Paul Ryan’s Fiscal Rectitude: Two Wars on the Chinese Credit Card

House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer (D-MD), a champion the Bowles-Simpson deficit plan, on Wednesday attacked Paul Ryan for using the fiscal commission as a political weapon against President Obama after helping ensure its defeat.

“My friend Paul Ryan talks about fiscal responsibility, but voted to put two wars on the credit card. He voted to spend trillions of dollars on tax cuts for millionaires and billionaires. He voted for a prescription drug benefit with no plan to pay for it. He abandoned the bipartisan principle that we must pay for what we buy,” Hoyer said at the Democratic convention. “And he voted against the balanced deficit reduction plan produced by a bipartisan commission—a fact, by the way, that he didn’t tell us in his speech last week.”

He said that while Democrats tried to fix the economy, “Republicans unfortunately played politics” and rooted for Obama to fail.

“Let’s review the history,” he said. “Senator Mitch McConnell, the Republican leader in the Senate, said that Republicans’ number one priority was the defeat of President Obama. Not the defeat of terrorism, not the creation of jobs, not the reduction of our deficit and debt, not ensuring access to health care, not educating our children. But to simply defeat our president.”

 

Sahil Kapur at Talking Points Memo