Ryan revealed his constitutional ignorance on Meet the Press in his discussion on the Democratic-controlled parts of the federal government. “The President and his party have been in charge of Washington during this time. They have not budgeted for four years,” he declared. Of course, the president has put out a budget plan, and does every year. President Obama’s 2013 budget plan makes no pretense of ever bringing the federal budget into balance. More importantly, the president and his party are not “in charge” of spending in Washington, and haven’t been since they lost control of the U.S. House of Representatives in the 2010 elections. The Republican-controlled House has an absolute stop on any new spending, which means that the trillion-dollar deficits for the past two years have been approved by Republicans as well as Democrats.
Former Republican vice presidential nominee and Congressman Paul Ryan told NBC’s Meet the Press January 27 that the Republican ideas for spending cuts on social welfare programs would have increased the Food Stamp program by 260 percent over a decade, instead of the Democrats’ 270 percent. Ryan has nevertheless been reliably touted by the mainstream media as a solid conservative and fiscal hawk.
Meet the Press host David Gregory pressed Ryan — who currently serves as the U.S. House of Representatives Budget Committee chairman — for an example of spending cuts he’d make that would stop the “takers” in society. Ryan said during the presidential campaign that America risked becoming a nation of “makers” who work and “takers” dependent upon government assistance. “Food Stamps, for example,” Ryan replied, “if our reforms went through, they would have grown by 260 percent over the last decade instead of 270 percent. So when you call such reforms ‘savage,’ that, I think, does a disservice to the quality of debate we need to have.”
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