House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-WI) warned at Friday’s Faith and Freedom Conference that the government needed to remove itself from the free market.
In a well-received speech, he offered his prescription for recovery: “Pay off the debt, keep our tax rates low and stable and predictable, stop picking winners and losers in Washington through the regulatory system, and get the system under control so we can flourish.”
The line about picking winners and losers is a bit bold coming from one of the few Republicans who voted for the two most critical recent government interventions in the free market: TARP and the auto bailout.
Ryan recently defended TARP as a necessary measure to prevent an economic collapse in a major speech on his budget. His vote on the auto bailout comes up less often, but he told The Daily Beast in 2010 that he believed President Obama would have used TARP funds with less Congressional oversight to rescue the industry if the bill had not passed.
Benjy Sarlin
Benjy Sarlin is a reporter for Talking Points Memo and co-writes the campaign blog, TPM2012. He previously reported for The Daily Beast/Newsweek as their Washington Correspondent and covered local politics for the New York Sun.
Disqus Conversations
Click here to read the Disqus Commenting FAQ.