Romney chooses Ryan as VP pick
House Budget Committee Chairman Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis. introduces Republican presidential candidate, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney before Romney spoke at the Grain Exchange in Milwaukee, Tuesday, April 3, 2012. / AP Photo/M. Spencer Green
Updated 7:43 a.m. ET
(CBS News) It's official: Mitt Romney's campaign has announced he has chosen Wisconsin Rep. Paul Ryan to be his running mate, bringing to the ticket a youthful budget hawk who will help underscore the GOP ticket's focus on righting the economy with substantial changes to government spending.
The Romney campaign communicated the pick via iPhone app at around 7 a.m. Saturday. Ryan will join Romney for an appearance in Norfolk, Va., on the deck of the USS Wisconsin at 9 a.m.
Ryan, 42, is a bold - and risky - choice. The chairman of the House Budget Committee, has proposed fundamental changes to the social safety net, including eventually turning Medicare into a system of direct payments to seniors that would allow them to buy their own insurance. Ryan has also called for replacing Medicaid with lump sum payments to states, who can use them as they see fit, and sought to allow workers to invest a portion of their payroll taxes, which fund Social Security, in private accounts. (Some of these proposals have been tweaked or abandoned.)
Democrats have used Ryan's proposals to criticize the vast majority of Republicans who voted in favor of his budget plan, which Romney has embraced. While many conservative opinion writers have rallied around Ryan, saying his proposals represent a necessary effort to reign in the debt and deficit, some have suggested his positions could sink the GOP. When Ryan released his budget plan, conservative columnist Charles Krauthammer wrote that "at 37 footnotes, it might be the most annotated suicide note in history." And then-presidential candidate Newt Gingrich famously referred to Ryan's Medicare plan as "right-wing social engineering", which resulted in criticism from Gingrich's fellow Republicans.
Ryan, a Janesville native who has represented Wisconsin's 1st district since 1999, is a likeable and natural presence on the campaign trail. He has been a strong advocate for Romney and could help Republicans win his home state, which President Obama won comfortably in 2008, but which is very much up for grabs this year. The state has seen a number of dramatic political developments in the past two years, with conservative Republican Gov. Scott Walker surviving a recall election this year. A strong debater who appears prepared to face off with Vice President Joe Biden, he will energize a conservative base that has shown skepticism about Romney due to his record as Massachusetts governor.
Romney's selection of Ryan represents a fundamental change in campaign strategy. The presumptive Republican presidential nominee has until this point sought to make the election largely a referendum on the president. That ends with the choice of Ryan, a policy wonk who has offered up a clear and detailed alternative to the president's policies. His addition to the ticket will likely move the political conversation in a more substantive direction, with the two sides are offering clear alternatives to the American people.
A former Hill staffer, Ryan has spent most of his professional life in Washington - he won his seat when he was just 28 - and he could undercut Romney's message that America needs a tested political outsider at the helm of the economy. He has gone toe-to-toe with the president in public forums, and argues that the president wants to move the United States toward a "European" style of government. His policies have been celebrated by conservative think tanks and opinion leaders, who see Ryan as a potentially transformative figure who can convince Americans that the time has come to reign in entitlement programs as part of what Ryan calls the "Path To Prosperity." http://paulryan.house.gov/uploadedfiles/pathtoprosperity2013.pdf
The president has called Ryan's proposals "deeply pessimistic."
"There's nothing serious about a plan that claims to reduce the deficit by spending trillions of dollars on tax cuts for millionaires and billionaires," he said last April. "And I don't think there's anything courageous about asking for sacrifice from those who can least afford it and don't have any clout on Capitol Hill."
Romney's VP choice: Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis.
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Was it patriotic for Secretary of the Veteran's Bureau, Charles Forbes, to be jailed?
He was sentenced, to Leavenworth, for stealing vet money intended for hospitals.
Was it patriotic for John Mitchell to be our only incarcerated AG?
Was it patriotic for JEB Bush to wear a Confederate flag lapel pin?
Was it patriotic for Michelle Bachmann to sign Swiss citizenship papers?
Was the Utah War patriotic?
The 26th amendment (granting the right to vote for 18 year-olds) took only 3 months & 8 days to be ratified! Why? Simply! The people demanded it. That was in 1971...before computers, before e-mail, before cell phones, etc.
Of the 27 amendments to the Constitution, seven (7) took 1 year or less to become the law of the land...all because of public pressure.
In three days, most people in The United States of America will have the message. This is one idea that really should be passed around.
Congressional & Senate Reform Act of 2012 Term Limits.
12 years only, one of the possible options below..
A. Two Six-year Senate terms
B. Six Two-year House terms
C. One Six-year Senate term and three Two-Year House terms
2. No Tenure / No Pension.
A Congressman & Senators collects a salary while in office and receives no pay when they are out of office.
3. Congress & Senate (past, present & future) participates in Social Security.
All funds in the Congressional & Senatorial retirement funds move to the Social Security system immediately. All future funds flow into the Social Security system, and the Congress & Senate participates with the American people.
4. Congress & Senate can purchase their own retirement plans, just as all Americans do.
5. Congress & Senate will no longer vote themselves a pay raise. Congressional pay will rise by the lower of CPI or 3%. Their current rate of Pay will be lowered by 25% effective 11//11/12.
6. Congress & Senate loses their current health care system and participates in the same health care system as the American people do.
7. Congress & Senate must equally abide by all laws they impose on the American people.
8. All contracts with past and present Congressmen & Senators are void effective 1/1/12.
9. Congress & Senate will pass a Balanced Budget amendment for the year 2014, and all future years. They will not leave the chambers or halls of Congress until they do so.
The American people did not make these contracts with Congressmen. Congressmen & Senators made all these contracts for themselves.
Serving in Congress & Senate is an honor, not a career. The Founding Fathers envisioned citizen legislators, so ours should serve their term(s), then go home and go back to work.
You can also copy this contract for America and present it at Public Locations for people to sign. (Like a petition) Have future prospective Leaders sign also or agree to in public. Let's clean up the act of these politicians in the past so that we have a future for our children. We voted these people into office not to squander our children's future, but to improve it.
If each person contacts a minimum of twenty people then it will only take three days for most people (in the U.S. ) to receive this message. Maybe it is time.
THIS IS HOW YOU FIX THE SENATE & CONGRESS!!!
Notice that "bmullen" completely disappeared when confronted with the facts, and cannot argue against billionaires paying their FAIR SHARE!
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occupy; Busch/Cheney/Republican apologists like "bmullen" are not here to debate actual facts, their sole intent is to post false and misleading comments, knowing that even the most outrageous and obvious lie will leave an imprint. Even mud thrown against a wall will leave some stain, even when the mud itself doesn't stick.
4 Fantastic things I like about Ryan
1. He is not.......
2. He is not.......
3. He is not.......
4. He is not.......
Yes, we already knew what paul ryan was NOT: like not an ECONOMIST; not a Washington OUTSIDER; not a bi-partisan COMPROMISER; not in the 99%; and not looking out for the middle class Americans........
........................since ryan is a ultra-conservative ideologue, and the love child between eddie munster and ayn rand! LOL!
by Rafterman11: "My personal favorite GOP canned response is "...and yet he is still more successful than you". Followed closely by "Did your welfare check come yet?"
Yeah, those are Great ones! ;-)
Such as the following:
Obama is the first president in history whom the opposing party (Republican) swore publicly to make a one term president, and preceded to successfully block any and all budget, economy, or jobs-improving bills from passing.
The same republicans who refused ALL attempts at compromise, even when the president offered basically the SAME bills Republicans themselves had proposed in the past.
The same Republicans who; for the first time in history, FORCED the downgrading of America's credit rating.
The same republicans who, from 2001 through 2009, were doubling the debt from $5.8 trillion to $11.9 trillion, all the while assuring the American public that "THE DEBT DOESN'T MATTER', Note: professional liars, like professional actors (Reagan), show no facial, vocal or other signs, that everything they are saying is totally fabricated (read script-written).......... And now These same republicans are screaming how the debt, which they themselves created, is now President Obama's fault, and how that debt will ruin our grandchildren's future.
The same republicans who took over a balanced budget and, with their cut-taxes, borrow and spend policies, turned it into an almost certain second great depression
The same republicans who now blame President Obama for an economic disaster created by the previous Bush/Cheney (republican) administration, with their multiple tax cuts, and drastically increased spending for un-funded wars, Medicare part D, and etc.
The same republicans who are responsible for more than $13 trillion, of the existing $15.9 national debt, the same debt that has already cost $8.5 trillion in interest, effectively foisting a $24.4 Trillion TAX INCREASE on ALL Americans.
Even with current interest rates at an all-time low, the interest on the national debt is now costing $.5 trillion EVERY YEAR. If the interest rates were the same as in the 1900's that annual cost would be about $1.3 trillion.
The obvious concern for Americans every where MUST be: The Reagan, GW Bush, tax cuts have reduced top income tax rates from 70% in 1980 to the present 35%, yet the National debt is 16 times greater in the same time period (.9 trillion to 15/9 trillion). Why hasn't the republican tax cuts prevented the present economic situation.
I sincerely ask that ALL honest readers of this comment read it and analyze it by using the Internet and other sources to see for themselves.