Looks like the Obama team stayed up late to get this out as fast as they could. Kinda sounds a little panicked if you aske me. First the video:
Guy Benson with TownHall did a fantastic job of debunking this video point by point:
(1) They begin with video of CNN reporters discussing accusations of Ryan’s “lies.” This is proof that the Obama campaign sent out a lot of angry emails, and nothing else.
(2) Medicare – Sorry, guys, but it is 100 percent true that Obamacare raided $716 Billion from Medicare to pay for itself. It does cut benefits to current seniors. And Paul Ryan’s plan took the president’s Medicare “savings,” and re-routed them back into Medicare to shore up the program. Mitt Romney’s plan would undo those cuts altogether. Obama took those cuts and used them to pay for Obamacare.
(3) The GM Plant – Part of the factory Ryan mentioned was shut down under Bush, despite the initial GM bailout (which Senator Obama supported). The plant finally fully closed in April of 2009, during Obama’s presidency, as this report clearly states. Obama’s problem is that he showed up and made empty promises to pander for votes. Ryan never said Obama was personally responsible for the plant’s closure, but he accurately stated that it closed down within a year of candidate Obama’s hope-filled speech and remains closed today. Obama goes on and on about “saving” the auto industry and his economic recovery. That boarded-up Janesville plant tells a different story.
(4) The Stimulus – Pointing out that Paul Ryan asked that his district receive a slice of a giant, wasteful pie after it was passed — and despite his opposition — is at worst an instance of hypocrisy. It does not disprove anything that Ryan said in his speech, and it does not change the empirical fact that Barack Obama’s borrowed stimulus has utterly failed based on the metrics for success Obama himself set out for it.
He also debunks the Debt Commission portion but you’ll have to click over to Townhall to read it.
I would like to make one more point about the GM plant portion of Ryan’s speech:
Ryan's point was not that Obama closed the GM plant. It was that Obama's "hope" campaign made promises he did not keep.
— Jon Henke (@JonHenke) August 30, 2012
That’s exactly what I was thinking. Obama made promises he couldn’t/didn’t keep and that was Paul Ryan’s point. Read it for yourself from Ryan’s speech last night:
My own state voted for President Obama. When he talked about change, many people liked the sound of it.
Especially in Janesville where we were about to lose a major factory. A lot of guys I went to high school with worked at that G.M. plant. Right there at that plant, candidate Obama said, “I believe that if our government is there to support you, this plant will be here for another 100 years.”
That’s what he said in 2008. Well, as it turned out, that plant didn’t last another year. It is locked up and empty to this day. And that’s how it is in so many towns where the recovery that was promised is no where in sight.
Government was there to support GM and the plant isn’t operating. As I said last night, the whole GM bailout was a scam anyway considering they had to file for bankruptcy after getting 2 bailouts from the government.