Reflecting on the near government shutdown, Rep. Paul Ryan (R., Wis.), the House Budget Committee chairman, defended the House GOP’s maneuvering this morning on NBC’s Meet the Press. “I feel like we had a pretty good outcome,” he said. “We represented one-third of the negotiators, but we got two-thirds of the spending cuts we were asking for.” He tempered his praise by acknowledging that the cuts are “still a drop in the bucket.”
Ryan argued that the real fiscal battles are still to come. “We want to move from talking about saving billions of dollars to going on to saving trillions of dollars,” he said. The upcoming debt-ceiling vote, he noted, will be an important front. “We believe, accompanying any debt ceiling, you need real fiscal reforms — real spending cuts and real spending controls.”
It's time to move on. This was the Dem's budget from last year. Ryan's budget is more important, and will be a bigger battle.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseWhen you ask for something statistically insignificant but symbolically important, and then you agree to walk back the symbolic part of it, then you've accomplished next to nothing on either front, no matter what percentage of the request is granted.
Smart fans evaluate basketball teams not according to highlights, or even general statistics, but according to two criteria: how do they perform in the first and last five minutes of either half? Both teams want to start strong and finish strong, and the one that is more able to impose their will during those two periods is almost always superior and victorious.
In every policy fight with the opposition, the GOP starts slow and ends weak. And then conservative commentators, who I want to believe, because I agree with them, try to point to the rhetoric they used in the middle and the concessions that the victors granted them in the end show that they were superior, even in defeat.
I don't find it compelling, no not one bit.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseYe, this was a great outcome for America...never mind the $54 BILLION DOLLAR DEBT INCREASE that occurred the week prior to this deal. LOL.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseI bet we could balance the budget from the proceeds of a pay-per-view debate between Ryan and Obama on how we should get out of fiscal mess.
I know I'd pay real money for that.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseThis deal on the leftover budget from Reid/Pelosi wasn't the "hill to die on". Boehner did a good job. This is the first time spending was actually cut; before only the rate of spending was slowed. And today Obama's top spinner Puff…Poof?…Fluff??… announced that Obama would announce his own deficit reduction plan this week. The president is running to catch up with Ryan's express!
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseOver on the HuffPo, R.J. Eskow is trying to figure out why the unpopular Tea Party types keep beating the poor progressives whose ideas are very popular with the public. As long as they believe that, we'll be ok if we take each battle as it comes. Eric Cantor said this is only the beginning and called raising the debt ceiling a "leverage moment". Boehner said they wouldn't raise the debt ceiling without something really big. Let's hope they don't "go wobbly" on us.