Rep. Paul Ryan Supported Stimulus - When President Bush Proposed It
Should it really surprise anyone that modern American politics isn’t about doing what’s right, just, or prudent? It’s about trying to gain an advantage politically for the next election; to gain political power at the expense of the other candidate (or party).
It’s why politicians flip flop and cavort themselves in to pretzels to try and deal with positions they had recently taken. It’s why GOP nominee Mitt Romney has tried to sidestep the fact that the PPACA (aka Obamacare) is based on the very health care reform package that Romney brought to Massachussetts. He, and the rest of the GOP have been claiming that the federal health care reform is the foundation of socialism and a government takeover of medicine, as well as unconstitutional because it imposes an individual mandate on those who can otherwise afford health care insurance but don’t - even as the GOP was pushing for an individual mandate as a central theme of personal responsibility and accountability in their health care reform packages for 20 years - right up until the moment that President Obama incorporated the same plan into the PPACA.
It’s also why VP choice Rep. Paul Ryan’s going to have to deal with the fact that he supported a stimulus package to jump start the economy as it faltered in the early 2000s when the person proposing it was President George W. Bush but then opposed the very similar package as proposed (and enacted by) President Obama.
Ryan goes on to correctly note that unemployment lags after the base economic recovery takes place. That’s an argument that the current Obama Administration is using, even as Ryan and the GOP are claiming that the lag in employment is proof that stimulus didn’t work.