Keith Hennessey:
Today’s Washington Post contains an election-season hatchet job on Paul Ryan by reporter Lori Montgomery, “Amid debt crisis, Paul Ryan sat on the sidelines.” I would expect a story like this on the Newsweek or Huffington Post sites, but the Post purports to be nonpartisan and balanced.
Ms. Montgomery’s story offers two premises:
- Mr. Ryan “sat on the sidelines” rather than act, and in doing so he failed to behave as a responsible legislator;
- He would rather espouse conservative principles than engage in the messy business of bipartisan compromise.
Here is Ms. Montgomery’s core assertion:
But knowledge is not action. Over the past two years, as others labored to bring Democrats and Republicans together to tackle the nation’s $16 trillion debt, Ryan sat on the sidelines, glumly predicting their efforts were doomed to fail because they strayed too far from his own low-tax, small-government vision.
Here is her evidence:
- Ryan voted against the Bowles-Simpson recommendations;
- Through much of 2011, he insisted publicly that a “grand bargain” on the budget was impossible; and
- He “asked Boehner not to name him to the congressional ‘supercommittee’ that took a final stab at bipartisan compromise last fall.”
- He voted against a measure to dial back unemployment benefits and extend a temporary payroll tax holiday.
Not mentioned
She writes that Mr. Ryan “did draft a blueprint for wiping out deficits by 2040,” but she fails to mention that he passed that plan through the House. She does not report that Mr. Ryan’s staff were providing behind-the-scenes technical assistance to Speaker Boehner during the Grand Bargain negotiation. She doesn’t report that Mr. Ryan loaned his budget committee staff director to Mr. Hensarling on the super committee. She doesn’t mention that Mr. Ryan’s prediction that the super committee would fail came true, or that the Obama White House was AWOL during the super committee negotiations. She doesn’t mention that he voted for the Budget Control At of 2011, for the tax rate extensions at the end of 2010, and for the FY 2012 Omnibus Appropriations Act, three major bipartisan fiscal laws that deeply split House Republicans.
Action
Did Chairman Ryan sit on the sidelines over the past two years? On April 15, 2011, the House passed the FY 2012 budget resolution. On March 29, 2012, the House passed the FY 2013 budget resolution. Both were written by Mr. Ryan, passed by him out of his Budget Committee, and he managed the floor debate for each.
It is true that Mr. Ryan never reached a bipartisan conference agreement on either of his two budget resolutions, but that’s because the Senate never did its work. Mr. Ryan’s Senate counterpart, Senate Budget Committee Chairman Kent Conrad (D), did not pass a Senate budget resolution for any of the last three years. It is unfair to criticize Mr. Ryan for failing to reach a bipartisan compromise when his Democratic counterpart didn’t even show up or do his job.
