“As he did with the Olympics, and so many times in the private sector turning despair into success, Mitt Romney has again used his talents to make the right, critical choice at a critical hour for our nation. Paul Ryan understands the priorities needed to put our nation back on the road to more freedom, less government and renewed prosperity. I have known and worked with Paul Ryan since being elected to the Congress and was outraged time and again when his ideas to move our nation forward were killed by a liberal Senate. Now our party can give him the right platform and a Senate that will no longer be flawed and unworkable. With great pride, we all unite today behind the Romney-Ryan ticket."

I am pleased to congratulate my colleague, Congressman Paul Ryan, on being selected to join Mitt Romney on the road to the White House as his vice presidential running-mate. As I have always said, I will wholeheartedly support the Republican candidates, and with true fiscal conservative Paul Ryan, on the ticket, I am particularly pleased to do so.

Congressman Ryan has a deep understanding of the fiscal challenges facing our nation in both the short and long term. He has consistently provided realistic, actionable solutions that will keep our promises to our seniors while putting our economy back on the “Road to Prosperity.” Unlike President Obama, he put forward a serious budget.

The damaging economic policies of President Obama’s administration have left Americans with unemployment at or above 8 percent for 42 months and they are now facing the largest tax increase in history. His foreign policies have emboldened our enemies and left our allies vulnerable. Our nation cannot afford to continue down this destructive path which seeks to wed more Americans to government handouts, saddles our children and grandchildren with insurmountable debt, weakens our defenses at home and abroad, and turns Americans against each other. President Romney and Vice President Ryan will put our nation back on a course of economic freedom and equality of opportunity for all Americans.

The combination of Mitt Romney’s successful record in business and government, and Paul Ryan’s legislative experience and willingness to lead on pressing fiscal problems is just the recipe to get America back on the right path. President Mitt Romney and Vice President Paul Ryan are what we need to begin restoring the greatness of our constitutional republic.”

Today, Mitt Romney named Congressman Paul Ryan as his pick for vice president. Congressman Ryan has been called a serious person, but he, like Mitt Romney, has seriously flawed ideas for our economy that have only failed us in the past.

Congressman Ryan laid the groundwork in Congress for Mitt Romney's budget-busting scheme that gives an additional $250,000 tax cut for millionaires while punishing middle-class families with tax hikes of up to $2,000 a year. This tried and failed trickle-down economics scheme is familiar and troubling: cuts to education and other job-creating initiatives, ending Medicare as we know it and saddling our seniors with the ball all to pay for more tax cuts for millionaires and billionaires. And I can say, with no doubt, middle-class families and seniors in my home state of Florida want no part of a Romney-Ryan economic scheme that puts millionaires ahead of Medicare and throws the middle class under the bus to give more tax breaks to the wealthy.

The American middle class and our seniors cannot afford to go back to the failed policies of the past, and it is unconscionable to ask them to foot the bill for the Romney-Ryan scheme. A Romney-Ryan ticket is sure to take us back and repeat the same catastrophic mistakes that got us into the mess we found ourselves in in the first place.

In selecting House GOP Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan as his running mate, Mitt Romney has embraced a radical vision for our country totally out of step with American people. Chairman Paul Ryan may be heralded as a courageous policymaker in Washington, but at home in my district, forcing middle class families and seniors to weather massive cuts just to finance new trillion dollar tax cuts for the wealthy is anything but brave.

The retirees who rely on Medicare for their health and financial security, the families who deserve a government who invests in their future, and the workers who will pay higher taxes under the Romney-Ryan plan are not Democrats or Republicans. They are Americans, and in this make-or-break moment for our economy, they will not stand for a misguided ideological crusade.