The unofficial Obama and Romney VP speculation thread

[byu71]

I know why you/they think this - but I think you're underestimating his appeal and his effectiveness.

Ryan is nearly alone among national politicians in his totally unaffected earnestness in framing and addressing policy challenges - and he has framed and addressed THE most pressing national challenge more effectively than anyone on the landscape.

Yes, the Dem counter did succeed in sliming him - but put him in the spotlight and let him talk (esp facing Biden) and he's going to walk away looking a lot better. In large part bc he's smart as hell, fast on his feet and also - he's largely right on this issues and has the benefit of not lying to the American people about the state of the economy.

I saw him twice today. One show with Dick Durbin. That wasn't much of a match. The other show was he and Austin Goolsby (sp). Goolsby was reduced to shouting, that isn't true, those aren't the facts, you just want to help the rich. (my paraphrasing)

Watching he and Biden would be a treat.

Typical media with Durbin. Gregory asks a pretty good question of Ryan. If Obama wins will you accept the results and compromise with him. Ryan of course avoided the question. Gregory pushed and pushed and pushed. He successfully didn't answer, which really doesn't look good.

I applaud Gregory for at least asking Durbin the same question if Romney won. Durbin did the same avoidance dance. Gregory just let his avoidance just go. No pressuring.

Ryan is a real threat to the press's views. They could go overboard in trying to destroy him.

[frank ryan]

Romney could throw everyone off by picking Rocky Anderson. They have campaigned for each other in the past.

[myboynoah]

Romney could throw everyone off by picking Rocky Anderson. They have campaigned for each other in the past.

Yes, that would throw everyone off . . . . . . . . off of the Mitt Train.

Don't do it Mitt.

[frank ryan]

Yes, that would throw everyone off . . . . . . . . off of the Mitt Train.

Don't do it Mitt.

But he'd get all those third party voters who are backing Anderson's run for president. It would be a surprise move.

[Color Me Badd Fan]

I'm sure Paul Ryan would be more of a hit with Cali if he had said that food stamps were just about the best possible form of economic stimulus. Torching $800 billion $100 million at a time on the likes of Solyndra and Curt Shilling's video game studio makes you not a joke in Cali's world.

[calicoug]

I'm sure Paul Ryan would be more of a hit with Cali if he had said that food stamps were just about the best possible form of economic stimulus. Torching $800 billion $100 million at a time on the likes of Solyndra and Curt Shilling's video game studio makes you not a joke in Cali's world.

I certainly wouldn't be upset if he supported more spending for food stamps.

Are you at all familiar with his roadmap? Do you support it? If so, why?

[Color Me Badd Fan]

I certainly wouldn't be upset if he supported more spending for food stamps.

Are you at all familiar with his roadmap? Do you support it? If so, why?

Of course you're for more food stamps.

You were so extensive with the specifics in your initial post on the subject that I think you've already covered everything. I don't plan on trying to do the impossible on a Sunday night and work on talking economic sense to a guy who thought the stimulus was a great "bang for the buck." Bang for the buck apparently means giving Curt Schilling more money to make a video game, sight unseen, than anyone would ever give to the guys that made MW, Skyrim or Mass Effect.

How anyone can mock Paul Ryan occupying the position you do, with your side's record of graft, waste and utter incompetence is beyond me. It must be quite a challenge to produce a budget that gets no votes in the Senate, but the Obama administration has now done that twice. Yet somehow Obama's budgetary achievements eclipses that of the Democratically controlled Senate which has produced no budget at all.

So to sum it up for you all, in Cali's mind sending a budget to the Senate that garners not a single vote and failing to produce a budget altogether is not a joke, but Paul Ryan's budget is a joke.

Perhaps Cali would be interested in discussing the virtues of Obama's budget which his own party apparently hated.

[calicoug]

Of course you're for more food stamps.

You were so extensive with the specifics in your initial post on the subject that I think you've already covered everything. I don't plan on trying to do the impossible on a Sunday night and work on talking economic sense to a guy who thought the stimulus was a great "bang for the buck." Bang for the buck apparently means giving Curt Schilling more money to make a video game, sight unseen, than anyone would ever give to the guys that made MW, Skyrim or Mass Effect.

How anyone can mock Paul Ryan occupying the position you do, with your side's record of graft, waste and utter incompetence is beyond me. It must be quite a challenge to produce a budget that gets no votes in the Senate, but the Obama administration has now done that twice. Yet somehow Obama's budgetary achievements eclipses that of the Democratically controlled Senate which has produced no budget at all.

So to sum it up for you all, in Cali's mind sending a budget to the Senate that garners not a single vote and failing to produce a budget altogether is not a joke, but Paul Ryan's budget is a joke.

Perhaps Cali would be interested in discussing the virtues of Obama's budget which his own party apparently hated.

Come on, CMB. If you don't understand that the Republicans advanced a sham budget purely for political gain, you are watching way too much Fox "News." You ought to go back and actually read about the budget Republicans proposed. It was a total of 56 pages long. It was a shell that represented aggregate numbers and nothing more, all with the sole purpose of saying "nobody will vote for Obama's budget." I guess they found one sucker to buy their line.

Ryan's roadmap is a joke.

Tell me if this makes sense to you. Medicare, which we can all agree is costing too much (and has costs growing too quickly) is a big issue. How to fix it? Ryan's brilliant plan is to say that the government will an amount for Medicare that then cannot (by law) grow faster than the rate of inflation. Guess what rises faster (by a lot) than the rate of inflation? You got it. Medicare costs. So what happens to the seniors on Medicare? They keep getting some portion of Medicare costs covered, but it is a rapidly shrinking portion, effectively gutting Medicare and leaving seniors with nothing. It is a joke. Rather than try to fix the systematic issues with Medicare, Ryan has decided on a much simpler solution. Just make seniors pay for it. Of course, if seniors could pay for it, we wouldn't have Medicare in the first place.

Apart from Medicare, Ryan's plan requires that federal revenues remain at a static 19% of GDP per year. Here's the next big problem: because of the massive tax cuts his roadmap includes for the very wealthy, nobody actually thinks we would keep getting 19% in taxes per year under his plan. Instead, estimates come in around 16%. What does that 3% difference mean for his plan? It would mean a debt/GDP ratio of over 180% by 2050.

Ryan's plan also moves social security funds into private accounts. Ironically, that involves an act that Ryan thinks is unconstitutional- requiring Americans to purchase a particular product from the market. If the insurance mandate is unconstitutional, requiring people to pay money into social security and then require those same Americans to invest a portion of their contributions into private accounts would necessarily be unconstitutional too.

It's worth repeating: his plan is a joke.

[byu71]

Come on, CMB. If you don't understand that the Republicans advanced a sham budget purely for political gain, you are watching way too much Fox "News." You ought to go back and actually read about the budget Republicans proposed. It was a total of 56 pages long. It was a shell that represented aggregate numbers and nothing more, all with the sole purpose of saying "nobody will vote for Obama's budget." I guess they found one sucker to buy their line.

Ryan's roadmap is a joke.

Tell me if this makes sense to you. Medicare, which we can all agree is costing too much (and has costs growing too quickly) is a big issue. How to fix it? Ryan's brilliant plan is to say that the government will an amount for Medicare that then cannot (by law) grow faster than the rate of inflation. Guess what rises faster (by a lot) than the rate of inflation? You got it. Medicare costs. So what happens to the seniors on Medicare? They keep getting some portion of Medicare costs covered, but it is a rapidly shrinking portion, effectively gutting Medicare and leaving seniors with nothing. It is a joke. Rather than try to fix the systematic issues with Medicare, Ryan has decided on a much simpler solution. Just make seniors pay for it. Of course, if seniors could pay for it, we wouldn't have Medicare in the first place.

Apart from Medicare, Ryan's plan requires that federal revenues remain at a static 19% of GDP per year. Here's the next big problem: because of the massive tax cuts his roadmap includes for the very wealthy, nobody actually thinks we would keep getting 19% in taxes per year under his plan. Instead, estimates come in around 16%. What does that 3% difference mean for his plan? It would mean a debt/GDP ratio of over 180% by 2050.

Ryan's plan also moves social security funds into private accounts. Ironically, that involves an act that Ryan thinks is unconstitutional- requiring Americans to purchase a particular product from the market. If the insurance mandate is unconstitutional, requiring people to pay money into social security and then require those same Americans to invest a portion of their contributions into private accounts would necessarily be unconstitutional too.

It's worth repeating: his plan is a joke.

You have convinced me. What is your plan for handling the rising costs of medicare that will break the system?

[Moliere]

Tell me if this makes sense to you. Medicare, which we can all agree is costing too much (and has costs growing too quickly) is a big issue. How to fix it? Ryan's brilliant plan is to say that the government will an amount for Medicare that then cannot (by law) grow faster than the rate of inflation. Guess what rises faster (by a lot) than the rate of inflation? You got it. Medicare costs. So what happens to the seniors on Medicare? They keep getting some portion of Medicare costs covered, but it is a rapidly shrinking portion, effectively gutting Medicare and leaving seniors with nothing. It is a joke. Rather than try to fix the systematic issues with Medicare, Ryan has decided on a much simpler solution. Just make seniors pay for it. Of course, if seniors could pay for it, we wouldn't have Medicare in the first place.

What a tragedy. Seniors paying for their own healthcare. OMG! The other option are what? Borrow money to pay for it or get the money from the middle class. You can raise taxes to 100% on the rich and you still won't have enough money to pay for Medicare or SS so the money was to come from somewhere other than Buffett and Gates.

Maybe when people are paying their own health care costs they start thinking twice about the cost/benefit and make better decisions. But that will never happen because it creates too many negative sound bites to actually gain any steam.

Apart from Medicare, Ryan's plan requires that federal revenues remain at a static 19% of GDP per year. Here's the next big problem: because of the massive tax cuts his roadmap includes for the very wealthy, nobody actually thinks we would keep getting 19% in taxes per year under his plan. Instead, estimates come in around 16%. What does that 3% difference mean for his plan? It would mean a debt/GDP ratio of over 180% by 2050.

I love it when people project things like this out to 2050. What a joke. While I'm not a big fan of limiting Fed spending to a % of GDP, I'm a huge fan of a balanced budget.

Ryan's plan also moves social security funds into private accounts. Ironically, that involves an act that Ryan thinks is unconstitutional- requiring Americans to purchase a particular product from the market. If the insurance mandate is unconstitutional, requiring people to pay money into social security and then require those same Americans to invest a portion of their contributions into private accounts would necessarily be unconstitutional too.

I get the hypocrisy here, but how is this idea a "joke"? Seems like a rational approach to modifying SS. Why aren't the Dems the ones pushing this?

[byu71]

I get the hypocrisy here, but how is this idea a "joke"? Seems like a rational approach to modifying SS. Why aren't the Dems the ones pushing this?

Calling it a joke is a good discrediting technique. You don't have to explain why you are against what you called a joke. Can you imagine asking someone of high intelligence to explain something he called a joke. Shame on you.

[oxcoug]

Rather than try to fix the systematic issues with Medicare, Ryan has decided on a much simpler solution. Just make seniors pay for it. Of course, if seniors could pay for it, we wouldn't have Medicare in the first place.

Cali you generally impress me with the thoughtfulness of your responses even when I disagree with you - but here you're revealing a bit of a partisan, Strangelovian arm reflex - calling Ryan's plan a "joke" because it asks people to pay for a thing that we are currently forcing the children of this generation and the next to pay for is.... errr....a joke.

Someone has to pay for it because we can't keep borrowing for it - but in your fantasyland we can continue to borrow money to maintain our unsustainable trajectory and then just pin the consequences on the backs of the next generation.

Start with this: There is not enough money to go around and a whole bunch of people are going to have a hard time once our budgetary outlays begin to grapple with that reality.

[Indy Coug]

Cali you generally impress me with the thoughtfulness of your responses even when I disagree with you - but here you're revealing a bit of a partisan, Strangelovian arm reflex - calling Ryan's plan a "joke" because it asks people to pay for a thing that we are currently forcing the children of this generation and the next to pay for is.... errr....a joke.

Someone has to pay for it because we can't keep borrowing for it - but in your fantasyland we can continue borrow money to maintain our unsustainable trajectory and then just pin the consequences on the backs of the next generation.

Start with this: There is not enough money to go around and a whole bunch of people are going to have a hard time once our budgetary outlays begin to grapple with that reality.

People need to disabuse themselves of the notion that there is still a pain-free window of time open where we can get ourselves out of the mess we are in. That ship sailed decades ago. The problem continues to grow exponentially, so the lack of serious solutions in the near future will make things even more painful very, very quickly.

[Mormon Red Death]

What a tragedy. Seniors paying for their own healthcare. OMG! The other option are what? Borrow money to pay for it or get the money from the middle class. You can raise taxes to 100% on the rich and you still won't have enough money to pay for Medicare or SS so the money was to come from somewhere other than Buffett and Gates.

Maybe when people are paying their own health care costs they start thinking twice about the cost/benefit and make better decisions. But that will never happen because it creates too many negative sound bites to actually gain any steam.

Didn't you know that every senior is $100 from eating cat food? Get with the times Moliere!

[Jacob]

Ryan's roadmap is a joke.

Tell me if this makes sense to you. Medicare, which we can all agree is costing too much (and has costs growing too quickly) is a big issue. How to fix it? Ryan's brilliant plan is to say that the government will an amount for Medicare that then cannot (by law) grow faster than the rate of inflation. Guess what rises faster (by a lot) than the rate of inflation? You got it. Medicare costs. So what happens to the seniors on Medicare? They keep getting some portion of Medicare costs covered, but it is a rapidly shrinking portion, effectively gutting Medicare and leaving seniors with nothing. It is a joke. Rather than try to fix the systematic issues with Medicare, Ryan has decided on a much simpler solution. Just make seniors pay for it. Of course, if seniors could pay for it, we wouldn't have Medicare in the first place.

Apart from Medicare, Ryan's plan requires that federal revenues remain at a static 19% of GDP per year. Here's the next big problem: because of the massive tax cuts his roadmap includes for the very wealthy, nobody actually thinks we would keep getting 19% in taxes per year under his plan. Instead, estimates come in around 16%. What does that 3% difference mean for his plan? It would mean a debt/GDP ratio of over 180% by 2050.

It's worth repeating: his plan is a joke.

You said you'd like to shine a light on the roadmap's deficiencies. Please shine away. I'm a luke-warm supporter, because I think the plan is too modest. But I am a supporter.

Your first argument concludes that Ryan's plan is "effectively gutting Medicare and leaving seniors with nothing." That is clearly false, as you admitted just prior to making the absurd statement. In fact, you appear to have no idea what Ryan's plan is. Here's a summary of the benefit to people currently under 55:

For those currently under 55 – as they become Medicare-eligible – it creates a Medicare payment, initially averaging $11,000, to be used to purchase a Medicare certified plan. The payment is adjusted to reflect medical inflation, and pegged to income, with low-income individuals receiving greater support. The plan also provides risk adjustment, so those with greater medical needs receive a higher payment.

$11,000 per year pegged to medical inflation (not inflation as you cliamed). Yet to you, $11,000 per year is "nothing."

Your second argument is that he can't collect enough revenue to pay for 19% spending. And that "nobody thinks we would keep getting 19% in taxes [i.e. revenues]" after if his tax plan were implemented. First of all, your claim that "nobody thinks" that is obviously false. Ryan believes it, for one, as do many economists. Secondly, you attack Ryan for proposing spending at 19% of GDP, yet the other proposal is currently to continue to spend well over 20% of GDP. And the current revenues at current tax rates are well below 19%.

Your final claim is your worst, though I'm not sure we can really rate one as much worse than the other as none of them actually qualify as valid arguments. Here's what you say:

Ryan's plan also moves social security funds into private accounts. Ironically, that involves an act that Ryan thinks is unconstitutional- requiring Americans to purchase a particular product from the market. If the insurance mandate is unconstitutional, requiring people to pay money into social security and then require those same Americans to invest a portion of their contributions into private accounts would necessarily be unconstitutional too.

1st off, Ryan's plan give people the option of moving a portion to a private account. Secondly, your legal reasoning has failed you as an unconstitutional ruling re: obamacare mandate is largely irrelevant to the constitutionality of social security. I don't know where you are getting your talking points, but the source is not good. Here's what Ryan actually proposes:

Offers workers under 55 the option of investing over one third of their current Social Security taxes into personal retirement accounts, similar to the Thrift Savings Plan available to Federal employees. Includes a property right so they can pass on these assets to their heirs, and a guarantee that individuals will not lose a dollar they contribute to their accounts, even after inflation.