The Debt Lie: Romney-Ryan will not unbury the middle class.
Ryan has been talking a lot about Obama the Grave Digger. It is a convenient fiction. Ryan says that under President Obama, middle class families have been ''buried by regulations, buried by taxes, buried by borrowing." It's a lie.
In reality, Americans today owe nearly one and a half billion dollars less on their credit cards than they did when President Obama took office, according to Politifact. Furthermore, the household debt rate -- debt as a percentage of a family's disposable income -- has declined every year of the Obama presidency.
What's more, Ryan has done his darnedest to increase consumer debt, not lower it. He voted against the Credit Card Accountability Responsibility and Disclosure (CARD) Act, with its common-sense protections to help consumers keep their credit card debts down. The CARD Act bars card issuers from increasing interest rates randomly and without notice, provides consumers longer lead times before rate increases take effect so they can seek out alternatives, limits gimmicks like moving the payment dates, which were used by card issuers to trick people into missing due dates and paying excessive fees and it mandates disclosures to help consumers understand how to reduce their debt.
Ryan claims he wants to "stop digging" the middle class into a deeper ditch of debt. But between his voting record and his tax and spending plans, it seems his ultimate objective is to bury them alive.
The Advocacy Lie: Romney-Ryan will not protect consumers.
When it comes to consumer protection, Ryan does his damnedest to sound like a populist, but he's not.
Ryan signed on to a Republican plan to gut the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which many consider to be the centerpiece of the Dodd-Frank Act, created to protect consumers from fraud and predatory practices and promote financial literacy. Like his sponsor, Governor Romney, and his patrons (Sheldon Adelson, the Koch brothers and their Wall Street colleagues) Ryan is a "pro-consumer means anti-business" kind of guy. So while Rep. Ryan might argue that he has been a friend to the American consumer by crusading to cut government spending, that argument is belied by his vigorous support for Mitt Romney's plan to gut the consumer bureau and replace it with "streamlined" regulations that favor Wall Street over regular people and allow financial predators to roam relatively unrestricted like "the good old days."
Unlike Governor Romney -- with whom each day is a new adventure -- Paul Ryan has remained consistent. His statements are often lies, and when his talk turns to statistics and numbers and the financial facts faced by everyday Americans, his lies expand past the realm of "damned lies" into Mark Twain's third category of exotic deception.
Pro tip: You can tell he's lying, because his lips are moving.
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Pro tip: laugh when Ryan talks about education.
ReplyDeleteThe Debt Lie: Romney-Ryan will not unbury the middle class.
Ryan has been talking a lot about Obama the Grave Digger. It is a convenient fiction. Ryan says that under President Obama, middle class families have been ''buried by regulations, buried by taxes, buried by borrowing." It's a lie.
In reality, Americans today owe nearly one and a half billion dollars less on their credit cards than they did when President Obama took office, according to Politifact. Furthermore, the household debt rate -- debt as a percentage of a family's disposable income -- has declined every year of the Obama presidency.
What's more, Ryan has done his darnedest to increase consumer debt, not lower it. He voted against the Credit Card Accountability Responsibility and Disclosure (CARD) Act, with its common-sense protections to help consumers keep their credit card debts down. The CARD Act bars card issuers from increasing interest rates randomly and without notice, provides consumers longer lead times before rate increases take effect so they can seek out alternatives, limits gimmicks like moving the payment dates, which were used by card issuers to trick people into missing due dates and paying excessive fees and it mandates disclosures to help consumers understand how to reduce their debt.
Ryan claims he wants to "stop digging" the middle class into a deeper ditch of debt. But between his voting record and his tax and spending plans, it seems his ultimate objective is to bury them alive.
The Advocacy Lie: Romney-Ryan will not protect consumers.
When it comes to consumer protection, Ryan does his damnedest to sound like a populist, but he's not.
Ryan signed on to a Republican plan to gut the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which many consider to be the centerpiece of the Dodd-Frank Act, created to protect consumers from fraud and predatory practices and promote financial literacy. Like his sponsor, Governor Romney, and his patrons (Sheldon Adelson, the Koch brothers and their Wall Street colleagues) Ryan is a "pro-consumer means anti-business" kind of guy. So while Rep. Ryan might argue that he has been a friend to the American consumer by crusading to cut government spending, that argument is belied by his vigorous support for Mitt Romney's plan to gut the consumer bureau and replace it with "streamlined" regulations that favor Wall Street over regular people and allow financial predators to roam relatively unrestricted like "the good old days."
Unlike Governor Romney -- with whom each day is a new adventure -- Paul Ryan has remained consistent. His statements are often lies, and when his talk turns to statistics and numbers and the financial facts faced by everyday Americans, his lies expand past the realm of "damned lies" into Mark Twain's third category of exotic deception.
Pro tip: You can tell he's lying, because his lips are moving.
Follow Adam Levin on Twitter: www.twitter.com/Adam_K_Levin