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Senior Romney campaign adviser Ed Gillespie said Mitt Romney would draft and push his own budget plan if elected, working to rebuff Democratic attacks that said the presumptive GOP nominee had embraced the controversial budget proposal of his new running mate, Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.).
ON CNN’s “ State of the Union” Gillespie was asked by host Candy Crowley about a leaked internal campaign memo which reminds surrogates that Romney “applauds Paul Ryan for going in the right direction with his budget, and as president, he will be putting together his own plan for cutting the deficit and putting the budget on a path to balance.”
Gillespie said that Romney fully backed Ryan’s efforts on the budget, but was still the top of the ticket and would call the shots in his own administration.
“As Gov. Romney has made clear, if the Romney, I'm sorry, if the Ryan budget had come to his desk as president, he would have signed it, of course,” he said. “At the same time, it is the Romney/Ryan ticket, and as president, President Romney will be putting forward his own budget.”
Gillespie said that Romney would look closely at the Medicare reform proposal Ryan crafted with Democratic Sen. Ron Wyden (Ore.).
“The Wyden/Ryan plan, that is something that Gov. Romney agrees is an approach we need to take,” he said.
Democrats are making a push to tie Romney to Ryan’s budget plans which would cut $5 trillion and shift Medicare to a subsidized private insurance model, proposals the president’s campaign believes voters will reject.
An Obama campaign video accused Ryan of seeking to “raise taxes on the middle class and cut taxes for the wealthy” and “end Medicare as we know it.” The video said it was a plan “Romney endorses.”
And on Sunday, Obama campaign adviser David Axelrod described Ryan as a “right-wing ideologue” and said Romney shared his “extremist” views.
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