ABC News Calls Out Paul Ryan For Hypocrisy Over Looming Budget Cuts
By Igor Volsky on Feb 17, 2013 at 11:02 am
ABC News’ Jonathan Karl confronted Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) over his past support for the sequester, just as the one-time GOP vice presidential candidate sought to blame President Obama for the automatic across-the-board cuts scheduled to go into effect on March 1.
During an appearance on This Week, Ryan argued that President Obama “proposed the sequester” and hasn’t “put any details out there” to offset it. “We are here because the president back in the last session of Congress refused to cut spending in any place and therefore we wound up with the sequester,” Ryan insisted. But Ryan hasn’t always opposed the automatic cuts. As Karl pointed out, when Congress was debating the Budget Control Act in August of 2011, Ryan supported the framework and urged his fellow Republicans to vote for the sequester:
KARL: Congressman, I’ve heard you Republicans for a long time. This was the president’s idea on and on and on but let’s look at your own words. What you said right after the law putting this in place was passed in August of 2011. These are your words. You said “what conservatives like me have been fighting for for years are statutory caps on spending, literally legal caps in law that says government agencies cannot spend over a set amount of money and if they breach that amount across the board sequester comes in to cut that spending. You can’t turn it out without a supermajority. We got that into law.” Now, it sounds to me there like if you weren’t taking credit for the idea of the sequester, you were certainly suggesting it was a good idea.
RYAN: So those are the budget caps on discretionary spending. Those occurred. We want those. Everybody wants budget caps. The sequester that we’re talking about now is backing up the super committee. Remember the Super Committee in addition to those caps was supposed to come up with 1.2 trillion in savings. The Republicans on the super committee offered even higher revenues in exchange for spending cuts as part of that. It was rejected by the president and the Democrats. So no resolution occurred and therefore the sequester is occurring.
Watch it:
-snip-
read more:
http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2013/02/17/1604991/abc-news-calls-out-paul-ryan-on-hypocrisy-over-looming-budget-cuts/
= new reply since forum marked as read
1. He participated in the effort to hold the debt ceiling "hostage" in 2011 that led to the eventual passage of the BCA. IMHO we wouldn't even be talking about a "sequester" if they had just raised the debt ceiling without demanding concessions for doing so.
2. He voted for the BCA as did most Republicans at the time. Those whom didn't refused largely b/c it didn't go FAR ENOUGH
3. The "Super Committee" went nowhere, largely b/c Republicans refused to agree to any new revenues
4. President Obama has put forward several proposals to cut spending but all of them were reflexively rejected by Republicans
5. The sequester was never really meant to happen in the first place. It was meant to be a leverage tool
6. Boehner is not working on any new proposals to eliminate/replace the sequester and has now abdicated his leadership role to the Senate
7. The sequester could easily be eliminated with a quick bill but see #6
Republicans have now basically decided to let the sequester happen and bank on President Obama and Democrats bearing the brunt of the fallout thereof, hence all of the current spin and maneuvering. 
