Paul Ryan's office denies report that he wasn't invited to Obama speech

House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) was invited by the White House to attend President Obama's combative speech on the deficit last April, Ryan's office said Monday, contradicting a report that he showed up unannounced.

On Monday, The New York Times reported that the White House did not know that Ryan planned to attend the speech at George Washington University, where Obama delivered a blistering rebuke of the House GOP's 2012 budget plan.

Before the speech began, according to the Times, then-White House Chief of Staff William Daley “spied an unexpected guest in the audience: Rep. Paul D. Ryan, the Republican chairman of the House Budget Committee, whose budget plan Mr. Obama was about to shred.”

The story says Daley told an aide to try to warn Obama and appears to imply that Obama might have toned down his rhetoric had he known Ryan was in the audience.

The problem with this account, Ryan’s office says, is that the White House invited Ryan to the speech.

"Chairman Ryan was invited by the White House. Ryan RSVP’d in the affirmative to the White House, and he was given his seating assignment by the White House," spokesman Conor Sweeney said.

"Of far greater concern is the President’s failure to lead when it comes to tackling our nation’s most pressing fiscal and economic challenges.  President Obama has offered four unserious budgets with serious consequences for families, seniors and the next generation.  The President’s disappointing approach to the debt-fueled economic crisis before us was captured well by Secretary Geithner at the House Budget Committee earlier this month, when he admitted: 'We’re not saying we have a definitive solution…what we’re saying is we don’t like yours,'" he added.

The speech is seen as a turning point that put Obama and House Republicans on a collision course in last year's fights over the budget and debt ceiling.

Obama has faced criticism from centrists in his own party for condemning Ryan’s budget with Ryan in the audience.