Paul Ryan Gets an Earful as Tour Bombs

by John Nichols
Published on Wednesday, May 4, 2011 by The Capital Times
(Wisconsin)
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/05/04-7

KENOSHA, WI -- Paul Ryan, the
smooth-if-not-always-substantive congressman, is the
darling of the D.C. talk shows. The House Budget Committee
chair, chosen by GOP House leaders to respond to President
Obama's State of the Union Address, is the prime pitchman
for the Wall Street lobbying agenda on everything from
privatization of Social Security to tax cuts for the rich.
During Congress' spring break, he took his show on the
road.

Ryan, R-Janesville, may have thought that his carefully
crafted sales pitch for pulverizing Medicare would play
perfectly in Paddock Lake and Milton and Kenosha --
Wisconsin towns where the congressman expected to be
greeted with cheers for a conquering hero from inside the
Beltway.

As it happens, hundreds of Ryan's constituents were turned
away from the town hall meetings, which were packed to
capacity long before their starting time. But the crowds
that did get in to the sessions did not exactly come to
hail their congressman as an American idol.

Outside the cloistered confines of Capitol Hill and the
few blocks of southern Manhattan where he is a hero, the
congressman had a hard time peddling his fiscal snake oil.

And in Kenosha, Ryan bombed.

When he claimed that he was serious about balancing the
budget, someone in the crowd shouted: "That's not what the
Congressional Budget Office says." And the room erupted
with cheers for the correction of the congressman's
attempted deception.

When Ryan claimed his Republican budget plan would save
Medicare and Medicaid, the packed room erupted with shouts
of "Liar!"

When Ryan claimed that he didn't want to replace Medicare
with a voucher system but rather with "choices," a woman
piped up: "You can call it what you want, but don't tell
us that it's still Medicare."

When Ryan claimed that taxes needed to be cut for
corporations and the wealthy in order to create jobs, he
was greeted with a collective groan from hundreds of
workers in a town that recently lost a major auto factory.
One man yelled: "We've been cutting their taxes for 30
years and what did it get us? Outsourcing and layoff
notices."

When Ryan claimed he couldn't impose serious cuts on
Pentagon spending because troops were in the field in Iraq
and Afghanistan, the crowd started chanting: "Bring them
home!"

The congressman was spinning out what were supposed to be
sure-fire applause lines. But they fell flat.

Like a rock star who used to "have it" but can no longer
get his groove on, the congressman kept looking for a
trick, some gimmick, some ploy that would work. Think
"Spinal Tap," the "mockumentary" where an over-the-hill
British band tries one comeback stunt after another until,
finally, the guitarist announces that he is going to rock
harder by turning his amplifier volume "up to 11," and
you've got the picture.

Ryan pulled out the audiovisual aids -- flashing charts
from his friends at the Heritage Foundation on a big
screen -- until people in the crowd shouted to him that
they did not come for a picture show. He tried
partisanship, suggesting that President Obama wasn't
taking budget issues seriously. He tried pandering,
pointing to crews from national television networks and
saying: "Let's show them that Wisconsinites can be cordial
to one another."

At that point, the woman sitting next to me, Susan Sheldon
of Burlington, leaned over and said: "Let's show them that
Wisconsinites won't be lied to."

So it went for Paul Ryan, the salesman for the Republican
plan that may be selling in Washington -- at least to
Republicans -- but is earning a thumbs down from his
constituents in Wisconsin. Likewise, voters in other
states have also been rejecting the plan at increasingly
contentious town hall meetings of Republican members of
Congress.

It may be true that congressmen can fool some of the
people some of the time. But, for Ryan, the further he
gets from Washington -- where he has spent almost half his
life as a congressional aide, conservative "think tank"
staffer and member of the House -- the harder it has been
for the budget committee chairman to find buyers for his
schemes. Not only does he want to restructure Medicare and
Medicaid in order to shift money away from patient care
and into the coffers of insurance companies, he also wants
to gamble the retirement security of Americans with his
campaign donors on Wall Street and to give more tax cuts
to the rich, more tax breaks to the corporations, and more
goodies to the bankers he served when he led the charge to
get GOP votes for the 2008 bailout.

After the Kenosha session, I asked Ryan whether the
overwhelming opposition might cause him to rethink his
proposal. "No," he said, "it's what I expected in
Kenosha."

Kenosha, he explained, is "a Democratic town."

But Ryan faced tough questions and criticism at most of
the stops on what has been billed as a "listening tour."

The reception wasn't always as rough as in Kenosha. But
even in traditionally Republican communities, people were
packing Ryan's sessions and demanding answers. And they
were groaning and grumbling when he failed to provide
them.

The truth is that Ryan was not listening on his "listening
tour." He was trying to peddle a product that polls
suggest four out of five Americans don't want.

In his home district, at several of the stops for his
"listening tour," it sounded like that opposition figure
might be a good deal higher than 80 percent.

Ryan's Kenosha session started with a lengthy filibuster
by the congressman. But when he finally started taking
questions, the first one came from a white-haired woman
who said: "We are supposed to give up our insurance
(Medicare) for vouchers. Are you going to give up your
gold-plated insurance for vouchers?" Ryan danced around
that question and a lot of others at the Kenosha
gathering.

One of the highlights of the afternoon came when retired
insurance man Bill Schroeder read a list of proposals for
balancing budgets. "Do not renew the Bush tax cuts for the
wealthy!" he began, to loud applause. The cheers continued
as Schroeder proposed ending tax breaks for corporations
that ship jobs overseas, and bringing the troops home from
Afghanistan. From throughout the crowded room came cries
of "Let's elect him instead of Ryan!"

(c) 2011 The Capital Times

___________________________________________

Portside aims to provide material of interest to people
on the left that will help them to interpret the world
and to change it.

Submit via email: [log in to unmask]

Submit via the Web: http://portside.org/submittous3

Frequently asked questions: http://portside.org/faq

Sub/Unsub: http://portside.org/subscribe-and-unsubscribe

Search Portside archives: http://portside.org/archive

Contribute to Portside: https://portside.org/donate