Quoted from DemocraticVoiceOfReason

Listening to Congressman Paul Ryan speak is very refreshing.  It is great to hear a Roman Catholic politician speak publicly in favor about the Right to Life that EVERY human being has.

Quoted from Box A Rox

HUH! DVOR and I agree about one thing:  

"EVERY HUMAN BEING" has a right to life.  

Quoted from Box A Rox

"President Barack Obama "has doubled the size of government since he took office." Paul Ryan.

Even Ryan’s out-of-date budget data offers no support for the notion that Obama "has doubled
the size of government since he took office."

As the House's budget leader and a key spokesman for his party’s budgetary proposals, Ryan
should have known better. We rate his statement Pants on Fire.

Politifact

Quoted Text

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Republican National Convention is drawing to a close with some factually slippery statements coming from the stage.

Most prominently, on the eve of presidential nominee Mitt Romney's speech closing the convention Thursday night, running mate Paul Ryan ignored conspicuous parts of his own record on budget cuts, the stimulus and Medicare in his haste to accuse President Barack Obama of taking the economy off the rails.

A closer look at some of Ryan's remarks Wednesday at the GOP convention in Tampa, Fla.:

___

RYAN: Obama "created a bipartisan debt commission. They came back with an urgent report. He thanked them, sent them on their way and then did exactly nothing."

THE FACTS: It's true that Obama hasn't heeded his commission's recommendations, but Ryan's not the best one to complain. He was a member of the commission and voted against its final report.

___

RYAN: "And the biggest, coldest power play of all in Obamacare came at the expense of the elderly. ... So they just took it all away from Medicare. Seven hundred and sixteen billion dollars, funneled out of Medicare by President Obama."

THE FACTS: Ryan's claim ignores the fact that Ryan himself incorporated the same cuts into budgets he steered through the House in the past two years as chairman of its Budget Committee, using the money for deficit reduction. The cuts, used in part to expand health insurance to more people, do not affect Medicare recipients directly but ultimately could by cutting into the profits of hospitals, health insurance plans and other service providers. Even so, the cuts are part of an overhaul that extends the solvency of Medicare's giant trust fund by eight years.

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RYAN: "The stimulus was a case of political patronage, corporate welfare and cronyism at their worst. You, the working men and women of this country, were cut out of the deal."

THE FACTS: Ryan himself asked for stimulus money shortly after Congress approved the $800 billion plan, known as the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. Ryan's pleas to federal agencies included letters to Energy Secretary Steven Chu and Labor Secretary Hilda Solis seeking stimulus grant money for two Wisconsin energy conservation companies.

One of them, the nonprofit Wisconsin Energy Conservation Corp., received $20.3 million from the Energy Department to help homes and businesses improve energy efficiency, according to federal records. That company, he said in his letter, would build "sustainable demand for green jobs." Another eventual recipient, the Energy Center of Wisconsin, received about $365,000.

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RYAN: Said Obama misled people in Ryan's hometown of Janesville, Wis., by making them think a General Motors plant there threatened with closure could be saved. "A lot of guys I went to high school with worked at that GM 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 hundred years.' That's what he said in 2008. Well, as it turned out, that plant didn't last another year."

THE FACTS: Although Obama did not explicitly promise to save the plant, Ryan is right that Obama implied that he had the backs of its workers when he spoke at the factory early in 2008 and issued a statement about its closure later. The plant halted production in December 2008, weeks before Obama took office and well before he enacted a more robust auto industry bailout that rescued GM and Chrysler and allowed the majority of their plants — though not the Janesville facility — to stay in operation. Ryan himself voted for an auto bailout under President George W. Bush that was designed to help GM, but he was a vocal critic of the one pushed through by Obama that has been widely credited with revitalizing both GM and Chrysler.

Quoted from Shadow

The reason Ryan voted against the comissions recommendation was because they wouldn't tackle entitlement reform which is where real money can be saved. I ran across that info while looking for something else.  This is the Jainsville statement: His aides point out -- and GM confirms -- that the plant was not shut down per se but idled, meaning it could be reactivated at any time.

However, nothing Ryan said in his speech about the plant was factually untrue.

Ryan stated in his convention speech that "we were about to lose a major factory" in the town at the time Obama showed up there. And though he compressed then-Sen. Obama's remarks, Ryan did not distort them.

This is what Obama said at the time: "I believe that if our government is there to support you, and give you the assistance you need to re-tool and make this transition, that this plant will be here for another hundred years."

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/politic.....0sbQjUs:  

Quoted Text

THE FACTS: Ryan himself asked for stimulus money shortly after Congress approved the $800 billion plan, known as the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. Ryan's pleas to federal agencies included letters to Energy Secretary Steven Chu and Labor Secretary Hilda Solis seeking stimulus grant money for two Wisconsin energy conservation companies.

One of them, the nonprofit Wisconsin Energy Conservation Corp., received $20.3 million from the Energy Department to help homes and businesses improve energy efficiency, according to federal records. That company, he said in his letter, would build "sustainable demand for green jobs." Another eventual recipient, the Energy Center of Wisconsin, received about $365,000.

Quoted from DemocraticVoiceOfReason

Since Obama used taxpayer dollars to bail out GM, he could easily have insisted that GM reopen the Janesville, WI plant as part of the deal to bail the company out.

Quoted Text

Last night Paul Ryan said that Obama failed to save a GM plant in Janesville, Wis. Many outlets — including Wonkblog — said that was a lie. But some conservatives have tried to salvage the claim. Jonathan Adler of the National Review asks, “What was ‘false’ in Ryan’s statement? Was Janesvile ‘about to lose’ the factory at the time of the election? Yes. Did Obama fail to prevent this as he had promised? Yes.”

Let’s break down, then, the exact chronology of the Janesville plant closing; Conn Carroll of the Washington Examiner has helpfully posted one here, which I add to below. The basic takeaway, however, is this: by December 2008, the plant had reached a point of no return where the plant would be shut down regardless of federal action. Ryan was faulting Obama for an that was event that was inevitable over a month before he took office.

February 2008: At a campaign stop in Janesville, Obama says, ”I believe that if our government is there to support you, and give you the assistance you need to re-tool and make this transition, that this plant will be here for another hundred years.” As Politifact writes, “That’s a statement of belief that, with government help, the Janesville plant could remain open — but not a promise to keep it open.”

June 3, 2008 – GM decides to close the Janesville plant, announcing that production will end by 2010, after months of rumors it might close. The press release declares, “Janesville, Wisconsin, will cease production of medium-duty trucks by the end of 2009, and of the Tahoe, Suburban and Yukon in 2010, or sooner.” Senators Herb Kohl and Russ Feingold, both Democrats, and Paul Ryan, whose House district includes Janesville, write the company urging it to reverse the decision.

September 2008 – Paul Ryan flies to Detroit to urge GM to reconsider its decision to close the plant. According to the Los Angeles Times, he pitched “a $224-million proposal that included roughly $50 million in state enterprise zone tax credits, local government grants worth $22 million and major contract concessions from the United Auto Workers union local.” Throughout, Ryan frequently speaks with GM chief Rick Wagoner.

Oct. 11, 2008 – Barack Obama comments on the Janesville closing. He does not promise to prevent the closing-in-progress, but instead declares he will “retool plants like the GM facility in Janesville” (emphasis mine) as president. Regardless of one’s views of the auto bailout, it has saved facilities like the Janesville one, if not the Janesville one in particular.

November/December 2008 – Congress weighs a bailout of GM and other automakers. One proposal, backed by Ryan and 31 other House Republicans, but not Mitt Romney, would have provided $15 billion in bridge loans. The bill passed the house but was not picked up by the Senate. The Bush administration declines to use TARP funds to rescue automakers, but approves a bridge loan on Dec.19, too late to save the Janesville plant.

Dec. 23, 2008 – Lacking a bailout, the plant closes. The plant holds a “final goodbye ceremony” as it builds its last SUV. In a statement to MSNBC, GM confirmed that the plant “was idled” in December. But — and this is where it gets confusing — winding down a plant takes time.

April 21, 2009 – The Janesville plant builds its last medium-duty truck and shuts down its last assembly line, completing the shutdown process started in June 2008.

In short, the Janesville shutdown commenced in June 2008. Once it was clear that aid wasn’t forthcoming in November, actual assembly lines were being shut down by December. It is true that Paul Ryan tried to get the Obama administration to save another plant, in Kenosha, which the Obama administration failed to do. Attacking Obama for that is fair. But hitting him for Janesville is dishonest. The first assembly line stopped rolling in December 2008. Workers unfurled banners declaring the “Last Vehicles Off the Janesville Line” at a “final goodbye ceremony,” The plant was closing regardless of what Obama did.

This is a very strange dispute, in a way. Mitt Romney wrote an op-ed in the New York Times under the title “Let Detroit Go Bankrupt,” and now his campaign is trying hard to fault Obama for not bailing out automakers aggressively enough. Not only that, but after the campaign’s repeated denunciation of the Obama administration for “picking winners,” Ryan is faulting Obama for not “picking a winner” not just among companies, but among plants. He’s attacking Obama for not using the government to micromanage GM’s affairs.

Quoted from DemocraticVoiceOfReason

Obama could have made reopening the Janesville plant a condition of bailing GM out.   GM has a 45 plants  OUTSIDE the United States -- they could have been "convinced" to close or scale back one or more of those plants and bring those jobs to Janesville.