Ryan: It's the Economy, Stupid

Paul Ryan hit President Obama hard tonight on the nation's economic troubles—and ObamaCare—and offered a "clear choice" and goal to cut debt and put Americans back to work. "After four years of a runaround, we need a turnaround," he declared in his acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention. Ryan emphasized his roots as an all-American small-town boy from Janesville, Wis., a city struggling desperately in the economic recession. "The recovery that was promised" when Obama campaigned there last time around "is nowhere in sight," he said. Instead, the Obama administration has focused on ObamaCare—which he said has "no place in a free country." In the "biggest, coldest" play, Ryan claimed, the White House is raiding Medicare to cover ObamaCare costs.

A GOP administration won't spend four years "blaming others" for the economy; "we will take responsibility," he added. Before "the math and the momentum overwhelm us all, we are going to solve this nation’s economic problems. And I’m going to level with you: We don’t have that much time. But if we are serious, and smart, and we lead, we can do this." He said the GOP aims for a "stronger middle class, with the goal of generating 12 million new jobs" over the next four years, and plans to cap federal spending at 20% of the GDP or less, choosing to "limit government" instead of economic growth. We need to fix an economy that has unemployed "college graduates living in bedrooms in their parents' homes, staring at fading Obama posters," he said, to the delight of the crowd. We're living, he added, in a "government-planned life where everything is free but us." (More Paul Ryan stories.)