Presumptive GOP vice presidential candidate Paul Ryan admitted to seeking millions of dollars in federal economic stimulus. That is government talk for taxpayer money. Ryan had previously denied twice that he previously requested the money.
The Daily Mail reports,
The embarrassing reversal was the first major campaign trail mistake made by the Wisconsin congressman and came as a new poll showed that he had put his home state into play for Mitt Romney, who is now leading President Barack Obama there.
Ryan said that he had forgotten that his office had sent letters, which were signed by him, to the US Energy and Labor departments asking for money from the stimulus program on behalf of two Wisconsin companies.
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‘They should have been handled differently, and I take responsibility for that,’ Ryan said in a written statement released after an Ohio TV interview on Thursday in which he had once again denied requesting stimulus funds.
The denial in an interview with Cincinnati’s WCPO-TV contradicted letters he wrote in 2009 to Steven Chu , Energy Secretary, and Hilda Solis, Labor Secretary.
Federal records show that one of the two companies, the non-profit Wisconsin Energy Conservation Corporation, later raked in $20.3million from the Energy Department to help homes and businesses improve energy efficiency
‘After having these letters called to my attention I checked into them, and they were treated as constituent service requests in the same way matters involving Social Security or Veterans Affairs are handled,’ Ryan said in a statement late Thursday. ‘This is why I didn’t recall the letters earlier.’
“I’m not one who votes for something and then writes to the government to ask them to send us money,” Ryan had formerly said in a radio interview .
Yet the Boston Globe pointed out,
But beginning in the fall of 2009, he sent the first of a series of letters to the Department of Energy on behalf of a pair of Wisconsin energy conservation groups, insisting the funds would help create jobs, the Globe reported on Tuesday.
For example, Ryan predicted that a grant being sought by the Madison-based Wisconsin Energy Conservation Corporation would “create or retain approximately 7,600 new jobs over the three-year grant period and the subsequent three years.”
The letter continued: “I was pleased that the primary objectives of their project will allow residents and businesses in the partner cities to reduce their energy costs, reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and stimulate the local economy by creating new jobs.”
The organization ultimately received $20 million in economy stimulus funds, while another entity that he advocated for, the Energy Center of Wisconsin, was awarded a separate $740,000, according to federal records.
Now mind you Ryan was not the only one who did this. Georgia Senators Saxby Chambliss and Johnny Isakson ripped the stimulus bill as a “bloated government giveaway” then asked for $50 million in stimulus money for a constituent’s bio-energy project from then Defense Secretary Robert Gates There were other Republicans who did as well.
My friends both political parties are selling us out and then they turn around and blame each other. While publicly decrying the wasteful spending of Obama’s stimulus, which was right, behind the scenes politicians go and ask for their own little stimulus programs. This doesn’t even take into consideration the TARP issue in approving $700 billion in taxpayer money to be given to banks which was then lowered to $471 billion. This is just as wrong.
I ask you, what right does the federal government have to go and give taxpayer money to companies? It’s theft, plain and simple. If the federal government has extra money, it should be returned back to the people who paid it in, not redistributed elsewhere. In fact, they should have no more than they need to operate at what they are limited to by the Constitution.
We have entirely too many Executive Branch departments that are wastefully giving away taxpayer money annually. I am thoroughly behind the plan to remove five of those departments immediately and stop the wasteful spending. They aren’t benefiting America in the least bit. They are continuing to deplete the American economy.
But more than this, we have to get rid of politicians who claim to be fiscally conservative, but then behind the scenes have their hands out for taxpayer money.
This is not, nor has it ever been a fiscally conservative position. This is why records are important things. Each of the men running for office have political records that should be examined closely by each individual that is voting and as I’ve said before a person’s voting record speaks volumes above whatever their rhetoric states.
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