Paul Ryan Slams Spending, Health Care at Canton Rally

NORTH CANTON, Ohio — Mitt Romney’s running mate in the upcoming presidential election, Rep. Paul Ryan, continued the Republican assault on President Obama’s heath care overhaul and spending in Washington at a rally in North Canton on Thursday.

“Lets be candid, President Obama clearly inherited a very difficult situation,” said Ryan to the assembled crowd at the Alumni Arena of Walsh University. “Problem is he made things much worse.”

Ryan spoke for 23 minutes and began with harsh comments on the Democratic health care overhaul dubbed, ‘Obamacare’.

As he did at a rally in Oxford, Ohio on Wednesday, Ryan cited a figure from a July 24th Congressional Budget Office report in telling the crowd that $716 billion would be taken from Medicare to pay for the new health care system.

“You think raiding Medicare to pay for Obamacare is an achievement?” said Ryan, to the crowd, who promptly booed the comment.

The $716 billion figure, according to CNN, comes from the measured impact of repealing the health care overhaul law.

Obama’s administration says the spending on Medicare would be offset by the decreased cost of prescription drug coverage.

Romney’s campaign, according to CNN, suggests that to not repeal the health care law results in the opposite, a $716 decrease in Medicare spending.

Ryan later moved from health care to the economy and the more than trillion dollar budget deficit that the United States has faced in each of Obama’s four years in office.

“It’s a plan to create 12 million jobs in the next four years. That in Ohio means 452,000 jobs if we get this economy growing like it should,” said Ryan. “And we can get this economy growing like it should at four percent,”

Part of the plan according to Ryan is relying on domestic energy resources which would involve off-shore drilling.

“Lets use our own energy, to create jobs and stop depending on foreign oil,” said Ryan.

The 42-year-old received the biggest cheer from the crowd when he spoke of the deficit spending over the past four-years.

“We can’t keep spending money we don’t have,” exclaimed Ryan to a cheering crowd. “We’ve got to get this deficit under control.”

He later added, “President Obama gave us four budgets with trillion dollar deficits each time.”

That message resonated with voters like Marti Steiner.

“It’s what we need to do, somebody needs to get in there and do it,” said Steiner.

“I’m very impressed with him,” said supporter Rhonda Baker. “I think he’s very down to earth and he really has a heart for the American people.”

Ryan ended the speech by telling the crowd, “It’s not too late, it’s not too late. We can get this done, we need Stark County.”

Ryan’s visit to the northeast Ohio area was the first by the Republican VP candidate since being chosen by the Romney campaign on August 11th.

Ryan later made his way to a suburb outside Dayton for another rally.