BIDEN: Not mathematically possible.
RYAN: It is mathematically possible. It's been done before. It's precisely what we're proposing. It's been done a couple of times, actually. Jack Kennedy lowered tax rates, increased growth. Ronald Reagan, Republicans & Democrats have worked together on this.
THE FACTS: The top marginal tax rate in 1962 was 91% and JFK proposed lowering the top rate to 65% (compared to a top rate of 37% today). Yes, JFK did cut tax rates by more than 20%. But in the context of the much higher rates in 1962, cutting tax rates meant something very different than today--Ryan hence cannot realistically apply the lessons from JFK to today. No politician of any party today would even consider RAISING tax rates to the LOWER levels proposed by JFK in 1962!
Biden lifted the veil on that one, pointing out that to even begin to get enough money to pay for tax cuts of the size the Republicans are talking about, you'd have to cut the mortgage interest deduction and you'd have to start counting employer paid health care as part of taxable income. The only people who wouldn't howl would be the really rich for whom these deductions are minor and the really poor who don't own houses or have employer paid health care.
RYAN: I don't see how a person can separate their public life from their private life or from their faith. Our faith informs us in everything we do. My faith informs me about how to take care of the vulnerable, about how to make sure that people have a chance in life. Now, you want to ask basically why I'm pro-life? It's not simply because of my Catholic faith. That's a factor, but it's also because of reason and science. I believe that life begins at conception. Now, I understand this is a difficult issue. And I respect people who don't agree with me on this. But the policy of a Romney administration will be to oppose abortion with the exceptions for rape, incest and life of the mother.
RYAN: We don't think that unelected judges should make this decision; that people, through their elected representatives and reaching a consensus in society through the democratic process, should make this determination.
BIDEN: The next president will get one or two Supreme Court nominees. That's how close Roe v. Wade is. Just ask yourself: With Robert Bork being the chief adviser on the court for Mr. Romney, who do you think he's likely to appoint? Do you think he's likely to appoint someone far right, that would outlaw abortion? I suspect that would happen. I guarantee you that will not happen [with Obama]. We picked people who are open-minded. They've been good justices.
RYAN: Was there a litmus test on them?
BIDEN: There was no litmus test. We picked people who had an open mind, did not come with an agenda.
BIDEN: The two budgets the congressman introduced have eviscerated all the things that the middle class cares about. It will knock 19 million people off of Medicare. It will kick 200,000 children off of early education.
This is not what a real recovery looks like. You deserve better. Mitt Romney and I want to earn your support. We're offering real reforms for a real recovery for every American. Mitt Romney, his experience, his ideas, his solutions, is uniquely qualified to get this job done. At a time when we have a jobs crisis in America, wouldn't it be nice to have a job creator in the White House?
The choice is clear: a stagnant economy that promotes more government dependency, or a dynamic, growing economy that promotes opportunity and jobs. Mitt Romney and I will not duck the tough issues. We will take responsibility.
BIDEN: 97% of small businesses make less than $250,000. What they count as small business are hedge funds that make $800 million a year, because they're passthrough.
RYAN: That's what our entire premise of our pro-growth plan for a stronger middle class is all about: getting the economy growing at 4%, creating 12 million jobs over the next 4 years. Look at just the $90 billion in stimulus--the vice president was in charge of overseeing this--$90 billion in green pork to campaign contributors & special interest groups. There are just at the Department of Energy over 100 criminal investigations that have been launched.
RYAN: It's crony capitalism.
BIDEN: They found no evidence of cronyism.
RYAN: Was it a good idea to spend taxpayer dollars on electric cars in Finland or on windmills in China? Was it a good idea to borrow all this money from countries like China and spend it on all these various different interest groups? Where are the 5 million green jobs that were being promised?
RYAN: Oh, gosh, yes. What we should not be apologizing for are standing up for our values. What we should not be doing is saying to the Egyptian people, while Mubarak is cracking down on them, that he's a good guy and then the next week say he ought to go.
BIDEN: With all due respect, that's a bunch of malarkey.
RYAN: Absolutely. Medicare is going bankrupt. Medicare was there for my grandmother, just like it's there for my mom right now who's a Florida senior. We will honor this promise. And the best way to do it is reform it for my generation. You see, if you reform these programs for my generation, people 54 and below, you can guarantee they don't change for people in or near retirement. Here's what we're saying: Give younger people, when they become Medicare-eligible, guaranteed coverage options that you can't be denied, including traditional Medicare. Choose your plan, and then Medicare subsidizes your premiums.
BIDEN: It's a voucher. Now they got a new plan: "Trust me, it's not going to cost you any more." Folks, follow your instincts on this one.
RYAN: A hundred percent coverage for them.
Q: How do you pay for it?
RYAN: The premium support payments? By taking down the subsidies for wealthy people.
BIDEN: We will not be part of any voucher [that says] when you're 65, go out there, shop for the best insurance you can get; you're out of Medicare. You can buy back in, if you want, with this voucher, which will not keep pace with health care costs, because if it did keep pace with health care costs, there would be no savings. We will be no part of a voucher program or the privatization of Social Security.
RYAN: A voucher is you go to your mailbox, get a check and buy something. Nobody's proposing that.
RYAN: You don't cut defense by a trillion dollars.
BIDEN: Who's cutting it by a trillion?
RYAN: We're going to cut 80,000 soldiers, 20,000 Marines, 120 cargo planes. We're going to push the Joint Strike Fighter out. We're cutting missile defense. If these cuts go through, our Navy will be the smallest it has been since before World War I. This invites weakness. Look, do we believe in peace through strength? You bet we do. And that means you don't impose these devastating cuts on our military. So we're saying don't cut the military by a trillion dollars, not increase it by a trillion, don't cut it by a trillion dollars.
BIDEN: Look, we don't cut it. This "sequester," this automatic cut--that was part of a debt deal that they asked for. [Ryan] said, announcing his support of the deal, "we've been looking for this moment for a long time."
RYAN: That meant we've been looking for bipartisanship for a long time.
RYAN: You know what the unemployment rate in Scranton is today?
BIDEN: I sure do.
RYAN: It's 10%.
BIDEN: Yeah.
RYAN: You know what it was the day you guys came in?
BIDEN: No.
RYAN: 8.5%. That's how it's going all around America.
BIDEN: You don't read the statistics. It's going down.
RYAN: Look, did they come in and inherit a tough situation? Absolutely. But we're going in the wrong direction! Look at where we are. The economy is barely limping along. It's growing at 1.3%. 23 million Americans are struggling for work today. 15% of Americans are living in poverty today. This is not what a real recovery looks like. We need real reforms for a real recovery, and that's exactly what Mitt Romney and I are proposing. [Including]: Don't raise taxes on small businesses, because they're our job creators.
RYAN: For younger people. What we said then and what I've always agreed is let younger Americans have a voluntary choice of making their money work faster for them within the Social Security system.
BIDEN: You saw how well that worked.
RYAN: That's not what Mitt Romney's proposing. What we're saying is no changes for anybody 55 and above. And then the kinds of the changes we're talking about for younger people like myself is don't increase the benefits for wealthy people as fast as everybody else, and slowly raise the retirement age over time.
BIDEN: All the studies show that if we went with Social Security proposal made by Mitt Romney, if you're in your 40s now, you will get $2,600 a year less in Social Security. If you're in your 20s now, you get $4,700 a year less. It is absolutely the wrong way.
BIDEN: The middle class will pay less, and people making a million dollars or more will begin to contribute slightly more. We want to extend permanently the Bush middle-class tax cut. These guys won't allow us to. They're holding hostage the middle-class tax cut to the super wealthy.
RYAN: Our entire premise of these tax reform plans is to grow the economy and create jobs. It's a plan that's estimated to create 7 million jobs. Now, we think that government taking 28% of a family and business' income is enough. President Obama thinks that the government ought to be able to take as much as 44.8% of a small business' income. Look, if you taxed every person in successful small business making over $250,000 at a hundred percent, it'd only run the government for 98 days. There aren't enough rich people and small businesses to tax to pay for all their spending.
RYAN: Different than this administration, we actually want to have big bipartisan agreements.
Q: Do you have the specifics? Do you have the math?
RYAN: Look at what Ronald Reagan and Tip O'Neill did. They worked together out of a framework to lower tax rates and broaden the base, and they worked together to fix that. What we're saying is here's our framework: Lower tax rates 20%--we raise about $1.2 trillion through income taxes. We forgo about $1.1 trillion in loopholes and deductions. And so what we're saying is deny those loopholes and deductions to higher- income taxpayers so that more of their income is taxed, which has a broader base of taxation, so we can lower tax rates across the board.
BIDEN: I was there when Ronald Reagan tax breaks; he gave specifics of what he was going to cut.
RYAN: We mourn the loss of these four Americans who were murdered. [Initially, Obama] sent the U.N. ambassador out to say that this was because of a protest and a YouTube video. It took the president two weeks to acknowledge that this was a terrorist attack. Look, if we are hit by terrorists, we're going to call it for what it is, a terrorist attack. Our ambassador in Paris has a Marine detachment guarding him. Shouldn't we have a Marine detachment guarding our ambassador in Benghazi, a place where we knew that there was an al-Qaida cell with arms? This Benghazi issue would be a tragedy in and of itself. But unfortunately it's indicative of a broader problem, that we are watching the unraveling of the Obama foreign policy, which is making the world more chaotic and us less safe.
RYAN: We cannot allow Iran to gain a nuclear weapons capability. And talk about credibility. When this administration says that all options are on the table, they send out senior administration officials that send all these mixed signals. In order to solve this peacefully, you have to have the ayatollahs change their minds. It's because this administration has no credibility on this issue. It's because this administration watered down sanctions, delayed sanctions, tried to stop us from putting the tough sanctions in place. Now we have them in place because of Congress. They say the military option's on the table but it's not being viewed as credible, and the key is to do this peacefully, is to make sure that we have credibility. Under a Romney administration, we will have credibility on this issue.
BIDEN: Incredible. These are the most crippling sanctions in the history of sanctions, period.
RYAN: Let's look at this from the view of the ayatollahs. They see this administration trying to water down sanctions in Congress for over two years. They're moving faster toward a nuclear weapon; they're spinning the centrifuges faster. We have to change their mind so they stop pursuing nuclear weapons, and they're going faster.
Q: What's worse: another war in the Middle East, or a nuclear-armed Iran?
RYAN: I'll tell you what's worse. A nuclear-armed Iran, which triggers a nuclear arms race in the Middle East. This is the world's largest sponsor of terrorism. They've dedicated themselves to wiping an entire country off the map. They call us the Great Satan. And if they get nuclear weapons, other people in the neighborhood will pursue their nuclear weapons as well. We can't live with that.
BIDEN: War should always be the absolute last resort.
RYAN: We don't want to lose the gains we've gotten. We want to make sure that the Taliban does not come back in and give al-Qaida a safe haven. We agree with the administration on their 2014 transition. And that means we want to make sure our commanders have what they need to make sure that it is successful so that this does not once again become a launching pad for terrorists.
BIDEN: We went there for one reason: to get those people who killed Americans, al-Qaida. [Ryan & Romney] say it's based on conditions, which means it depends. It does not depend for us. We are leaving in 2014, period.
Q: What conditions could justify staying?
RYAN: We don't want to stay. We want to make sure that 2014 is successful.
Q: He says we're absolutely leaving in 2014. You're saying that's not an absolute.
RYAN: Do you know why we say that? Because we don't want to broadcast to our enemies, put a date on your calendar, wait us out and then come back.
RYAN: Nobody is proposing to send American troops to Syria. How would we do things differently? We wouldn't refer to Bashar Assad as a reformer when he's killing his own civilians. We wouldn't be outsourcing our foreign policy to the UN. After international pressure mounted, then President Obama said Bashar Assad should go. It's been over a year. The man has slaughtered tens of thousands of his own people and more foreign fighters are spilling into this country. So the longer this has gone on, the more groups like al-Qaida are going in.
BIDEN: What would you do differently?
RYAN: We would not be going through the UN. Things like embargoes and sanctions and overflights--those are things that don't put American troops on the ground.
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The above quotations are from 2012 Vice Presidential Debate Rep. Paul Ryan (R) vs. V.P. Joe Biden (D) Oct. 11, 2012. Click here for main summary page. Click here for a profile of Paul Ryan. Click here for Paul Ryan on all issues.
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