Paul Ryan Gets His World Rocked When a ‘Taker’ Rebels At Town Hall

Paul Ryan got his world rocked at a recent town hall when one of the victims of the sequester, a.k.a. a taker burst his Ayn Rand bubble.

Here is the video:

To get more stories like this, subscribe to our newsletter The Daily.

Transcript:

Robert Novak: I am on sequestration. I’m on furlough. I’ve already lost $6,000 in pay. I’ve got 47 more hours in furlough to lose. I work for the EPA in Chicago. I’ve got another 47 hours to lose. You’re taking away our pay. You’re screwing with the Social Security. You’re taking away the Veterans Administration. You’re decreasing the pay for retired and active duty military. When is it going to stop? You’re picking on your own people. Enough of it.

Rep. Paul Ryan (Think Progress): This was is something the president has done through the Budget Control Act. We didn’t like it so we passed two bills to replace it. Twice. I passed a bill twice. I passed a bill in December that said instead of doing the sequester, here’s how the government should cut to pay for it. They rejected it. Then this last March we passed a bill funding the government and giving the executive branch the authority and flexibility on top to implement the sequester.

The EPA chose to implement it this way to affect you as you described. The Department of Transportation, they chose — chose, I’m using this word intentionally — they chose to furlough air traffic controllers when they could have cut other [inaudible]. They slated the Kenosha/Janesville airport for closure when they had the authority by Congress, signed into law.

Almost everything that Rep. Ryan said to that audience was a lie. Paul Ryan has been pushing for the sequester since 2004. It was Paul Ryan and Eric Cantor who originally set the stage for the sequester by talking John Boehner out of accepting President Obama’s offer of a grand bargain in 2011.

Ryan didn’t tell Novak that the House’s sequester replacement bills occurred in the previous Congress, and thus were not valid pieces of legislation that could be used to deal with sequester. He also left out the part about House Republicans not allowing any votes on replacement bills before the sequester hit. Rep. Ryan didn’t bother to tell his constituents that his budget is even worse than the sequester, and that he wants even deeper cuts in the future.

When confronted with the reality that life isn’t an Ayn Rand novel, Paul Ryan wove a web of lies that ended with blaming the president for everything. (This excuse doesn’t make any sense when you consider that the House holds the power of the purse.)

Ryan’s actions are so indefensible that when confronted about why he is hurting the people of his own district, all he can say is, “I didn’t do it. He did it.”

Mr. Novak should consider himself lucky. Normally, Ryan handles these uppity “takers” by having them arrested.

It was most telling that when confronted by the consequences of his actions, all the boy in the Randian bubble could do is blame President Obama.

Paul Ryan is a numbers guy with no numbers, and an ideologue who can provide no justification for the pain that his ideology inflicts on others.

Jason Easley

Jason is the managing editor. He is also a White House Press Pool and a Congressional correspondent for PoliticusUSA. Jason has a Bachelor’s Degree in Political Science. His graduate work focused on public policy, with a specialization in social reform movements.

Awards and  Professional Memberships

Member of the Society of Professional Journalists and The American Political Science Association