Topic: Paul Ryan: Republicans Wanted 260 Percent Increase in Food Stamps

[AmericanPatriot]

This is our conservative financial genius


http://thenewamerican.com/usnews/congress/item/14340-paul-ryan-republicans-wanted-260-percent-increase-in-food-stamps

Former Republican vice presidential nominee and Congressman Paul Ryan told NBC's Meet the Press January 27 that the Republican ideas for spending cuts on social welfare programs would have increased the Food Stamp program by 260 percent over a decade, instead of the Democrats' 270 percent. Ryan has nevertheless been reliably touted by the mainstream media as a solid conservative and fiscal hawk.

Meet the Press host David Gregory pressed Ryan — who currently serves as the U.S. House of Representatives Budget Committee chairman — for an example of spending cuts he'd make that would stop the “takers” in society. Ryan said during the presidential campaign that America risked becoming a nation of “makers” who work and “takers” dependent upon government assistance. “Food Stamps, for example,” Ryan replied, “if our reforms went through, they would have grown by 260 percent over the last decade instead of 270 percent. So when you call such reforms 'savage,' that, I think, does a disservice to the quality of debate we need to have.”

Ryan made no constitutional argument against limiting the federal government to its enumerated powers, eliminating any programs, or even any year-over-year spending cuts. He also volunteered that the federal government should be a big brother to people down on their luck under any circumstance: “We want to have a safety net. A safety net for the poor, the vulnerable, the people who cannot help themselves.”

Even on deficit reduction, Ryan announced a goal of not bringing the budget into balance for another decade. “I'll just explain what the speaker said when we passed that bill,” he said of the House GOP plan. “Our goal is to get cuts and reforms that put us on a path to balancing the budget within a decade.” The Ryan budget introduced last year, "The Path to Prosperity," would not balance the budget well into the 2030s, so proposing only one additional decade of deficit spending instead of two decades might be considered a sort of progress. But analysts have noted that it is still a long way from balancing the budget within the two-year term his Wisconsin constituents elected him to serve.

Ryan saved most of his criticism for the Democratic-controlled U.S. Senate, observing, “They haven't passed a budget in four years, even though there is a law that says we have to budget every year.” He criticized Democrats for not making the most of their control of the executive branch and the U.S. Senate.

Senate Democrats have pledged to pass a budget this year, and on January 20 Senator Charles Schumer of New York promised on Meet the Press that it would include massive tax increases:
You're gonna need more revenues as well as more cuts to get the deficit down. And I've talked to leader Reid, I've talked to Budget Chair Murray. We're gonna to do a budget this year and it's gonna have revenues in it, and the Republican colleagues better get used to that.

Ryan revealed his constitutional ignorance on Meet the Press in his discussion on the Democratic-controlled parts of the federal government. “The President and his party have been in charge of Washington during this time. They have not budgeted for four years,” he declared. Of course, the president has put out a budget plan, and does every year. President Obama's 2013 budget plan makes no pretense of ever bringing the federal budget into balance.

More importantly, the president and his party are not “in charge” of spending in Washington, and haven't been since they lost control of the U.S. House of Representatives in the 2010 elections. The Republican-controlled House has an absolute stop on any new spending, which means that the trillion-dollar deficits for the past two years have been approved by Republicans as well as Democrats. The majority of Republicans in the House could put a stop to deficit spending all by themselves, simply by refusing to pass new deficit spending. But House Republicans — led by Speaker John Boehner and Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan — haven't even proposed doing this.

Ryan also predicted in the Meet the Press interview that the $120 billion in automatic cuts as part of last year's budget deal would take place. “I think the sequester is going to happen,” he told Gregory. The sequester would cut equal amounts from military and non-military discretionary spending increases.

[Glock32]

Obama's budgets have been unanimously rejected even by Senators from his own party. He and his Palace Guard in the media can try to hide behind the technical fact that he presented budgets, but it in no way excuses the reality that government has now been operating for 4 years without a budget. If his budget proposals are rejected even by his own party, it is his obligation to make revisions until something gets passed. Yeah I know, that's too much like rule of law and all that hokey nonsense.

I think Rush has it right that he and the Senate Democrats have no interest in passing a budget, because that would show too many of their cards. If you have an "opposition" who let you get away with continuing resolutions and debt limit increases, why even bother with a budget?

The whole thing is a rigged game, and even if pangs of guilt and honesty suddenly infected that Swamp on the Potomac it is in all likelihood far too late to correct anyway.

[Libertas]

We've been down this road so many times and the scenery never changes, I hate it!

The Dem Senate will never put forth a budget because they are lazy and because it is too much fun to watch everyone in the Democrat-Media Complex beat the sh*t out of the House budget no matter what is in it, demonize it and call it "Draconian" and "Extremist" and "DOA"...nobody is talking about how Obama's proposals hit the Senate DOA or that the Senate is negligent in their duty, the MFM covers all sins and only exists to torture Pubbies.

The only question before the House Repub's is this - Why do you fukcing tards give these chitholes exactly what they want?

They ought to say they will not even put a budget together until one comes from the Senate, or let the automatic triggers hit.

But they are Pubbies.  They are weak, they are stupid and they are too easily manipulated.  Obama & the Dem's will get everything they want, all they have to do is sit back, point thier fingers at the Pubbies and bitch 24/7 like they all do anyway...

To Hell with them!

[Glock32]

The Republicans are nothing more than paid opposition. They're like whatever team the Harlem Globetrotters are playing.

[Pandora]

Has it occurred to anyone else that the problem is so big, intractable and overwhelming that they really don't know what to do?  And because of that, they're guessing, and to guess "wrong" is to not only make things much worse, but to bring The Wrath down on them?  It's cowardly, no doubt about it, but I can see the constant pressure and the whipsaw of one crisis after another has to be intimidating.

[Libertas]

No, it's a complete lack of courage to play hardball, if they are intimidated by anything it is the constant demonization spewing out of the MFM, but they are too chickensh*t to realize that demonization is coming NO MATTER WHAT!

So why not play hardball and let the chips fall where they may?

They have yet to convince me that bending over and grabbing their ankles has worked.

[charlesoakwood]

"Has it occurred...?"
                      No, what he said and more.

[Pandora]

Okay, okay.  Just askin'.

[Libertas]

Being here at the end...sucks...oh well, not without a fight, right?!

[Glock32]

Well what has occurred to me is that for all the scorn we rightly heap on a bunch of unprincipled politicos, the people of this country deserve even more. This is ultimately the consequence of a depraved electorate.

I'm always reminded of a story Walter Williams frequently tells, which he usually places under the heading of "Who is to blame?"

Who is to blame for a federal government that spends a third of our income, regulates most every aspect of our lives, and has snuffed out the personal liberty envisioned by our founders? It is tempting to blame politicians whom we elect and send to Washington. I shared that view until a luncheon conversation I had with the late Sen. Jesse Helms of North Carolina during the 1980s.

Part of our conversation was about crop subsidies that I had often criticized in my nationally syndicated column. Sen. Helms said that he agreed with me 100 percent. Then he asked me to tell him how could he remain senator from North Carolina and vote against crop subsidies. He said that if he voted against crop subsidies, North Carolinians would run him out of office and elect someone else whom I’d find worse than he.

My conversation with Sen. Helms was an epiphany of sorts: how reasonable is it for us to ask or expect a politician to commit what he deems to be political suicide? A politician’s goal, before all others, is to get elected to and remain in office. The way he accomplishes that is suggested by Henry Louis Mencken’s description of an election: “Government is a broker in pillage, and every election is sort of an advance auction sale of stolen goods.” To the extent Mencken is right our problem is identified. It’s not our politicians who are to blame for our Leviathan government and subsequent loss of liberties. It is the American people.

http://spectator.org/archives/2010/02/12/whos-to-blame

[Pandora]

“Government is a broker in pillage, and every election is sort of an advance auction sale of stolen goods.”

Precisely.  They broker, negotiate, with that which isn't theirs to sell.

Shades of Boehner offering tax increases to Obongo in exchange for whatthehellever.  As though it wasn't OUR MONEY he was playing with.

[Libertas]

Yeah, if your only defense is "this is the way the system works", well, that ought to be setting off alarm bells from coast to coast...and setting people off to arms to end the corruption and return the system to the default setting we had at our Founding!

[charlesoakwood]

"...how reasonable is it for us to ask or expect a politician to commit what he deems to be political suicide?"

If we have the opportunity...No professional politicians, term limit the all and senators get no 6 year ride.

[IronDioPriest]

I would like it if about 95% of them would commit real suicide. As in, the kind where you stop being a politician because you're dead.

[AmericanPatriot]

[quote]We have met the enemy. He is us[/quote][/size][/size]

Pogo

[charlesoakwood]

Seppuku? IDP, that would require courage of which they have none.

[Dan]

Yes, our fellow citizens are to blame. Left, right and center. Everybody swallows whatever their side outs out. Ryan lost me early on iun the process with the "tough votes" he cast, but I grew to despise him for teh sh*t he was sellin' such as a balanced budget in 35 years? And this crap about 260% being the answer as opposed to 270%? f**k him and all those like him.

[Glock32]

Yeah a balanced budget by the year 2040?  That's the politics version of "I promise I'll call you tomorrow"

[LadyVirginia]

My brother once owed $20,000 on his credit cards.  He just spent and spent over 2-3 years.

When it finally dawned on him that he couldn't keep doing that he threw himself into working all the time (he worked on commision--this was the early 90's) and within 2 years paid off the cards.  Three years later he paid cash for a BMW.

I'm sick of this taking years to fix problems crap!!!

[Glock32]

It's because they want to continue being codependent enablers in this mass delusion that, somehow, we can get our national finances in order without harming a single precious hair on the head of Sosh Security and Medicare.

So we get dissembling salesman BS about a balanced approach that will come to fruition in the comfortably distant future. It's just like the alcoholic who's really -- seriously! -- going to quit....tomorrow.