First off – great job to Norah O’Donnell for a great interview and basically calling bullshit on Paul Ryan’s lies. This is really embarrassing; he claims to tell people the hard truths but he can’t even own up to his own voting record. Republicans really wanted to push Obama to the brink and actually got our credit rating pushed down to AA due to their political brinkmanship. They negotiated and voted on a deal to force budget cuts with half coming from defense and half coming from Medicare providers and other areas should Democrats and Republicans be unable to come to terms on reducing the deficit by $1.2 trillion over 10 years.
Paul Ryan voted for that bill. Period. That bill is what has led us to this point and it wouldn’t have happened if conservatives were willing to negotiate in good faith and look at raising taxes on the rich. If they would – defense companies wouldn’t be worrying about cutting back.
Courtesy of Think Progress HERE:
O’DONNELL: Now you’re criticizing the President for those same defense cuts you’re voting for and called a victory.
RYAN: No, no — I have to correct on you this, Norah. I voted for a mechanism that says the sequester will occur if we don’t cut $1.2 trillion in government. … We can get into this nomenclature; I voted for the Budget Control Act. But the Obama Administration proposed $478 billion in defense cuts. We don’t agree with that, our budget rejected that, and then on top of that is another $500 billion in defense cuts in the sequester.
O’DONNELL: Right. A trillion dollars in defense spending, and you voted for it!
RYAN: No, Norah. I voted for the Budget Control Act.
O’DONNELL: That included defense spending!
RYAN: Norah, you’re mistaken.
As the NY times shows HERE and Paul Ryan himself acknowledges – he voted for the Budget Control Act of 2011.
On the bill that Paul Ryan acknowledges voting for but disavowing his responsibility from … the sequestration starts on PAGE TWO. You can find that bill HERE. And it says it very, very clearly …
‘‘SEC. 251A. ENFORCEMENT OF BUDGET GOAL.
‘‘Unless a joint committee bill achieving an amount greater than $1,200,000,000,000 in deficit reduction as provided in section 401(b)(3)(B)(i)(II) of the Budget Control Act of 2011 is enacted by January 15, 2012, the discretionary spending limits listed in section 251(c) shall be revised, and discretionary appropriations and direct spending shall be reduced, as follows:‘‘(A) For fiscal year 2013— ‘‘(i) for the security category, $546,000,000,000 in budget authority; and ‘‘(ii) for the nonsecurity category, $501,000,000,000 in budget authority.
And then it shows the cuts year by year until they agree. So – in this case … $546 billion would need to be cut from defense over 10 years starting in 2013 if Republicans and Democrats are able to reduce the deficit through some mixture of tax increases and spending cuts in the amount of $1.2 trillion over 10 years. This would not be the law if Paul Ryan and other conservatives who controlled the House chose to vote against it. But they did and now they need to own it. You can read more about the looming fiscal cliff and the sequestration cuts set to take effect HERE. Mitt Romney said on Meet the Press that Republicans shouldn’t have voted for it HERE.
At the core of this – Republicans buoyed by the political climate and the conservative crazies in their party thought that the defense cuts would never happen and that it would just be one more issue to attack President Obama for. Well – President Obama seems content to hold Republicans up against the wall between their defense company lobbyists pushing for a deal (who have great sway) and their anti-tax lobbyists/donors who also have great sway. In short – Republicans won’t get a deal unless they raise taxes and this means they’re getting yelled at by both sides of lobbyists who really tell conservatives how to vote in the first place.
I don’t believe President Obama is particularly enthusiastic about defense cuts … I do think it would be a win for the left wing in his party if it happened and I think some are happy to see it happen. But regardless – Obama isn’t going to let Republicans off the hook. He’s making them sweat and now guys like Paul Ryan have to own up to their vote and they’re getting grilled in prime time.
