In an interview with conservative radio host Mark Levin on Wednesday, Republican vice presidential candidate Paul Ryan took 15 minutes to lay out how he and his running mate Mitt Romney intend to tackle some of nation’s most challenging problems.
Partial transcript and highlights below
Education:
“The core of our education plan is to put parents back in charge, to respect federalism, respect states’ rights, but do what we can to deal with the interest groups, mainly the teachers’ unions that are standing in the way of parental control and choice in education, and for adults — people who lost their jobs, who are mid-career,” he said.
Ryan went on to explain that he wants to consolidate some of the job training programs spread out over seven bureaucracies, which he said are very difficult to study for success rates, and to open up more school choice programs, which had been blocked by the Obama administration early in his term.
Economy:
“It is a reversal of Obamanomics,” he said. “It is cut spending, get the deficit and debt under control, stop the regulatory juggernaut, which is picking winners and losers in the economy from a central bureaucracy, to have regulatory reform, clean up this tax system through loopholes, lower tax rates for everybody, trigger economic growth, get energy from this country because we have energy in this country — all of the above: coal, natural gas through fracking, oil, nuclear — all of it, all of the above, get trade agreements that work for us because we can make more things in America, grow more things in America, sell them overseas, the skill-system we just discussed on education for people K-12 and above and we’ve basically got to send a signal that we’re not going to have a mountain of uncertainty plaguing the economy at the first of the year, but a liberation.”
“The idea is growth, opportunity and it is to not look at people who are successful in society with envy or resentment, but with pride,” he continued. “We’re happy when people are successful in America. We want more people to be successful in America. The job of government is not to fix the pie and redistribute the slice of the pie. The job of government is to protect our natural rights, promote equality of opportunity so that entrepreneurs, small businesses — the American people can grow the pie and we can have growth of opportunity. That is what the Romney-Ryan administration is going to do from day one.”
Medicare:
“Stop Obamacare, which raids Medicare and puts a board of bureaucrats in charge of cutting it and price-controlling it for its current seniors, repeal every inch of Obamacare and all the damage it does to Medicare, don’t makes for people that are 55 and above,” Ryan said. “They’ve already retired or are about to retire — keep that promise to them. In order to keep that promise, you must reform my generation — those of us 54 and below and we do it just like members of Congress have, like federal employees have. It’s a bi-partisan solution where you get a list of guaranteed coverage options, including traditional Medicare, to choose from. Medicare subsidizes your premium based on who you are — more for the poor, more for the middle income, the sick, less for the wealthy. Choice, competition — it works. It brings down costs, increased quality, and it stays in so we can keep the promise of Medicare to those who are in or near retirement. There are no changes, which is a clear contrast to Obamacare, which raids Medicare and puts a board in charge of price-controlling, which leads to denied care for seniors.”
Foreign policy
“Two things — number one the Obama foreign policy is to subjugate ourselves to the United Nations, which gives Russia and China a veto power on the Security Council,” Ryan said. “So, we are giving these two countries you mentioned, these two powers which do not share our values, undue needless unnecessary clout because we’re running everything through the Security Council. That’s point number one.”
“Point number two — the reckless defense cuts the president is promising in his budget and his lack of leadership to deal with these devastating defense cuts that are coming at the end of the year means that we will have a Navy that is so small, we haven’t seen it since the likes of the [era of] the 1917 time. That deals with the issue of the South China Sea and the Pacific,” he continued. “If we do not have a strong Navy, we cannot protect our interests globally. We cannot protect the sea lanes. We can’t keep commerce going. We will create a void that is filled by other nations that do not share our values, that do not share the notion of individual rights of freedom and economic freedom.”
“And so, Obama’s devastating defense cuts obliterate the whole entire notion of peace through strength,” he said. “We will reverse that. We are serious about that. And we’re not going to run everything through the U.N., which gives these countries veto power over every little move we make. We believe in peace through strength. We believe in a strong national defense. We believe in forging stronger ties with our allies. And that combined with peace through strength means our adversaries respect us more and are not willing to challenge us as much.”