Paul Ryan: The Harsh Reality!

Dear Commons Community,

The response to Paul Ryan as Mitt Romney’s vice presidential running mate is getting mixed reviews.  The Huffington Post reported that the Republican audience in Norfolk, Virginia, at Ryan’s acceptance speech yesterday greeted him with applause and a degree of enthusiasm:

“And as Ryan got going into his remarks and warmed up, he gathered momentum. It was clearly evident that Ryan is going to supply Romney with intangibles that favorability polls suggest the candidate has sorely lacked: energy, vigor, emotion, feeling.

“America is an idea. It’s the only country founded on an idea,” Ryan said emphatically. When he mentioned that rights come from God and not from man — a bedrock belief of conservative governance — the crowd broke into lusty chants of, “USA, USA, USA!”

However, others are expressing seriously concern about Ryan and his fiscal plans for the country. A New York Times editorial warns that Ryan has little sympathy for those in need:

“As House Budget Committee chairman, Mr. Ryan has drawn a blueprint of a government that will be absent when people need it the most. It will not be there when the unemployed need job training, or when a struggling student needs help to get into college. It will not be there when a miner needs more than a hardhat for protection, or when a city is unable to replace a crumbling bridge.

And it will be silent when the elderly cannot keep up with the costs of M.R.I.’s or prescription medicines, or when the poor and uninsured become increasingly sick through lack of preventive care.

More than three-fifths of the cuts proposed by Mr. Ryan, and eagerly accepted by the Tea Party-driven House, come from programs for low-income Americans. That means billions of dollars lost for job training for the displaced, Pell grants for students and food stamps for the hungry. These cuts are so severe that the nation’s Catholic bishops raised their voices in protest at the shredding of the nation’s moral obligations.

Mr. Ryan’s budget “will hurt hungry children, poor families, vulnerable seniors and workers who cannot find employment,” the bishops wrote in an April letter to the House. “These cuts are unjustified and wrong.”

The Times has it right.  Paul Ryan’s plans for America will hurt the people who need its help the most.

Tony