Monday, February 1, 2010
10:23 AM
Ryan asks Obama for more spending limits, line-item veto support
U.S. Rep. Paul Ryan was featured prominently in Friday's GOP House Issues Conference in Baltimore, in which Republican members asked policy questions of President Obama.
Ryan, of Janesville, was the second GOP member to ask a question of the president. After introducing his family, Ryan asked for additional, quicker spending constraints than the ones Obama proposed in his State of the Union address last week.
"The spending bills that you've signed into law, the domestic discretionary spending has been increased by 84 percent. You now want to freeze spending at this elevated beginning next year," Ryan said. "This means that total spending in your budget would grow at 3/100ths of 1 percent less than otherwise. I would simply submit that we could do more and start now."
Obama responded that most of those spending increases "were not as a consequence of policies that we initiated but instead were built in as a consequence of the automatic stabilizers that kick in because of this enormous recession." He added that implementing additional cuts before the next fiscal year could damage the still-vulnerable economy.
Ryan also asked the president to consider his proposal to implement a line-item veto for federal spending measures -- a bill co-authored by Dem U.S. Sen. Russ Feingold of Middleton. Obama responded, "I think there's not a President out there that wouldn't love to have it. And I think that this is an area where we can have a serious conversation."
Obama also referenced a Ryan proposal to reform Medicare to point out the "political vulnerability" of tinkering with entitlement programs.
"If the main question is going to be what do we do about Medicare costs, any proposal that Paul makes will be painted, factually, from the perspective of those who disagree with it, as cutting benefits over the long term," Obama said.
The president also used Ryan as an example of the deteriorating political discourse in Washington.
"We've got to be careful about what we say about each other sometimes, because it boxes us in in ways that makes it difficult for us to work together, because our constituents start believing us," Obama said. "So just a tone of civility instead of slash and burn would be helpful. The problem we have sometimes is a media that responds only to slash-and-burn-style politics. You don't get a lot of credit if I say, 'You know, I think Paul Ryan is a pretty sincere guy and has a beautiful family.' Nobody is going to run that in the newspapers."
"And by the way, in case he's going to get a Republican challenge, I didn't mean it," Obama quipped. "Don't want to hurt you, man."
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