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Ryan: Obama Provides Fewer Specifics than Romney on the Deficit and the Economy

12:39 PM, Oct 2, 2012 • By JOHN MCCORMACK
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At a townhall-style event in Iowa, Paul Ryan was asked to provide more specifics about the Romney-Ryan economic plan, and he proceeded to talk about Romney's 5-point plan for about eight minutes. Buzzfeed posts the video

Ryan then pointed out that Romney has been far more specific than Obama has been about how to rein in spending and grow the economy. 

"Mitt Romney has put more specifics, more details about how to grow the economy, about how to save Medicare and Social Security, about how to prevent a debt crisis than the incumbent president of the United States has," Ryan said. "All President Obama is saying is another round of stimulus, where he spends money on his friends--on interest groups, on cronies like Solyndra--and then add more loopholes to the tax codes and raise tax rates."

Indeed, Bill Clinton's former chief of staff Erskine Bowles has said Obama's budget proposal is not serious: "The President came out with his own plan and the President came out, as you will remember, with a budget and I don’t think anyone took that budget very seriously. Um, the Senate voted against it 97 to nothing." 

Obama says his plans for Medicare and Medicaid are to keep "costs low," but he never explains how he's going to keep costs low. During a TV interview, Obama adviser David Axelrod scoffed at the notion the president should provide any specifics on how to keep Social Security from going bankrupt. Obama hasn't been specific about all of the taxes he wants to raise to get more than $1 trillion in new revenue.

"By the way, if you add up all of President Obama's proposed tax increases, it pays for less than one-fifth of all his proposed deficit-spending increases," Ryan said at the event in Iowa today. "So all these tax increases are just to spend it in Washington. Why don't we keep that money in Clinton, Iowa? Why don't we keep that money with our manufacturers? Why don't we keep that money with our farmers so they can do more and they can hire more people? That's how you get better take home pay. That's how you grow the middle class. That's how you get more jobs."

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