On Sunday morning, the other Paul Ryan problem
Paul Ryan during G.O.P. response to Obama's 2012 budget.
7:34 am Sep. 10, 20121
The big pitfall in picking Paul Ryan was supposed to be his controversial plan to overhaul Medicare. But on Sunday morning, Mitt Romney had a different problem with his running mate, who voted for the automatic defense cuts included in last year's debt ceiling deal that Romney now calls an "extraordinary miscalculation" on the part of House Republicans.
"That's a big mistake," said Romney, who was making his first appearance this cycle on "Meet the Press" with a two-part interview on his campaign bus, followed by an open-air, rooftop sit-down near his campaign headquarters. "I thought it was a mistake on the part of the White House to propose it. I think it was a mistake for Republicans to go along with it."
Romney would very much like to be seen as the defender of a robust military budget, particularly in defense-heavy states like Virginia, but first he must reconcile that position with Ryan's voting record, as one of the House Republicans who supported the deal.
"I worked with President Obama to find common ground to get a down payment on deficit reduction. It wasn't a big down payment, but it was a step in the right direction," he told Norah O'Donnell on "Face the Nation." O'Donnell quoted from a Ryan press release at the time, praising the deal.
Ryan argued that he had voted for the sequestration bill to motivate more action in the House, and that he followed that vote with a compromise proposal for spending cuts that would avoid the sequestration, though it's not clear whether that distinction got through to Guthrie, or to viewers.
"No, no, I have to correct you on this, Norah," he said. "I voted for a mechanism that says a sequester would occur if we don't cut $1.2 trillion in spending in government. We offered $1.2 trillion in various—the supercommittee offered it. We passed in the House a bill to prevent those devastating defense cuts by cutting spending elsewhere. The Senate's done nothing. President Obama's done nothing."
Even before Ryan's selection, some conservatives had misgivings about his long record in the House, which included votes for most of the unbalanced budgets of George W. Bush, before Ryan started building a profile as a deficit hawk. Ryan's voting record could complicate Romney's efforts to distance the ticket from Bush, who Democrats have tried to argue is the model for Romney's policies.
On "Meet the Press," host David Gregory pressed Romney on the particulars of his budget, in particular the exemptions that would be eliminated to raise the revenue necessary to fulfill all of Romney's promises.
"Governor, where are the specifics of how you get to this math? Isn't that an issue?" Gregory asked
"Well, the specifics are these, which is those principles I described, are the heart of my policy," Romney replied. "And I've indicated as well that contrary to what the Democrats are saying I'm not going to increase the tax burden on middle income families. It would absolutely be wrong to do that," said Romney, who added that he had proven his ability to balance budgets in Massachusetts.
"Give me an example of a loophole that you will close," Gregory said.
"Well, I can tell you that people at the high end, high income taxpayers, are going to have fewer deductions and exemptions," Romney replied. "Those numbers are going to come down. Otherwise they'd get a tax break. And I want to make sure people understand, despite what the Democrats said at their convention, I am not reducing taxes on high income taxpayers."
Ryan said it was a deliberate decision to articulate a "framework" and then hash out the details with Congress after they were elected.
Despite their difficulties explaining Ryan's sequestration vote and Romney's budget, Romney's 30-minute "Meet the Press" debut and Ryan's appearances on "Face the Nation" and "This Week" seemed to have successfully deflected attention from the Democratic National Convention, and also from a morning interview with President Obama on "Face the Nation."
Obama didn't make much news, saying he still supported "compromise," and he drafted off Bill Clinton's "arithmetic" line from the former president's convention address.
"Governor Romney said he wouldn't take a deal with $10 of spending cuts for $1 of revenue increases," Obama said. "And the problem is the math, or the arithmetic, as President Clinton said, doesn't add up." (Clinton will be campaigning in Florida on Monday and Tuesday.)
Asked about Clinton's speech, Romney said, "He did stand out in contrast with the other speakers. I think he really did elevate the Democrat convention in a lot of ways. And frankly, the contrast may not have been as attractive as Barack Obama might have preferred if he were choosing who'd go before him and who'd go after."
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Ryan did offer a compromise for budget cuts to avoid sequestration. The problem is and has been that no politician on either side of the aise wants to be held responsible for cutting anything. Everyone in D.C. has a sacrad cow they want to protect and if they can't protect it then they want the ability to deny responsibility for cuts. The reason sequestration has not been avoided so far is that it allows for needed cuts without personal responsibility. The broad cuts are aimed at everything. This is hack and slash legislation, but to expect any of these people to do it in a deliberate way and take responsiblity is a pipe dream particularly during an election year when so much is at stake. There might be a chance following the election, but given the time restraints involved it is highly unlikely. When we have a government that is so deeply divided along partisan lines and philosophical lines work simply won't get done. Partisanship is not just a republican thing. During the first two years of Obama's presidency the House and Senate were controlled by the democrates. Nancy Pelosi and her giant mallot beat the republicans into the ground and Reid made sure they stayed there. Obama should have stepped in and corrected that approach by reminding them he had run on a platform of "doing things differently" and "working together", but he allowed these two people to poison the waters of bipartisanship to the point of no return. Bill Clinton worked with a republican house and Gingrich and yet through his leadership still managed to get real legislation passed and Reagan did the same with the democrates. A serious lack of hands on leadership from the White House during these last four years has brougjht government to its knees. What compromise could have been reached is now lost in the politics of mutual destruction and there is no leadership to stop it.