Whatâs
Wrong Today:
Enjoy
todayâs ride on the Bandwagon of Wrongâ˘.
From
Politico: House Budget Committee Chairman
Paul Ryan (R-WI) said on âFox News Sundayâ that Senate and House Republicans
will meet up at their party’s retreats in the New Year to figure out what Republicans can extract from Democrats in return for raising
the debt ceiling next year:
as a caucus â along with our Senate counterparts â are going to meet and
discuss what it is weâre going to want out of the debt limit…We donât want [just]
nothing out of this debt limit. Weâre going to decide what it is weâre going to
accomplish out of this debt limit fight
Jared Bernstein on Ryanâs hope:
(emphasis by the Wrongologist)
livinâ but you donât get something
special for just doing your job. Once I arrive at work, I donât knock
on my bossâs door and ask for a bonus because I showed up. Thatâs the
least part of my job. Just like if youâre a member of Congress, not
defaulting on the national debt is the least part of your job
This
goes beyond normal Republican politics. Ryan is trying to bring the US
government to its knees in an early preview of his 2016 presidential campaign. We
get it; he wants something out of the deal so he will look good to the extreme right
wing of the right-wing Republican Party. And right there is what’s wrong with Republicans
today: They passed a 2-year budget that authorized this spending. Now they will
try to extract concessions in order to fund the spending that they just authorized.
That’s
insanity.
From
Digby: Senate Budget Committee chair Sen.
Patty Murray, (D- WA), and her House counterpart, Rep. Paul Ryan, (R- WI),
spoke on Meet the Press on Sunday
about the budget agreement which they announced last week. They said the accord
showed that serious legislating is still possible even when the two parties
appear to be deeply divided on matters of principle. Murray:
a step forward that shows that there can be other breakthroughs and compromise
if you take the time to know somebody, know what their passions are and how you
can work together
Ryan:
spent a lot of time just getting to know each other, talking, understanding
each otherâs principles and we basically learned that if we require the other
to violate a core principle, weâre going to get nowhere and weâll just keep
gridlock
Ryan
said that in the first quarter of 2014, the House Ways and Means Committee
would:
advancing tax reform legislation because we think thatâs a key ingredient to
getting people back to work, to increasing take-home pay, to growing this
economy
So,
could tax reform be what Ryan is angling for if he plans to hold the Debt
Ceiling increase hostage? He spent some time on Meet the Press kissing up to
the groups that were against his budget deal, the Club for Growth, Heritage
Action and Americans for Prosperity, saying: (emphasis by the Wrongologist)
think these are very important elements of our conservative family…I think
these taxpayer groups are indispensable
to keeping taxpayer interest accounted for, keeping people accountable…And
we sometimes have difference of opinions on tactics, [but] We all believe the
same thing with respect to our ultimate goals
And the budget deal couldn’t have worked out better from Ryanâs perspective. The discretionary
budget that the Democrats agreed with was far less than what Ryan had originally
proposed:
Ryan had wanted a budget of $1.095
billion, and he âsettled â for a budget of $967 billion. Republicans should
support a budget that was $128 billion
LESS than they wanted originally.
Now,
Patty Murray hopes to move on to tax reform and increasing entitlements. Is she
trying single-handedly to make Mr. Ryan the Republican nominee in 2016?
Wait!
Come to think of it, that may be a brilliant move…Ryan will be the new and improved Romney model for Republicans. More
conservative! More truthy!
Be
assured, there will be no tax increases under Paul Ryanâs watch between here
and 2016. And since the new budget reduces the deficit only by 1/3 of one percent over the next two years, we will revisit
the fight over the debt ceiling a few more times before the next presidential
election.
So the new budget bi-partisanship is only a photo-op for Paul Ryan. He plans to hold the Debt Ceiling hostage to yet another Republican effort to extract tax reductions and/or spending cuts from the Democrats.
It shouldn’t take any more “getting to know you” meetings by Ms. Murray to understand that Mr. Ryan’s passion is politics, and he has no plan to be a bi-partisan partner in solving low economic growth, stagnating wages for the middle class, or a balanced deficit reduction plan.
