Ruth Marcus used her Washington Post column today (5/11/16) to present the speech that House Speaker Paul Ryan should give to Republicans 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 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 goes, 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.
Economist Dean Baker is co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research in Washington, DC. A version of this post originally appeared on CEPR’s blog Beat the Press (5/11/16).
Messages can be sent to the Washington Post at letters@washpost.com, or via Twitter @washingtonpost. Please remember that respectful communication is the most effective.
In the end, it all depends on ownership and who has a right to own the wealth that we all had a part in producing.
For if Paul Ryan and Thomas Jefferson are correct, that an unalienable right is life, they we must have a right to own the food needed to have life. Then we must have a right earn all we can earn, own all we can own and to be a dictator over all who are on land that we own.
On the other hand, if life is a free gift that no one deserves, then we own nothing, everything we have belongs to those who have less and most guilty should we feel if ever we miss an opportunity to give all we can give.
Should you really push the idea that you can be for “pretty much no government” and then include a list of exceptions the last of which is an item that the corporate media pretends is free but which actually takes up the majority of discretionary spending?
Our military terrorism costs $1.4 trillion, but that is not the majority of discretionary spending. For our medical industry that keeps the public terrorized and in submission to authority, it consumes 20% of GDP, over $3.5 trillion annually.
And our corporate media speak a rare moment of truth when they say that the military is a profit generator, for since World War II, Empire USA has hoarded unto itself over half the liquid wealth on planet earth.
We have Donald Trump speaking what he wants, when he wants and with no facts to back them up, and we have to ask why the media thinks its Appropriate to lie? We should ask, when have the felt the actual need to speak the truth, as it has been a long, long time since we have heard the truth roll over the lips of the major For-Profit media pundits.
This also presupposes they can actually distinguish the Truth from fiction. For far, far too many, what they say, in their mind is truth, and they faithfully adhere to that lie.