May 11, 2016
Ruth Marcus used her column today to present the speech that House Speaker Paul Ryan should give to the Republican convention in order to disassociate himself from Donald Trump. She has Paul Ryan being somewhat less than honest.
Most notably, she wants Ryan to say:
“I have spent my life believing in, and fighting for, the ideals of the Republican Party: limited government, fiscal responsibility, free trade and free markets, the United States’ role as the world’s most important force for peace and liberty. It is not clear to me which, if any, of those convictions Mr. Trump shares.”
Ryan actually doesn’t want limited government, he actually wants pretty much no government. He has repeatedly introduced budgets that call for eliminating all of the federal government except Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and the military by 2050. His budgets provide zero funding for the Justice Department, the State Department, the Food and Drug Administration, the National Institutes of Health, the Education Department, the National Park Service and everything else we think of as the federal government.
As a big supporter of stronger and longer patent and copyright protection, it is hard to see how Ryan can claim to be a supporter of free trade and free markets. As far as fiscal responsibility, Ryan has proposed huge tax cuts that would go disproportionately to the wealthy, which he claims will be offset by ending deductions which he has never named.
She also has a reference to Social Security and Medicare, with Ryan then saying that he wants to “get entitlement spending under control.” If Ryan were being honest he would of course tell the convention that he wants to privatize both programs.
It’s not clear why Ms. Marcus thinks it’s appropriate for Ryan to misrepresent his fundamental political positions in this address to the Republican convention.
Comments