the president now has an opportunity to take the specifics of republicans and congress, attach them to mitt romney and he ll do it as long as he can get away with it. how do you sell the fact, howard, a rhetorical question to you and you know what it is going to be, how do you sell to the average person who works for $40,000 a year, you sweat, come home tired at 6:00 at night. and then under the paul ryan world, people who make money off money, people who get dividends, interest, whatever, they re not going to pay any taxes, any at all. in other words you don t have to look at mitt romney s tax returns anymore. it will have a zero price on it. don t look for the secret tax returns. a freebie. a free ride. how can you sell that to people who don t even know what a million bucks looks like? well, i think it s difficult. i think that the effort to question the underpinnings of the modern social welfare state, if you will, that s a legitimate one. how about right wing social engineer
and so on. so, you know, i think that it clarifies the choice for the american people. and i think it clarifies the choice in a way that is going to be helpful. paul ryan has been on this program five times. he s talked about these issues before. i have raised with him the fact that back when newt gingrich was on the program saying that the ryan budget and his plan to transform medicare was, in gingrich s words, right wing social engineering. something he backed off from. that a lot of republicans wanted to distance themselves, as they did, from the ryan plan. and this is what he said back in may of last year. watch. look, of course people are scared of entitlement reform. because every time you put entitlement reform out there, the other party uses it as a political weapon against you. look, both parties have done this to each other. here s the problem, david. if we don t get serious about these issues, if we don t get serious about the drivers of your debt, we re going to have a
one. how about right wing social engineering? just wait a minute. we re going broke. but mitt romney, i think, is probably ill suited in the extreme to be the guy carrying that case because he s not the democrats have very successfully painted him as an uncaring, unthinking rich guy who manipulates the tax code, who has offshore wealth, who doesn t pay his fair share of taxes, who only understands wealthy people, who doesn t have your interests at heart. so if he doesn t have your interests at heart and doesn t understand your life, how could the plan that he put forward actually help you? now in state and places like ohio, both campaigns are doing focus groups of undecided white, blue collar voters. sort of middle class voters. that s who this is aimed at. the romney/ryan ticket will say we re going to allow you to stop paying for the welfare state and give you back more tax money. that s what their argument is going to be.
modern social welfare state, if you will, that s a legitimate one. how about right wing social engineering? just wait a minute. we re going broke. but mitt romney, i think, is probably ill suited in the extreme to be the guy carrying that case because he s not the democrats have very successfully painted him as an uncaring, unthinking rich guy who manipulates the tax code, who has offshore wealth, who doesn t pay his fair share of taxes, who only understands wealthy people, who doesn t have your interests at heart. so if he doesn t have your interests at heart and doesn t understand your life, how could the plan that he put forward actually help you? now in state and places like ohio, both campaigns are doing focus groups of undecided white, blue collar voters. sort of middle class voters. that s who this is aimed at. the romney/ryan ticket will say we re going to allow you to stop paying for the welfare state and given you back more tax money.
to health care costs, and throw seniors on to the tender mercies of the private insurance market? the question is, do you really believe in medicare, or do you not? i believe what what newt gingrich said on your program. i think it s right wing social engineering. i don t believe that they believe in that program. i think it s interesting if you listen to your guests today and the first thing that the romney campaign put out yesterday, they re trying to distance themselves from this plan. in terms of debt, i heard congressman ryan talk about debt. as you pointed out, this was a guy who rubber-stamped every aspect of the bush economic policy, including not paying for two wars, social security medicare prescription plan, two big tax cuts, and now he wants trillions of dollars of more budget-busting tax cuts skewed to the wealthy. he s not in a position, he really isn t in a strong position to talk about this problem. david, let s talk more about what paul ryan is campaigning on now