Mitt Romney showed up at the debate last Wednesday night and surprised just about everyone by bringing his moderate persona to the stage and leaving severely conservative Mitt Romney at home. Today President Obama acknowledged that perhaps he was too polite to moderate Mitt Romney and should have challenged him more on his lies.
While we all anxiously await the debate tomorrow night between Vice President Joe Biden and Republican vice presidential candidate Paul Ryan, the Obama-Biden Truth Team gives us a glimpse of what we might expect by creating a mock debate between Ryan's RNC speech and the DNC speech given by Chris Van Hollen, Democratic Representative from Maryland's 8th District. If moderate Paul Ryan shows up tomorrow night watch for some of these responses from Vice President Biden:
On Screen: Paul Ryan's eloquent rhetoric ... can't hide the harsh reality.
Paul Ryan speaking at RNC: We have responsibilities, one to another. We do not each face the world alone.
Rep. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md) speaking at DNC: They pledged that they would never, never ask millionaires to pay one more dime to reduce our deficit.
Paul Ryan speaking at RNC: And the greatest of all responsibilities is that of the strong to protect the weak.
Rep. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md) speaking at DNC: And now a third grader can do the math. If you refuse to ask the wealthiest to pitch in, then you hit everybody else much harder. And that's exactly what the Romney-Ryan plan does.
Paul Ryan speaking at RNC: The truest measure of any society is how it treats those who cannot defend or care for themselves.
Rep. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md) speaking at DNC: They call their plan brave, bold, courageous. I ask all of you, is it bold to give millionaires another tax cut while forcing seniors to pay more for Medicare? No. [Audience yells, NO!] Is it brave to reward companies that ship jobs overseas while cutting education here at home? [Audience yells, NO!] And is it courageous to raise taxes on middle class families while giving tax cuts to people with Swiss bank accounts?
Paul Ryan speaking at RNC: Each of these moral ideas is as central to democratic government, to the rule of law, to life in a humane and descent society.
Rep. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md) speaking at DNC: This election is a choice. That choice will determine whether America is a place where people climb the ladder of opportunity and pull it up behind them, or whether America is a place where people who reach the top help the next person up. Which America do you believe in?
On Screen: The Paul Ryan plan: tax cuts for millionaires paid for by the middle class.
On Screen: Whether he admits it or not.
On Screen: Obama-Biden Truth Team.
Also, don't forget that Paul Ryan is also still running for his seat in the House of Representatives. Learn more about Paul Ryan's campaign and his opponent
in this diary. There is a must-see video of Paul Ryan there.
If you were inspired by Rep. Chris Van Hollen's DNC speech, you can watch the entire speech again here:
Published Transcript:
The following is a copy of a speech, as prepared for delivery, by The Honorable Chris Van Hollen, Former Chair of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, Member of the U.S. House of Representatives, Maryland at the Democratic National Convention on Wednesday, September 5, 2012.
A week ago today, Paul Ryan accepted his party's nomination for vice president. He's chairman of the House Budget Committee. I lead the Democrats on the committee. We have sharp differences over policy, but we get along well.
I'll admit, I was glad Paul was picked. I hoped it would result in a serious debate about the choice before us. Then I heard his acceptance speech—it kept the fact-checkers up all night. The Republicans had this gigantic clock in the arena showing the size of the national debt. Paul told America, "If you elect Republicans, we can fix that." But, if Paul Ryan was being honest, he would have pointed to that debt clock and said: "We built that."
Here are the facts. When President Clinton left office, America had projected surpluses of trillions of dollars over the next decade. Then came two wars, two huge tax cuts tilted to the wealthy and a new entitlement. Republicans didn't pay for any of it. Paul Ryan voted for all of it. On top of that, they left behind an economy in free-fall.
So when President Obama took office, the Republicans handed him the bill: projected deficits of trillions of dollars. Congressman Ryan, America is literally in your debt. So President Obama got to work. He established a bipartisan commission to get smart folks from both parties together to develop a plan to reduce the deficit and grow jobs. Guess what? It worked. They produced a balanced, bipartisan plan that would cut $4 trillion from the deficit. Lots of Republicans supported it, including Senator Coburn from Oklahoma. And Paul Ryan. He was on the commission. He voted against the plan.
And last week, Paul Ryan criticized the president for not acting on the bipartisan plan that he himself opposed. Then, he said that President Obama doesn't have a plan to reduce the deficit. But the president does have a plan. Here it is. He submitted it to Congress. It's on the Internet. President Obama's plan uses the bipartisan commission's balanced approach. It reduces the deficit by more than $4 trillion—cutting spending and asking those at the very top to pay the same rates they did under President Clinton, when we created nearly 23 million jobs and balanced the budget. So when Paul Ryan told America that President Obama didn't have a plan, that was false.
The truth is, he and Mitt Romney just don't like the president's plan. They both pledged that they would never ask millionaires to pay one more dime to reduce the deficit. Mitt Romney even said he would reject a budget with ten dollars in spending cuts for every one dollar in new revenue. Now, a third-grader can do the math. If you refuse to ask the wealthiest to pitch in, then you hit everyone else much harder. And that's exactly what the Romney-Ryan plan does. They call their plan bold, brave and courageous.
I ask you: Is it bold to give millionaires another tax break while forcing seniors to pay more for Medicare? Is it brave to reward companies that ship jobs overseas while cutting education at home? Is it courageous to raise taxes on middle-class families while giving tax cuts to people with Swiss bank accounts?
Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan's obsession with tax breaks for the wealthy is part of a rigid ideology. Give people like Mitt Romney a break, and hope something will trickle down and lift others up. But this theory crashed in the real world. We all lived through the recession when jobs went down and the deficit went up. So when they say they'll turn around the economy, beware. They mean a U-turn back to this failed theory that lifted the yachts while other boats ran aground.
And don't buy the lie that asking the wealthy to contribute more is about punishing success. It's about asking them to share responsibility for reducing the deficit. It's about growing the economy—not from the top down, but from the middle out and bottom up, making success possible for all Americans.
This election is a choice. That choice will determine whether America is a place where people climb the ladder of opportunity and pull it up behind them or whether America is a place where people who reach the top help the next person up. Which America do you believe in? You know the facts. You know the choice. You know what we have to do: Re-elect Barack Obama.