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Obama, Ryan to go another round in battle over federal budget
President Obama and Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) are poised to go another round in the battle of the budget.
The president will address Ryan’s 2103 budget plan in a speech on Tuesday morning, senior administration officials told The Hill, in what will be his first public remarks about the House-passed spending plan.
The Ryan budget cleared the House Thursday in a 228-191 party-line vote, setting up an election-year contrast with Democrats on spending and the debt. The budget would cut about $5 trillion more than the president’s 2013 proposal and would create a “premium support” option for future Medicare recipients.
The White House attacked the Ryan plan after the vote, saying in a statement that Republicans “banded together to shower millionaires and billionaires with a massive tax cut paid for by ending Medicare as we know it.”
Last year, the president rebuked the GOP budget in a speech at George Washington University. Ryan, the House Budget Committee Chairman, was among the lawmakers in the audience as Obama ripped his plan as being “less about reducing the deficit than it is about changing the basic social compact in America.”
After that speech, Ryan chastised the president for lowering himself to the “partisan mosh pit,” and the speech put the White House and House Republicans on a collision course in the fights over the budget and the debt ceiling.
No Democrats backed the new Ryan budget in the vote last week, arguing it offers disproportionate tax breaks to corporations and the wealthy, cuts social safety nets, and changes the Medicare program for the worse.
The GOP budget is not expected to pass the Democratic-controlled Senate, but in passing the measure, House Republicans have drawn what Ryan called a “crystal clear” distinction with the Democrats about where to take the country.
Democrats want to turn this year's Ryan budget into an election-year liability for the GOP, and are already buying ads to attack vulnerable Republicans who voted for it. They also hope to use it against Mitt Romney, Obama's likely opponent in the fall, who has endorsed it.
After the budget plan passed last week, Ryan said it would be an asset to the GOP’s presidential nominee because it shows what the party would do with control of Congress and the White House.
"People deserve to be spoken to like adults," Ryan sad.
The Republican budget aims to reduce the federal deficit almost entirely through spending cuts, while Democrats say there needs to be a “balanced approach” of spending cuts and tax increases.
Erik Wasson contributed.
This story was last updated at 3:02 p.m.
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