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"Yes, You Did Build That"

On the third night of the Republican National Convention, Congressman Paul Ryan, the nominee for vice president, emphatically put forth his party...

On the third night of the Republican National Convention, Congressman Paul Ryan, the nominee for vice president, emphatically put forth his party as the party of growth. “After four years of the government dividing up wealth,” he told a cheering crowd, “we’re going to get back to the business of creating wealth.” Explicitly crediting his mentor, the late Jack Kemp, Ryan presented an optimistic, expansive vision of a free society hospitable to entrepreneurs and owners of small businesses such as his own mother, whose “work gave us hope” after his father died. What these entrepreneurs “need to hear from their government," Ryan said, “is, ‘Yes, you did build that.’” Ryan announced policy goals of creating “12,000,000 jobs over the next four years” and keeping “federal spending at 20% of GDP or less, because that’s enough.” Given the choice between “hard limits on economic growth or hard limits on the size of government,” Ryan had no hesitation in announcing: “We choose to limit government.” “We can get this economy growing again,” he promised, echoing the assertions he made at the 4% Growth Project’s conference on economic growth in New York this spring. You can watch a video of his presentation here.