Paul Ryan has been the heartless young mercenary the Republican Party has dreamed of finding for over 30 years. A brash cutthroat willing to kill Social Security, eliminate Medicare, and assassinate the federal government by strangling it to death financially. Ryan also believes in destroying the Pell Grant program. Ryan told a student at a Wisconsin town hall earlier today that he should work three jobs to pay for college instead of using Pell Grants.
The student voiced concern over Ryan’s plan to cut Pell Grants, to which Ryan responded with the classical Republican comeback, “the program is unsustainable.”

LOWE: I come from a very middle-class family and under President Obama, I get $5,500 per year to pay for school, which doesn’t come close to covering all of the funding, but it helps ease the burden. Under your plan, you cut it by 15 percent. I was just curious why you would cut a grant that goes directly to the middle- and lower-class people that need it the most.
RYAN: ‘Cause Pell Grants have become unsustainable. It’s all borrowed money…Look, I worked three jobs to pay off my student loans after college. I didn’t get grants, I got loans, and we need to have a system of viable student loans to be able to do this. The second concern I have is, in the health care bill — people don’t know this — for budgetary gimmickry reasons, the administration and Congress at the time, took over the student loan industry. So they had the federal government, the Department of Education, basically confiscate the private student loan industry.
Here’s the video:
It takes a coldblooded human being to tell a student who is just trying to get by that he should take on three jobs to pay for college. Perhaps if Ryan would make a half-assed effort to make it to where students can get at least one great paying job after completing college, it would be easier for students to pay for their education without needing the grants in the first place. The reason people use the grants now is because it takes a lot of money to get an education these days. No part time job can possibly pay for college. Not even three jobs can pay those kind of expenses. Ryan apparently doesn’t realize that people need to eat, sleep, and pay their bills too. How could he? To know that, one needs a brain and a heart. Ryan has neither.
Ryan graduated in 1992. Since then the cost of college has grown almost 500% relative to inflation and the median household income. Ryan would have to have 15 jobs to pay for it today. Think he’s up to it?
Not defending Mr. Ryan. His position comes first from being a privileged white male in America. Yes, it still applies even though ‘they’ are allowing statistical minorities (percentage of blacks, Latinos, Asian, etc. in our whit society) to rise above the poverty line. His philosophy probably includes ‘pulling yourself up by your bootstraps’ and ‘winning at all costs.’ He probably believes that arrogance is earned and okay. He doesn’t have to answer to anyone, least of all to anyone who didn’t elect him. It’s kind the romantic cowboy hero who shoots first and asks questions later because he can. Good goin’ pardner!
Too bad we can redo “Deliverance” and make sure Paul Ryan gets the part of Ned Beatty.