Colorlines, News Report, Posted: Aug 13, 2012

Mitt Romney’s choice of the swashbuckling, budget-cutting ideologue, Paul Ryan, as his vice presidential nominee shows that when it comes to the GOP’s economic policy, it’s same script, different cast. Together, Romney and Ryan represent a retread of 40 years worth of Republican ideas on economics, race and the role of government. Not content to let failure remain dormant, they want to reanimate bankrupt concepts and take them to a whole, new level.

Ryan is the chair of the House Budget Committee, author of the jobs and social safety-net destroying “Ryan Budget,” and a self-described “Young Gun.” Romney announced his selection aboard the battleship USS Wisconsin. The seven-term congressmember hails from Janesville, Wisc.; population 63,000. He is a darling of the Tea Party and an adherent to its cause.

For progressives and people of color, it’s hard to imagine a worse choice. Romney and Ryan may make a telegenic pair, but the reality of their policies and philosophies is downright ugly.

The focus of their campaign will be to reignite last summer’s disastrous debate on the deficit and debt. But the problem isn’t America’s debt, it’s America’s values. Ryan and Romney’s idea of a country where the rich matter more than the rest, fueled by tax cuts which make millionaires even more powerful, is exactly what caused the current crisis.

Under Romney and Ryan, the tremendous gains of the rich—which are subsidized by average Americans through the very deficits that they decry—will continue.

More disturbingly, Romney’s and Ryan’s discredited proposals would take America back to a less-just, less equitable place. To them, that era of racial and economic injustice was America at its best—and the effort to end it created the current economic mess.

Nothing illustrates this perverse understanding of economic history more dramatically than the very reason why Ryan was chosen: the popularity amongst conservatives of his infamous “Ryan budget.” Read more here.