bush administration talking about some of the various privatization plans. he wrote, at that time, that, quote, if we borrow $1.2 trillion, talking about ryan s plan, to cover personal savings accounts and make though changes to wage indexing, we ll borrow trillions and have trillions more in unfunded liabilities. ryan s plan was actually well to the right of what the bush administration ended up proposing. these huge transition costs to go to a much more aggressive form of privatization. he continued to promote different forms of privatization through the next decade until 2010. it was when he really got charged with creating a budget that all republicans could sign on to that boehner and other members said you have to take this out of your budget because we can t go into battle like this. ryan was, in terms of what you had in the house, he was the leader of the privatization movement and was much more committed to it than just your run of the mill average
finally, after two or three times hitting on it, paul ryan backed off of it. the fact is there. romney s been talking about conditions. the president and the vice president have said they re coming home 2014. why did vice president biden hammer paul ryan tonight on the issue of him requesting stimulus funds for his district? i get that he caught him in a little bit of hypocrisy, but he s not realistically criticizing paul ryan for having asked for funds that the democratic side maintains has worked well? here s paul ryan criticizing the stimulus package, how terrible it was, deepening the deficit. then he makes personal requests for his own congressional district. that s a matter of record.
forget the hypocrisy in wisconsin. ryan voted for a stimulus bill nearly the size of the one he says is a ridiculous expenditure. does malarky mean lie? i think it does. joining us now is congressman chris van hollen, maryland democrat, chairman of the democratic congressional campaign committee. he was vice president biden s sparring partner during his debate prep which means congressman value hollen s time in life as fake paul ryan is coming to a close. congressman, thanks for joining us. yeah, hopefully i now go through my reprogramming here. exactly. tell me your overall assessment of the debate. i know i can cut to the bottom line and i know you think your candidate did well, but what particularly did you like and dislike about tonight? oh, what i liked was the fact that the vice president came out swinging for the middle class. his passion came through. he marshalled all the facts in support of his argument and showed the ryan/romney plan would be a gut punch to the mid
now. now we re not even going to wait to appoint a supreme court guy. let us do it, the elected officials th officials in these states. this should reenergize the pro choice movement. it s been the position for a long time, that roe v. wade was wrongly decided. that s what a majority of pro life republicans believe. it was remarkable to see a pro life republican dance around the issue and not answer chris question squarely on it. can i also add that when we talk about this issue and look about the debate over contraception that took place in the republican primaries, by definition paul ryan said this tonight. i believe paul ryan is right. the democratic party, the clinton formulation on this issue was safe, legal, and rare. i think that s where a lot of americans are on the issue. if you want to have less abortions, then you want to have more contraception.
i don t think paul ryan looked very good at the end of the day. he believed that stimulus plan was going to create jobs. that s exactly what it did. senator, this is ed. i don t know if pressure is the right word or not, but joe biden went in to this debate tonight. he had to accomplish something that maybe wasn t done in last week s debate. you being a veteran of the senate, i know you ve known joe for a long time. was there any doubt in your mind that he was going to come out and clear the plate tonight for the middle class? no, there wasn t. i didn t want to trump it ahead of time and say it s going to be a great debate for joe biden. you play down a little bit or don t get carried away. i knew when he gave him this assignment and said, joe, you re going to carry this flag into battle, he couldn t wait to get prepared for it. he did great. what s interesting, the republicans around here in the so-called spin room, what are they criticizing? oh, he laughed too much. he smiled too