"Recognizing Paul Ryan’s ‘tell’ when he is trying to avoid something" By Matt Miller at WP

Recognizing Paul Ryan’s ‘tell’ when he is trying to avoid something

By Matt Miller at WP

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/matt-miller-recognizing-paul-ryans-tell-when-he-is-trying-to-avoid-something/2012/08/16/f70201fa-e7df-11e1-8487-64e4b2a79ba8_story.html

"SNIP...............................................

Okay, you’re back. Hume started with a simple question: “The budget plan that you’re now supporting would get to balance when?”

Now, for context, recall that in the last era of epic budget smackdowns, 1995 and 1996, Newt Gingrich would have had an equally simple answer: in seven years. President Bill Clinton’s failure to embrace the goal of a balanced budget at all was a major political liability that Clinton finally (and shrewdly) erased when he came out with his own 10-year plan in mid-1995. (It’s worth underscoring that a 10-year path to balance was viewed then as the outer limit of credibility — pledging to end the red ink any further than a decade out didn’t pass the laugh test.)

Since Ryan knows that Romney’s bare sketch of a plan never reaches balance, he stumbles momentarily before trying to move the conversation to his comfortable talking points about Romney’s goal of reducing spending to historic norms as a share of gross domestic product.

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Ryan then adds that “the plan that we’ve offered in the House balances the budget.” But he immediately stops short of saying when — you see his eyes dart to the right at that moment, his next tell — because that would mean admitting it reaches balance in the 2030s. And Ryan wants to get through this interview without saying that, because he knows it doesn’t sound good. After all, what kind of “fiscal conservative” has a 25-year plan to balance the budget? Instead, in a practiced maneuver signaled by his telltale sideways glance, he moves to a contrast with President Obama, who he says has never offered a budget that ever reaches balance.

...............................................SNIP"