As you can tell by the above sentence, I think very little of Speaker Ryan. I never never understood how he got this deep thinker on policy. The media treated him as some golden boy and deep thinker. The only reason I can come up with that he wasn't the usual old out of shape white male Republican. He worked out. He looked pretty good. So he was a deep thinker.
Essentially it was the same old Republican ideas — poor people are leeches and rich people are great. The rich should be made as rich as possible and poor people should be denied as many people as possible.
Ryan's remark in 2010 that poor people or those people on public assistants are takers; they are not makers like rich people are. Then suddenly he seemed to have an epiphany:
“There was a time when I would talk about a difference between ‘makers’ and ‘takers’ in our country, referring to people who accepted government benefits,” he said. “But as I spent more time listening, and really learning the root causes of poverty, I realized I was wrong. ‘Takers’ wasn’t how to refer to a single mom stuck in a poverty trap, just trying to take care of her family. Most people don’t want to be dependent.”
The problem was he didn't mean it at all. The policies and legislation he pushed main goal was to gut the safety net for those takers. Repeal the affordable care act. Make many programs that help the poor into block grants to states. The massive tax cuts he pushed through for the rich. Justified with the totally ludicrous and debunked notion of trickle down economics.
So I'm glad to see this man leaving office. It can't happen soon enough.
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