If you cannot tell the truth, don’t speak

In light of Rep. Paul Ryan's claim, since recanted, to have run a marathon in less than three hours (actual time: more than four hours), it might be good to go over again the factual inaccuracies in his acceptance speech on Aug. 29. Candidates may not feel they need to pay attention to fact checkers, but voters certainly do. A few examples of blatant inaccuracies in Ryan's speech:

l Of the Simpson-Bowles deficit commission, Ryan said, “He created a new bipartisan debt commission. They came back with an urgent report. He thanked them, sent them on their way and then did exactly nothing.”

Ryan was a member of that commission. He opposed the commission's recommendations and he convinced other Republicans on the commission to oppose the recommendations, too.

l Of the downgraded credit rating, Rep. Ryan said that the president's time in office “began with a perfect AAA credit rating for the United States. It ends with the downgraded America.” During the summer of 2011, the White House had asked Congress to raise the debt ceiling so the government could borrow money to pay for spending that Congress had already approved. Ryan and other House Republicans refused to do so without agreement on major spending cuts. This reckless “brinkmanship” was responsible for Standard & Poor's conclusion that our “governance and policymaking are becoming less stable, less effective and less predictable.”

Jackie Martin

Mount Vernon