“And I’m going to level with you: We don’t have that much time. But if we are serious, and smart, and we lead, we can do this,” he was to say.
Ryan, 42, the House Budget Committee chairman and a seven-term lawmaker from Wisconsin, was expected to renew the Republican White House ticket’s pledge to repeal the national health care law, generate 12 million jobs over the next four years and put the country’s struggling economy on the right track.
“I accept the calling of my generation to give our children the America that was given to us, with opportunity for the young and security for the old – and I know that we are ready,” Ryan planned to say. “Our nominee is sure ready. His whole life has prepared him for this moment – to meet serious challenges in a serious way, without excuses and idle words. After four years of getting the run-around, America needs a turnaround, and the man for the job is Governor Mitt Romney.”
And two months after the Supreme Court ruled the national health care law constitutional, Ryan was expected to take aim at President Obama for declaring the health care debate a settled matter.
“Obamacare comes to more than two thousand pages of rules, mandates, taxes, fees, and fines that have no place in a free country,” Ryan was expected to say. “The president has declared that the debate over government-controlled health care is over. That will come as news to the millions of Americans who will elect Mitt Romney so we can repeal Obamacare.”
Ryan’s address comes on the second full day of the GOP convention and on the eve of Romney’s acceptance of his party’s presidential nod. Earlier Wednesday, the Wisconsin Republican tested out the convention stage along with his family and dropped by a Badger State “beers and brats” event near the Tampa Bay Times Forum, the GOP convention venue.
The Obama campaign, seeking to shape perceptions of the staunchly conservative lawmaker before he took the stage, released an online campaign video Wednesday criticizing what it called Ryan’s “out-of-step views from a bygone era.”
Ryan’s address was to round out a day of speeches by GOP luminaries including former secretary of state Condoleezza Rice, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.), Sen. Rand Paul (Ky.), former Minnesota governor Tim Pawlenty, Sen. John McCain (Ariz.), former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee, Sen. John Thune (S.D.), New Mexico Gov. Susana Martinez, Sen. Rob Portman (Ohio) and Puerto Rico Gov. Luis Fortuño.
