Congressional District An Example Of Ryan's Work

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After listening to President-elect Barack Obama's speech Thursday morning on his plan for an economic recovery and pledging to "put the American Dream within reach of the American people," I was struck by his comments requesting that Congress should make an effort to keep earmarks out of the stimulus bill and what impact that may have on South-Eastern Wisconsin.

Chicago tribune Excerpt:
FAIRFAX, Va. (AP) — President-elect Barack Obama is again vowing to keep "earmarks and pet projects" out of an economic recovery plan.

My guess here is that Obama is assuming that all congressional districts have been reaping some form of economic stimulus from the GOP-led pork spending spree of the past 12 years. Such is not the case for the 1st Congressional District of Wisconsin. If Congress passes an economic stimulus bill without earmarks, residents here won’t notice a thing. You see, Congressman Paul Ryan has been keeping his district earmark lean when it comes to economic stimulus, and I’m not talking about pork spending here.

Now, please don’t mistake those statements as a backward compliment for Ryan’s so-called fiscal conservatism. While Ryan’s district has been hemorrhaging jobs and manufacturing long before it became a national trend, he vowed to bring home even less in federal stimulus earmarks. On top of it, he’s been rubber stamping GOP-legislation, executive branch interests and budget deficits during his first eight years in Congress, among them the War On Iraq and the Wall street Bail-Out. Those two debacles alone have been responsible for $1.5 trillion and counting.

I know what you’re thinking – you’re saying “Hey hypocritical dude, the Democrats voted for the same things.” But there is a huge difference. Only since the Democrats took the House, has Ryan been blaming Congress for all our problems and grandstanding his "way" every chance he gets with the new majority. His local media enablers only promote the fiscal conservatism he wages against his own district and completely ignore his job-purging policies and national deficit growing economic liberalism. His record speaks for itself, Ryan has voted with the GOP over 90% of the time. Not one democrat can match that feat.

Unless someone else has been calling the shots in Wisconsin's 1st CD, it should be indisputable that the residents here have been experiencing Ryan’s roadmap firsthand for the past decade. We are his “pet project.” From Kenosha to Janesville, the district's unemployment trends and the general downward condition is a direct reflection of his handiwork and a bird's eye view of what the rest of the country can expect from the future plans of this "rising star."

So it is that if Obama can help it, his economic recovery plan and national stimulus package will be devoid of earmarks and although his campaign theme has been about change, the 1st CD of Wisconsin ironically, will get just more of the same.

Obama thought this district was important enough to stop here a few times during his presidential campaign run. The district responded – it flipped for him. Certainly that's not enough reason to expect him to make our district his pet project, but it sure would be nice if he could pay some extra attention to our district and change its direction.....because no one else will. It would serve as a great example for his recovery plan for the rest of the nation.