GOP’s Ryan: Obama entered ‘partisan mosh pit’ with deficit speech

House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) said President Obama descended into a “partisan mosh pit” with his deficit-reduction speech and accused him of delegating budget decisions to a “Biden commission” of lawmakers.

Ryan, speaking Thursday at an event sponsored by the conservative nonprofit e21, said Obama seriously damaged the chances for reaching a bipartisan deficit deal because of the tenor — and substance — of Wednesday’s remarks.

{mosads}The Republican said he had expected congressional Democrats, including House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.), to criticize his 2012 budget blueprint with what he characterized as false attacks.

“We didn’t expect it from the commander in chief,” said Ryan, who attended the speech at George Washington University at Obama’s invitation. “When the commander in chief brings himself down to level of the partisan mosh pit that we have been in, that we are in, it makes it more difficult to bring that kind of leadership.”

Still, the House budget chief said he still thinks a more limited deal can be made in exchange for House Republicans agreeing to raise the nation’s $14.3 trillion debt ceiling in a vote some time between May and July.

Ryan said he favors hard spending caps rather than the debt “trigger” Obama proposed. Negotiations over this issue are likely to be central in the coming weeks.

Obama has asked Vice President Joe Biden to convene talks over the budget with 16 lawmakers chosen by the leadership of both chambers. 

Ryan said the president’s message boiled down to “stick with me and I’ll give you security, you just have to give me more money. … Go with Republicans, it will be some Hobbesian state of nature.”

That line of attack is false, Ryan said, because his plan saves Medicare by reforming it. He said Obama has not proposed reforms that would do so and instead proposed rationing care.

Ryan said he had expected to build on the relationship Obama forged with House Republicans during negotiations for a 2011 spending deal to avert a government shutdown; he had anticipated the president might propose reforming Social Security now.

“The impression was we had an agreement on the CR, and we were going to build on that,” Ryan said.

Ryan said he attended the speech, along with Reps. Jeb Hensarling (R-Texas) and Dave Camp (R-Mich.), only to hear the “dramatic distortion” of the Republican budget.

“This wasn’t about building bridges,” he said, accusing Obama of using the bully pulpit to make a campaign speech.

“It’s as if his reelection is getting in the way of the next generation,” Ryan said, referring to younger Americans. “What the president did with his speech was fundamentally irresponsible.”

But while his hopes for Social Security reform are now dashed, Ryan said, he still thinks an agreement can be found to attach real spending caps to the raising of the debt ceiling.

“I think the debt limit is a must-pass. There is an opportunity there to get a down payment on a plan,” he said.

But the caps will have to differ greatly from the “debt fail-safe trigger” proposed by Obama this week, he said.

The Obama trigger would kick in if the national debt wasn’t in decline relative to GDP by 2014. By that measure, Obama’s 2012 budget would not violate the trigger.

Ryan said he wants the three levels of caps that are proposed in the House GOP’s 2012 budget: a discretionary spending cap, a total spending cap as a percentage of GDP, and a debt trigger that, unlike Obama’s, includes all aspects of government spending.

He characterized Obama’s trigger, which excludes 65 percent of spending, as nothing more than a guaranteed tax increase.