Jazlyn Beltre
Staff Writer
As Election Day approaches, we repeatedly hear the names Mitt Romney and Barack Obama being mentioned in the media. Their proposed policies have spread like wildfire to the ears of the citizens of the nation; and so have the names Joseph R. Biden, Dem. and Paul D. Ryan, Rep.
Although the Vice President contenders aren’t stirring up as much controversy as in 2008, when Sarah Palin was the Vice Presidential candidate for the Republican Party, Romney’s choice of Ryan as his running mate was a bold decision. As Nate Silver wrote in a New York Times article in August 2012: “[Ryan] is also more conservative than any Democratic nominee was liberal.”
Paul D. Ryan, who is 42 years old, is currently serving his seventh term as U.S. Congressman for Wisconsin’s first congressional district. He is the Chairman of the House Bud-get Committee, where he works to bring fiscal discipline and accountability to the federal government, and the House Ways and Means Committee, where he claims to work on simplifying the tax code and making healthcare more affordable and accessible for Americans.
As a Congressman, Ryan has made a variety of proposals in his “Path to Prosperity Budget,” that he claims can cut spending by $5 trillion dollars if passed. In his budget, he discusses taxes, debts, healthcare, spending, national security, size of government and deficits. He states that he would cut spending and repeal the President’s current healthcare plan by ‘taking power away from the government and put patients in control.’
But, according to FactCheck.org, a project of the Annenberg Public Policy Center, Ryan “accused President Obama’s healthcare law of funneling money away from Medicare at the expense of the elderly. When in fact, Medicare’s chief actuary says the law substantially improves the system’s finances, and Ryan himself has embraced the same savings.”
On the other hand, Joseph Biden, who is 69 years old and the current Vice President, is running for a second term with President Obama. Biden began his political career as a council member for Delaware’s New Castle County Council, shortly after graduating from law school. Then, at the age 29, Biden became the one of the youngest people elected into the United States Senate, according to the White House official website, WhiteHouse.gov. Biden is a U.S. Senator representing Delaware for 36 years, Chairman or Ranking Member of the Senate Judiciary Committee for 17 years, and has been recognized for his work on criminal justice issues such as the Violence Against Women Act, as well as foreign policy.
Biden’s plan for America was shown when he worked with President Obama to implement the American Recovery and Re¬investment Act, also known as the stimulus bill, worth $787 billion dollars in February of 2009. This law was passed in order to save the country from its financial burdens, a similar goal to Ryan’s proposed budget.
But, many Republicans, who claim that it failed, have scrutinized the stimulus law. Yet, according to an article in the New York Times updated in March 2012, “Republicans have derided the 2009 stimulus as a failure, the consensus among economists has been that it helped stave off deeper job losses and sup¬ported a modest recovery.”
The depths of discussion of Vice Presidential candidates and economic policies have only scratched the surface. To hear more about the Presidential and Vice Presidential candidates, tune into the First Presidential Debate on Wednesday, October 3rd at 9 p.m. and the Vice Presidential Debate on Thursday, October 11th at 9 p.m. Because the Vice President is one step away from the Oval Office if any¬thing should happen to the President, we must research carefully and be fully informed about both the Presidential and Vice Presidential candidates when we vote on November 6th. For more information concerning the truth about both political parties and the policies they propose, please visit FactCheck.org or, Pulitzer Prize winning, Politifact.com. The choice is ours. Vote 2012
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