Paul Ryan is a living, breathing GOP example of how public infrastructure and private entrepreneurship work hand-in-hand.
August 15, 2012





When Paul Ryan took to the stage in Mooresville, North Carolina, as
Mitt Romney’s running mate, he attacked President Obama’s “you didn’t
build that” remark about the role of government in supporting private
innovation. But while Republicans have been clamoring to make this
election a false dichotomy between the private sector and the public
sector, Paul Ryan — heir to a private fortune made by building public
highways — is a gaping pothole in that plan. Paul Ryan is a living,
breathing GOP example of how public infrastructure and private
entrepreneurship work hand-in-hand.
Paul Ryan’s great-grandfather started a construction company to build
railroads and, eventually, highways. According to the Web site of Ryan
Incorporated Central, the company was “ founded in 1884 with
a single team of mules building railroad embankments in Southern
Wisconsin.” And in the 1800s, railroad construction was subsidized by
the federal government. Mid-century, President Lincoln signed the
Pacific Railway Act into law, providing taxpayer dollars to fund the
construction of a transcontinental railway. All railroads thereafter
connected to, and benefited from, that public investment.
At the turn of the century, Ryan Inc. turned to road building. A subsidiary family corporation, Ryan Incorporated Southern, states on its Web site ,
“The Ryan workload from 1910 until the rural interstate Highway System
was completed 60 years later [and] was mostly Highway construction.”
The $119 billion spent by the federal government on the Interstate Highway System was, by one account , “the largest public works program since the Pyramids.”
And, according to the Ryan Inc. Web site, the company completed “some
of the original work at what would become O’Hare Airport” in
Chicago. Originally, O’Hare Airport was a manufacturing base for World
War II transport planes. In other words, it’s likely that construction
project, too, was paid for by tax dollars. A current search of Defense
Department contracts suggests that “Ryan Incorporated Central” has had at least 22 defense contracts with the federal government since 1996 , including one from 1996 worth $5.6 million .

When President Obama said that we succeed in America “because of our
individual initiative but also because we do things together,” he was
actually speaking in more general terms — about manufacturing companies
that ship their goods on our railways and highways and thus indirectly
benefit from that public infrastructure. With a net worth of up to $3.2
million and ranking as the 124th richest member of Congress, Paul Ryan
very directly and very significantly benefited from the federal spending
he now rails against.
Or does he? What’s funny is that Mr. Anti-Spending secured millions
in earmarks for his home state of Wisconsin, including, among other
things, $3.3 million for highway projects . And Ryan voted to preserve $40 billion in special subsidies for big oil , an industry in which, it so happens, Ryan and his wife hold ownership stakes. Yet Ryan wants to gut financial aid for college students, food stamps for hungry families , Medicaid,Medicare and Social Security — the very things that have, historically, helped poor families climb the ladder of opportunity in America.
And this is precisely the problem with the Romney-Ryan vision for
America: It takes the ladder of opportunity and public infrastructure
that helped the previous generation and yanks it up for the next
generation. Your grandfather went to college on the GI Bill? We’re not
even going to give you measly Pell Grants! Your grandmother lived
independently thanks to Social Security? We’re giving yours to Wall
Street to crash with the rest of our economy! Your great-grandfather got
rich building public railways and roads?http://www.alternet.org/election-2012/ryan-family-fortune-built-public-works-projects-romney-campaign-mocks