Paul Ryan’s birthday tune to Gov. Terry Branstad (R-IA) Saturday went something like this: 'for he’s a jolly good fellow, unlike the liars in Washington.'
The former vice presidential candidate has remained largely in the shadows during the defund Obamacare movement and the law’s bleak rollout. However, after praising Bradstad for cutting taxes and increasing employment rates, Ryan used the platform to bash the hollow lies of the Obama administration:
“When you take a look at the arguments that were made to sell this law, they were attractive arguments. As I look back at the campaign, I think one of the problems that Mitt and I had was we were arguing against big government in theory.
President Obama passed his program in the first two years of his presidency, when Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid were in charge of the place. Those programs didn’t take effect until this year, until after the 2012 election, things like Dodd-Frank and, of course, Obamacare. So we had to campaign against big government in theory, the rhetoric, the empty promises ‘if you like what you want you can keep it!’
Here’s the difference now— we’ve got big government in practice and what we are realizing is that the results are nothing close to the rhetoric that was used to sell them. What we’re realizing is that this not all that it was cracked up to be. “
This realization is now an opportunity, Ryan claimed:
“We’re seeing the hollowness of these promises and we are seeing these issues as they come forward and we don’t like it. I’m not talking about we Republicans, I’m talking about Americans — everybody. We have to show the country that we are not just the opposition party but the proposition party.”
Big government advocates do not understand America's founding principles, he claimed. Leftist don’t see that Americans seek more than comfort:
“They want dignity. They want the dignity of being a self-governing people. Obamacare is just the opposite I remember in all these debates…they kept saying ‘health care’s a right.”
When the government grants rights instead of the “Laws of Nature and of Nature's God,” problems follow. The government becomes the arbiter of individual rights. It determines how, where and when rights may be exercised. The Affordable Care Act, therefore, limits individual choices under the guise of providing a service to all Americans.
Americans must promote self-determination and fiscal responsibility with intensified vigor and courage, Ryan continued:
“Washington has gummed up the works, it’s made it harder for people to get ahead and the idea of upward mobility, of equality of opportunity is slipping further and further away from people who haven’t seen it for generations. We can do better than that!”
The concrete failures of Obamacare have already resulted in too much “human collateral damage”; it is a living specimen of big government ideals. But as Ryan also noted, most Americans — not just Republicans — despise this law. Now, he said, is the time to finally repeal it.
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