Did Paul Ryan Lie? You Be the Judge

photo courtesy of tobyotter on Flickr

Last night Paul Ryan stepped into the Republican National Convention spotlight and delivered an anti-Obama speech riddled with holes. Here are three things workers need to know about the vice presidential candidate:

1. Ryan attacked Obama for failing to keep open a GM plant that closed under Bush

Here’s what he told delegates:

My own state voted for President Obama.  When he talked about change, many people liked the sound of it. Especially in Janesville where we were about to lose a major factory.  A lot of guys I went to high school with worked at that G.M. plant.  Right there at that plant, candidate Obama said, "I believe that if our government is there to support you, this plant will be here for another 100 years.''

That's what he said in 2008.  Well, as it turned out, that plant didn't last another year.  It is locked up and empty to this day.  And that's how it is in so many towns where the recovery that was promised is nowhere in sight. 

Wrong. The factory halted production in December 2008 when President George W. Bush was still in office.

2. Ryan vowed to protect the poor, but his budget targets programs for low-income families

At the end of his speech, Ryan said this:

We have responsibilities, one to another.  We do not each face the world alone.  And the greatest of all responsibilities, is that of the strong to protect the weak. The truest measure of any society is how it treats those who cannot defend or care for themselves.

Ryan gets 62 percent of his enormous budget cuts from programs that benefit low-income Americans, according to The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. This includes the severe downsizing of Medicaid and other health care for people with low or moderate incomes; SNAP, formerly known as the Food Stamp Program; and low-income discretionary programs, like Pell Grants and job training programs.

3. Ryan condemned Obama’s stimulus bill, but his hometown owes its economic success to federal money

Ryan claimed:

The stimulus was a case of political patronage, corporate welfare anachronism at their worst.

You -- you the American people of this country were cut out of the deal.  What did taxpayers get out of the Obama stimulus? More debt.  That money wasn't just spent and wasted, it was borrowed, spent and wasted.

But as Ryan Lizza writes in The New Yorker, “When I pointed out to Ryan that government spending programs were at the heart of his home town’s recovery, he didn’t disagree.” Thanks to a $1.2 million stimulus grant, several big economic development projects are underway, including the Janesville Innovation Center, which will help entrepreneurs launch their ideas. The federal government is also chipping in $10 million for a new facility manufacturing a medical tracer -- currently made outside the United States -- that could employ 150 people.