Ryan: "Oops!... But..."

He was against it before he was for it.

Paul Ryan is the latest Republican hypocrite to spout off about all the evils of Obama’s stimulus plan while simultaneously requesting stimulus money for his district.

Congressman Ryan fancies himself to be a “true conservative.”  He finds the whole concept of government hand outs distasteful.  Over the past few years he has been quite vocal about his disdain for Obama’s stimulus; claiming that it didn’t work and didn’t create jobs.  But we now know that while he was publically criticizing the president’s plan he was writing letters requesting stimulus money for his constituents.

In 2009 Ryan wrote letters to the Department of Energy and the Department of Labor seeking stimulus money for two energy conservation companies.  One of them, Wisconsin Energy Conservation Corp. received $20.3 million for the energy Department to help homes and businesses improve energy efficiency.

When pressed on the matter Ryan denied applying for any stimulus funds.  Later, having read the letters, he admitted that he was wrong; that he had in fact applied for the funds...BUT they were treated as “constituent requests.” We guess means that he only applied for the money because his constituents asked him to???

“Regardless”, Ryan said, “it’s clear that the Obama stimulus did nothing to stimulate the economy and now the President is asking to do it all over again.”

In Mr. Ryan’s defense he is merely parroting the talking points handed down from Republican headquarters: “The economy sucks so the stimulus didn’t work.”  Republicans intend to ride that horse all the way to November.

The problem they have is that according to virtually every economist the stimulus did work.  The problem is the stimulus wasn’t big enough.  While it is hard to prove a negative; economists agree that were it not for the money infused into the economy by the President’s stimulus plan the economy would have fallen into a deep depression. If you want proof look no further than the jobs numbers. 

When Obama took office the country was losing private sector jobs at a rate of 750,000 PER MONTH. Since the President implemented his plan we have had 29 straight months of job GROWTH.  Last month the economy generated 163,000 net new jobs…and increase of 913,000 jobs per month since Obama took over.  Where in the hell do Ryan and his cronies think that job growth came from?  In fact the net growth numbers would be even greater if not for the decrease in public sector jobs caused by Republicans implementing their austerity measures at the state and local levels.

Obama wants another stimulus and he wants the wealthiest Americans to pay for it by raising their taxes.  Republicans say that you can’t increase taxes at a time of a struggling economy because it will take money out of people’s pockets.  By “people” they mean the rich.   Yet Republicans want to slash federal discretionary spending which has exactly the same negative effect…only on the middle class and working poor.

Mr. Ryan has proven himself to be quite adept at that age old strategy used by politicians everywhere…when caught in a compromising hypocritical moment…lie.

Mr. Ryan says that he is a devout practicing Catholic.  As such he should know better.