"Hey, I'm that Ryan guy"
by digby
Somebody's getting a very, very big head ...
Ryan, the House Budget Committee chairman, got a standing ovation from his colleagues during the meeting.
"Hey, I'm that Ryan guy," Ryan said at the start of his remarks at the meeting, according to a Republican aide.
Rep. Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.) told reporters after the meeting that Ryan told Obama "we're not going to make progress on reforming Medicare unless we cut through the demagoguery on the issue."
In reply, Obama "spelled out his differences and responded with the thought that if everyone would follow that, certainly he would," Goodlatte added. "Paul's point was that as president of the United States, he can take the lead in cutting through that and having a serious discussion."
Later, speaking to reporters, Ryan was asked if he had told Obama that he hadn't shown leadership on budget issues.
"That's not exactly what I said," he responded. "I said we've got to take on this debt and if we demagogue each other at the leadership level, then we're never going to take on our debt."
Ryan went on to say that Obama has "mischaracterized" his Medicare plan when talking publicly about it. So he said he explained to Obama how the plan works, in the hopes that "in the future he won't mischaracterize it."
I'm sure the president was very grateful for the correction from "that Ryan guy."
I can't help but note that the president is at least a little bit responsible for creating this monster --- he's the one who publicly characterized Ryan as a "serious guy." (I assume he didn't know that he was a juvenile Randroid at the time.) Now the monster is making demands. Of the president.
The other two members of the GOP mean Girls club had something to say as well:
"The president talked about a need for us to continue to -- quote-unquote -- invest. And to a lot of us that’s code for more government spending --something we can't afford right now," said Rep. Eric Cantor (R-Va.), the House majority leader.
Asked about the purpose of the meeting, House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) said: "It was an opportunity for our members to communicate directly with the president about our ideas about how to get the economy going again -- how to create jobs and solve the debt problem facing our country.
"I told the president one more time: This is the moment. This is the window of opportunity where we can deal with this on our terms. We can work together and solve this problem. We know what the problems are. Let’s not kick the can down the road one more time."
Yeah, whatever. They continue to conflate "creating jobs" with "fixing the deficit", (but so far it doesn't seem to be working.) Still, if there's one thing they can do it's stay on message until people get so sick of it they accept it just to shut them up.
Some Republicans were enthusiastic:
"What I heard from this president is he wanted to sit down and find real cuts now," Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) said after the meeting. "He said there needed to be entitlement reform. And we will work with him to those ends."
Let's keep our fingers crossed that this is just cynical GOP spin or that the president was just placating them with empty promises because with this economy, serious cutting is the last thing we should do.
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