Paul Ryan debated Joe Biden and proved to be a dud. The
encounter happened on October 11, 2012
because Mitt Romney who is running for President of the United States ,
invited Ryan to join the ticket and run to be his Vice President. The debate he
had with the sitting Vice President Joe Biden unmasked him as being not the
expert on the economy or the guru on the budget or the wonk on the deficit he
was billed to be, but a run of the mill blabber mouth that is more susceptible
to being programmed than to generating thoughts of his own.
When the moderator, Martha Raddatz asked the candidates to
tell how they would fix the American economy, Ryan rattled off a litany of the
symptoms affecting it without giving details of the plan that he and Romney
have in mind to relieve those symptoms or even cure the illness they say is
causing them. Instead, he described the economy as “limping along,” growing at
only 1.3 percent and where the creation of new jobs is slow. He added that twenty-three
million Americans are looking for work, that fifteen percent of the population
live in poverty; and this means the recovery is not at the level where it
should be in his estimation.
But what will he and Romney do that is different from what is
being done now? To answer this part of the question, Ryan mentioned the
five-point plan that Romney discussed before he chose him to be his running
mate. The first point is about getting America energy-independent by the
end of the decade which is something that has been talked about since the early
Nineteen-Seventies – four decades ago. The second point is to help the people
get the skills they need to get the jobs they want which is something that has
been talked about since the Seventeenth Century – four centuries ago. The third
and fourth point have to do with getting the debt and deficit under control
which is something that has been talked about since the beginning of time –
more than four millennia ago.
As to the fifth point, it is about not raising taxes on the
rich to reduce the deficit because these are the people who create jobs, says
Ryan. To answer the question that was raised on taxes: “If your ticket is
elected, who will pay more in taxes? Who will pay less?” Ryan repeated the old
talking points of his campaign unaware, apparently, that the discussion had
progressed beyond them. Here is where he was stuck: “If you taxed ...
businesses making over $250,000 at a hundred percent, it'd only run the
government for 98 days.” Thus, he offered what he said was a better solution:
“lower tax rates across the board and close loopholes.” But the idea that
closing the loopholes will generate more in taxes than the entire taxable
income is worth, has created the image of a hole that is bigger than the doughnut
– an intolerably absurd view.
For this reason, the Wall Street Journal – which is a mega
surrogate for the Romney-Ryan campaign – ran an editorial on the same day under
the title “Obama's Disappearing $5 Trillion” and the subtitle: “The President's
advisers concede 80% of Romney's tax-cut math.” In it, the editors tried to
smooth the absurdity not by acknowledging its existence but by laying the blame
on the beholder.
They did so as can be seen in the subtitle by saying that
the President's advisers were the ones to concede 80% of the math. Hey guys,
nobody outside the Romney campaign made it sound like the doughnut was one big
hole and no dough. Thus, by accusing the other side of conceding 80%, the
editors of the Journal have, in fact, conceded the 20%. And this is to admit
that under the Romney-Ryan plan, the middle class will pay 20% of the 5
trillion dollars in extra taxes; something that was vehemently denied by the
Romney campaign since the start. And this is what the debate was about in the
first place.
Instead of being “with it” and picking up the debate from
this point to advance it further, Paul Ryan did the following: “let me tell you
about the Mitt Romney I know.” He went on to tell a personal story of kindness.
But what was conspicuous by its absence were the charitable donations that
Romney has been making over the years to a church in which he is a bigwig; so
big in fact that he has the biggest say if not the only say as to how the tax
free money that comes in is spent. This is called serving the self through
charitable donations that are tax exempt to the donor, and tax free to the
recipient, both of which are one and the same. The wealthy Jews who donate to
the local Jewish charities or to Israel , operate on that same
principle, and they are doing very well at the expense of the other American
taxpayers.
Other than that, the tape and the transcript of that debate
are out. When you go over them, you are hard pressed to find anything that Paul
Ryan has said to indicate he knows enough about the economy, the deficit, the
debt or the budget that will help pull America out of its current
predicament.