Rep. Paul Ryan is in town today for a private roundtable and luncheon with the Center of the American Experiment. To welcome him to Minnesota, we put together a list of Paul Ryan’s top lies.
Paul Ryan said, “The greatest of all responsibilities is that of the strong to protect the weak.
In his keynote address at the 2012 Republican National Convention, Paul Ryan actually said that the greatest responsibility is that of the strong to protect the weak. This from a guy whose budget proposals have been labeled “cruel” and “an immoral disaster” because of the devastating cuts to services on which the poor, sick, and elderly rely. Meanwhile, Ryan’s budget would give the richest and big corporations trillions in tax breaks.
That doesn’t sound like the strong protecting the weak to me. It sounds like conservative politicians balancing the budget on the backs of working families to give more breaks to their rich, corporate friends.
Paul Ryan’s 2012 vice presidential nominee acceptance speech was filled with what Stephen Colbert calls truthiness.
Where to begin? When Paul Ryan accepted the vice presidential nomination in 2012, he gave a fiery speech filled with lies. Among the lies:
He attacked Obama for failing to keep open a Janesville GM plant that closed under Bush in 2008. He hit him for a credit-rating downgrade that S&P essentially blamed on GOP intransigence.
Paul Ryan claimed Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker’s anti-worker restrictions led to “riots” at the Capitol.
Luckily for us–and unluckily for Paul Ryan–PolitiFact factchecked this outrageous 2011 Ryan claim.
“For the most part, people have been very respectful and very orderly,” said Elise Schaffer, public information officer for the Dane County Sheriff’s Department. “It certainly has been a very peaceful protest.”
That doesn’t quite sound like a riot. PolitiFact finally called Paul Ryan’s office after speaking with multiple people who characterized the protests as peaceful and civil. Their response? “It was an inaccurate comparison.” Um, yeah. That’s why PolitiFact gave this Paul Ryan whopper a Pants on Fire rating.
Paul Ryan claimed that the U.S. taxes small businesses at rates higher than corporations.
In a January 2013 interview (after a quiet post-election period), Paul Ryan claimed that small businesses pay a higher tax rate than big corporations. PolitiFact also reviewed this claim, rating it Mostly False. PolitiFact wrote that Paul Ryan’s unqualified claim leaves the impression that higher rates are a fact of life for small businesses, which is not the case.
Paul Ryan claimed he ran a marathon in under three hours.
We couldn’t resist. One of Paul Ryan’s silliest lies was when he claimed he ran a marathon in under three hours. A simple check proved Paul Ryan ran exactly one marathon, and he finished in just over four hours, not under three.
