The Boston Globe highlights the blatant dishonesty HERE:
“All this temporary booster shot stimulus didn’t work in the stimulus package, didn’t work when the last administration tried these things, so we don’t want to go with ideas that have proven to fail, we want ideas that have proven to succeed,” he said in an interview on MSNBC in September 2011. “I think tax reform is the key.”
Even when asked about any appeals he made for stimulus funds by the caller on WBZ in 2010, he stuck to his guns.
“I assume you voted against the stimulus,” the caller, identifying himelf as Joe from Stoughton, began, “and I’m just curious if you accepted any money in your district.”
“No, I’m not one [of those] people who votes for something then writes to the government to ask them to send us money. I did not request any stimulus money,” Ryan responded.
It’s important to note that Paul Ryan voted to pass every major bill that led to the elimination of a surplus and the handoff of a $1 trillion deficit by the time President Obama came into office; Paul Ryan is not a fiscal conservative … he just plays one on tv. And this is bad because not only is he caught dead to rights having lied about his active request for stimulus funds he called government waste, but it his other problem is conservative voters would be far more willing to look past Republican politicians sleeping with hookers (David Vitter) or having sex with male pages (take your pick) than to see “conservative” politicians requesting “bigger government” behind closed doors. It’s practically scandalous.
This is a constant problem within the Republican party. On one hand … they continue to denounce and denigrate President Obama’s stimulus program which helped to stabilize the economy. The first 3 months of 2009 – the country lost 2.2 MILLION jobs (source) and yet nearly every single Republican voted AGAINST the stimulus plan. Their calculus was very simple:
Option A: The “great recession” was so severe it would take years to get the country back on track and by the time he was up for re-election … the economy still wouldn’t have fully recovered. Americans would want to blame someone and they would likely blame the President.
or
Option B: President Obama’s policies pull the country out of recession in which case voters would give him credit regardless …
Either way – Republicans had nothing to gain politically from a stronger economy; they needed America to fail or they’d be cast out in the darkness politically for a very long time. But – even while Republicans voted against the stimulus … those same Republicans who voted for and approved pork barrel spending projects in their home district under Bush continued to request these projects at home under Obama. They constantly said the stimulus was “waste” even though 1/3 of it was taxes, 1/3 went directly to the states to help stabilize hemorrhaging state budgets and 1/3 was for investments in infrastructure, research and projects.
The Associated Press reports on Paul Ryan’s lies HERE:
The documents show that Ryan’s attempts to take advantage of the stimulus funds even after he voted against them was more expansive than previously reported. Ryan was criticized by some House Democrats in 2010 after the Wall Street Journal reported that he was among several Republicans lawmakers who sought the stimulus money for their constituents by, in his case, writing a letter in 2010 to the Department of Labor.
The additional letters include his praise for the energy program’s aims, and clash with his own budget priorities, which call for curtailing many of the same Department of Energy investments that are designed to spur the growth of green technologies and reduce reliance on fossil fuels.
You can find the four letters Ryan wrote requesting stimulus dollars in his district HERE:
Well – not only has the country created 4 million private sector jobs since January of 2010 (source); Obama’s record on jobs is thus far significantly better than under George W. Bush according to Paul Krugman.
Lastly – for the geniuses who feel like the stimulus was a bad idea … as we wrote HERE:
93% of the economists surveyed by the University of Chicago Booth School of Business believed that the Obama stimulus i.e. American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 helped reduce unemployment. But when factoring in the potential costs of either raising taxes to address the deficit spending – only 14% of the economists surveyed felt the economy would be better off without having passed the Obama stimulus package.
NINETY THREE PERCENT. The votes are in. The fat lady sang. The stimulus was necessary and the only difference was as Paul Krugman said at the time …. it wasn’t big enough to handle the economic Tsunami that came crushing towards America’s shores in order to stave off the huge cuts to government sector cuts that had they not happened … the country’s unemployment would be near 7% right now. (source)
