Wednesday, November 14, 2012

Was Paul Ryan A Fool To Blindly Parrot the Romney Platform

Listening to Paul Ryan repeat the Romney stump speech, including his support for tax cuts, leads me to question Ryan's integrity. Supporting tax cuts was stupid politics and foolish economics. Paul Ryan had been one of the few politicians to be willing to address the third rail issue of entitlements. As a senior member of the House Ways and Means Committee, he is acutely aware of the unsustainable nature of the rapidly growing U.S. deficit. It seems hard to believe that Ryan really supported tax cuts, despite his espousing them as he parroted the Romney message. The support for tax cuts played right into the Obama campaigns claims that Romney was just out to help the rich.

What happened to Ryan's backbone? Neither he nor Romney really took Obama to task for the dangerous deficits that the U.S. is running up. Given that Romney lacked the political courage to back any sort of deficit reduction plan that would might risk his alienating key voting blocks, he was unable to attack Obama for being a spendthrift. Romney's own plan barely even touched upon how he was going to address the deficit.

Paul Ryan should have been an attack dog, going after Biden and Obama for putting social security, health benefits, and the economic future of all U.S. residents under age 55 at risk  However, rather than attack Obama's continuation of his trillion dollar a year deficits, he parroted the Romney platform. In particular, Ryan's support of tax cuts was nauseating. There is no way that any meaningful cuts to entitlements can be made without making some compromises on tax increases. Not only would the Senate reject attempts to cut entitlements without corresponding tax increass, the domestic turmoil engendered by benefit cuts might make the Occupy movement seem mild, as I pointed out in a post entitled Beware of Little Old Ladies With Signs 

I can only guess that when Ryan signed up for the Romney campaign, he agreed to parrot the current stump speech/ However, by doing so, he emasculated his capability to attack Obama's biggest weakness, the trillion dollar deficits. Thus, he blunted his own effectiveness in the debate with Biden, and raised questions about his own integrity. So, yes Ryan was a fool to blindly parrot the Romney platform.