Will Local Media Note Rep. Ryan's Two-Faced Stance On The Stimulus?
Wisconsin Congressman Paul Ryan (R) showed up in yesterday's blockbuster piece in The Wall Street Journal among members of Congress who had blasted the stimulus while also seeking some of that funding for their districts.
This is the key graf:
"Rep. Paul Ryan, a Wisconsin Republican who called the stimulus a "wasteful spending spree" that "misses the mark on all counts," wrote to Labor Secretary Hilda Solis in October in support of a grant application from a group in his district which, he said, "intends to place 1,000 workers in green jobs." A spokeswoman for Mr. Ryan said the congressman felt it was his job to provide "the basic constituent service of lending his assistance for federal grant requests.'"
Will the Wisconsin media follow-up?
3 comments:
A local letter writer nailed Ryan on this in the Journal Sentinel, yesterday I think.
I think Ryan can be against the general philosophy of the stimulus package while still doing his duty as a representative to his constituents. It would be a much worse story to hear that Ryan stubbornly refused to sign a support letter for a constituent business or non-profit group because he was philosophically opposed to it. Besides, it's not like he wrote the letter himself.
My problem with Ryan and the other anti-stimulus legislators is that they have used it as a club against Obama and the notion that government can be a positive force.
To turn around and then seek that very money is hypocritical. Not to mention trying to have it both ways with constituents.
A better way to have handled it would be to have said he was against government interventions, generally, but when the stimulus bill was in play, the country was in a meltdown and it was time to make an exception.
If I remember correctly, he supported the bank bailout, so he is capable of sifting and winnowing.
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