At first glance, Paul Ryan seems like a promising candidate. He claims he has an effective plan in place to balance the budget, improve the economy, and get Americans back to work. The interesting part about his plan is that during his first one-on-one interview with Brit Hume on Tuesday, Ryan admitted, after waffling around the question, that under the Romney/Ryan plan, it would take at least 10 years to balance the budget. He couldn’t provide a clear answer as to what exactly the plan entailed; instead, he chose to attack Obama rather than provide answers.
And there’s more bad news.
Ryan’s track record promises to take a step backward for women’s reproductive rights -- a right that Obama, Biden, and previous administrations have fought hard to take a stand for. Ryan co-sponsored a bill that could ban in-vitro fertilization for couples trying to conceive. He supports banning many common forms of birth control for women, including the pill. And if that’s not enough, Ryan voted against the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, which helps women fight for equal pay for equal work. Although the economy is certainly an important issue, protecting the fundamental equal rights of women is paramount. I prefer not to have a man, or the government, decide what my reproductive rights and options are.
Ryan also supports Romney’s plan to provide tax incentives for the wealthy at the expense of the middle class. Ryan supports a tax plan that would give our wealthiest Americans an after tax income increase by at least 8.7 percent. Under Ryan’s plan, people earning over $1 million per year would receive tax cuts of over $260,000 each year. We can also say good-bye to Medicare with Ryan in office and hello to a voucher system for our seniors.
Is Ryan a good choice for Romney? Only if you support a track record on radical conservative views on women’s health. Ryan likely helped Romney reconnect with our most conservative voters, but for your average American, Ryan promises to move our country backward not forward.
This post is part of a weekly conversation with our Moms Matter 2012 political bloggers. To see the original question and what the other writers have to say, see "Romney Picks Paul Ryan as VP."
Image via Gage Skidmore/Flickr
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Comments 63
The nation would freak the fuck out if any president got it in their mind to try and control our reproductive rights.
Conservatism with money and free enterprise is what the nation needs. I get so tired of hearing what new thing we'll have to buy, or be fined for it. Or how someone screwed with the taxes again and the middle class is who suffers for it.
No matter what side of the political fence you're on, it would take a blind, deaf, moron to not see that most of what Obama has done, isn't working.
Everyone has their good points & bad, but Obama is bad for business. Business makes the world go 'round.
Remind me again about how long Obama's budget will take to balance. Yeah...that's what I thought. As for the war on women - liberals are the only ones waging war (class, race, women, etc.) and by continuing to polarize view points, keeping the country divided and creating a passive-aggressive civil war, you are destroying our country. In order to move Forward, we must put a STOP to this. Paul Ryan is energizing not only the Conservatives, but ALL Americans begging for a positive message - his speech yesterday - PERFECT! We need new leadership, we need to regain our American Pride and we need new energy - I think the Right just found it and the Left is terrified.
So many people like you are completely forgetting that Ryan is on the ticket as VICE PRESIDENT, not president. Ryan has great ideas, and I support a vast majority of them, but Romeny is the one who is listed as president on the ticket. Remember that. He's running the show, Ryan is not, so stop getting all hysterical.
That being said, Ryan at least has a budget to stop the government's out of control spending. Obama and his democratic congress has not given us a budget for the past four years. Ryan is aiming to cut down debt, while Obama is seeking to increase it through entitlement programs such as Obamacare (which is going to definitely destroy Obamacare. For more information, take a close read of the Ryan-Wyden plan, a plan that Obama and his debt commission approved of btw).
The so called "war on women" and free birth control...those are social issues. The operative word there is "social". Society will decide on those issues, NOT government. I don't want anyone but myself to pay for my birth control thank you very much. The moment you, as a woman, let someone else like the government have control over payment of birth control, then the government has a right to but into your sex life. I'm not liking that idea, so the government can keep it's paws off of my birth control thank you very much.
As for equal pay, again it's a social issue, NOT a government issue. Women who have skills that employers value, have the opportunity to voice their own opinion about their own pay. It is NOT up to the government to make that decision for businesses. Have a problem with businesses? Ok, don't purchase products/services from businesses that don't offer women equal pay. Simple as that. You might want to start with tbe Obama White House though: women are paid significantly less than their male counterparts. Who's waging the war on women now?
Thank you the4mutts. It's high time people began seeing the difference between what politicians believe PERSONALLY, what they want to do POLITICALLY, and what is even POSSIBLE. It is not possible to ban IVF and birth control, and I've NEVER heard any Republican say they wanted to. They may not believe in it, but that doesn't mean taking it away from everyone else. These laws are about abortion, and the who IVF/BC thing only comes into play if you squint and look at it sideways while it's upside down. And 10 years to balance a 15 TRILLION dollar budges? That means saving 1.5 trillion per year MORE than what we're spending. That's a 3 trillion per year cut in spending. That seems pretty damn significant to me. This election is about the Republicans talking about the economy and the Democrats trying to distract voters by screaming about this "war on women". Well, I'm a woman, I'm on BC, and I'm also a worker. Guess what? I am not fooled, and none of you should be either.