Reid mocks Paul Ryan's claims on marathon

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) criticized vice presidential candidate Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) for having poor math skills when calculating both the GOP budget and how much time it took him to run a marathon.

“Paul Ryan’s math, his arithmetic, it’s very interesting,” Reid said on the floor Monday as he brought the Senate back into session after the August recess. “He said he ran a marathon, said he ran it in just over 2 hours and 50 minutes ... I’ve run marathons too, and using Ryan’s math, I would have made the Olympic team.”

Last month, Ryan claimed to have run a marathon in under three hours, which would have meant Ryan ran a mile in 6 minutes, 52 seconds pace — for more than 26 miles. The Hill reported that Ryan later corrected his statement, saying he finished the race in slightly more than 4 hours.

“The Ryan math doesn’t work in marathons — you know why? Because you can always check someone’s math,” Reid said. “It doesn’t work with Medicare, it doesn’t work with a budget.”

Reid accused Ryan and his running mate, Mitt Romney, of failing to offer specific plans on how they’d create more jobs if they win the election in November.

“Mitt Romney hasn’t brought forward a single idea on how to create jobs,” Reid said. “They go on saying they want to close these tax loophole, they’ve been asked which ones and they won’t say ... it’s part of a fictitious plan.

"They’re afraid to [say], so they give us this Romney math, this Ryan math instead.”

Reid then urged his colleagues to vote for the Veterans Jobs Corp Act, S. 3457, which would create new job-training programs to help veterans find jobs in targeted fields such as national park conservation, historic preservation projects, police officers and firefighters, among others. The Senate is schedule to take a vote on ending debate and moving on to a roll-call vote on the bill Tuesday afternoon.

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