this? well, i think they are, ed. this is a significant thing. while paul ryan may say that he was not affected by what was taking place in kenosha, other members of congress have to see moments like this. the fact is there s general agreement that 75, 80% of the people in the room, perhaps more, were opposed to him and by far the loudest applause line of the day was when bill schroeder, the insurance man from kenosha, said the best solution was to do those get rid of those bush tax cuts. that was a thunderous round of applause. nothing paul ryan said got anywhere near that kind of positive reaction. john nichols, washington correspondent of the nation great to have you with us tonight. i appreciate your time and insight. remember to answer tonight s question there at the bottom of the screen. we want to know what you think. house speaker john boehner wants to keep tax subsidies for big oil companies but he has a hard time admitting it. so he basically lied at an
that. i started this broadcast tonight saying that i really wanted to be in kenosha, wisconsin today but i think i would have got in trouble. i really do. i probably would have said something that was out of line. it would have been the truth and i would have made a spectacle of myself so i thought i d wait until tonight 10:00 eastern time to do it. this is a lie. this is wrong for america. this is not what our servicemen and women around the country are fighting for. this is not freedom. this is a government takeover is what it is. it s forcing, it is forcing the money to go to the private sector and wall street so we can go through yet another shakedown. do you think that s what americans want? i don t. and you know what? when these folks go from here to go to here, they don t know about liberal and conservative. they don t know about democrat/republican. you know what they know about? they know about fairness. and we are lacking fairness in this budget because they want to
reduce the tax rates for the top 2% another 10% from 35% to 25%. they want to reduce the corporate income tax. in fact, at kenosha today he even said that he twoonts reduce treduce he even said that he wants to reduce corporate taxes and burden on the job creators. tell us, congressman ryan, what job creators are you talking about? do you have commitments from corporations across america that if the tax rate is cut to 25% there are going to be guaranteed hires in this zmourcountry? you don t have that but you want us to believe this garbage? we re smarter than that. america is awake. america is alive. and i can t wait until 2012 because you know what? this isn t going away. they ve shown their cards. get your cell phones out. i want to know what you think of the story tonight. tonight s question will paul ryan s plan end medicare as we know it? text a for yes, b for no to 622639.
standing his ground? does he really believe this? i don t know if he really believes it. the fact of the matter is he has been a washington insider, in washington for the better part of 20 years as a congressional aide and member of congress and also very closely aligned with right wing think tanks. so i m not sure if he s thinking for himself all that much but i can tell you this. when i talked to him after the incredible session where you saw so much grass roots democracy on display and so many well informed people, i said, you know, were you changed by this? did this have an effect? he said, no, no. this is kenosha. i expected to have this kind of response here. i ve had it before. i was frankly very disappointed by that because the fact of the matter was i ve been in kenosha. i ve seen this town in many different political situations and i ve never seen it this charged up, this passionate, and this overwhelmingly concerned
earful and he should at town after town listening, at his his listening session in kenosha, wisconsin today the house budget chairman, he did his absolute best trying to sell this plan, but most of the crowd just didn t buy it. i really appreciate you coming out here today to this listening session. my hope to you is that you actually listen to what we re saying in this room and not listen to the high priced lobbyists like the heritage foundation back in washington. this is middle class america right here. this is middle class america. now if i m understanding your plan right, you want to take a publicly administered program such as medicare and turn it over to a private corporation. well can i get you right there? so about a fourth mefd care is already administered this way. the prescription drug benefit for all of part d is administered this way so most of medicare is already administered