Liberals Seize Upon News That Ryan’s Family Business Built Partly With Government Subsidies
The left has seized upon news that Republican vice presidential candidate Paul Ryan‘s family wealth was built partially upon government contracts, subsidies, and tax breaks. Over at Salon, Fox News contributor Sally Kohn attacks the congressman for mocking President Obama‘s now-famous “you didn’t build that” remark when Ryan himself has been the beneficiary of public-works projects and government assistance.
“A current search of Defense Department contracts suggests that ‘Ryan Incorporated Central’ has had at least 22 defense contracts with the federal government since 1996, including one from 1996 worth $5.6 million,” Kohn reported. “Mr. Anti-Spending secured millions in earmarks for his home state of Wisconsin, including, among other things, $3.3 million for highway projects. And Ryan voted to preserve $40 billion in special subsidies for big oil, an industry in which, it so happens, Ryan and his wife hold ownership stakes.”
These facts are likely to become a talking point for the Democrats whenever Romney/Ryan invokes the Obama remark on the campaign trail, and rightfully so. It’s nice for Republican politicians to pay lip service to the “free market” but, by and large, they never walk the talk. Heck, Ryan has been deemed a “radical free market type” by the left, but this is actually a pretty mainstream politician who voted for TARP, the auto bailouts, Medicare Part D, the Iraq War, and plenty of George W. Bush‘s spending initiatives that contributed to today’s massive debt. This is the big reason Ryan’s addition to the ticket has done nothing to inspire libertarians to get out the vote for the GOP in November.
And Ryan is not alone among Republicans in this sort of hypocrisy: supposed “free market” believer Rep. Michele Bachmann has yet to condemn the fact that her family’s farm has benefited from years of those wasteful federal crop subsidies; Sens. Richard Lugar, Chuck Grassley, and Orrin Hatch all benefit from federal farm subsidies; 16 GOP congresspersons famously abandoned principles of “free competition” to demand extension of federal wind subsidies; and an overwhelming majority of Republicans are ham-fisted in their resistance to federal defense spending cuts, regardless of the fact that much of the current spending is patently wasteful and exists to benefit well-connected businesses under the guise of “security.”
But this should be an important teachable moment for conservatives: too often the political right, who are supposedly dedicated to the principles of a “free market,” commit the cardinal sin of confusing “business” with “free markets” — that is, Romney/Ryan types proudly wave the “pro-business” flag without acknowledging that many of the “pro-business” policies they support are, in fact, antithetical to a free market system.
If the Republican Party wants to appeal to the fiscal libertarian types (and show some semblance of “consistency”), they need to actually denounce or bemoan “crony capitalism” on both sides of the aisle — not just the Solyndras of the left, but also the Big Oil subsidies, etc. on the right — even when that cronyism involves themselves.
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This is an opinion piece. The views expressed in this article are those of just the author.
