entitlements.<\/p>\n

Despite my criticisms of Ryan, I like many parts of his plan, especially the voucher system for Medicare and the block grants for Medicaid. But it appears that Paul Ryan saw the writing on the wall when it came to which way the Republican Party was moving, especially with the rise of the Tea Party. That is the motivation for his “Path to Prosperity”- not some long-held beliefs in the ideals of fiscal prudence or limited government.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

House Republicans today voted overwhelmingly in favor Paul Ryan’s deficit reduction plan. Ever since he released … Before He Was “The Solution” He Was “Part of the Problem”<\/span>Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":607,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[47,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-22976","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-liberals-suck","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22976","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/607"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=22976"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22976\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=22976"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=22976"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=22976"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}