party. here s what he writes. obama is arguing that misfortune can strike americans in all forms. a sdabt, a storm, illness, or merely outliving our savings. ryan s budget imposes savage cuts to food stamps, children s health insurance, and other mitigations of suffering for the least fortunate. and ryan also voted against relief for victims of hurricane sandy. by ryan s definition, if the government is rebuilding your destroyed home, you re a taker too. look, this is a straw man argument. the president said earlier that we had care of the elderly and feeding poor children. when he sets up these straw men, to affix views to add ver sears that they don t have, to win the argument by default, it s not an honest debate. we want to have a safety net. a safety net that s there for the vulnerable, poor, for people who cannot help themselves. but we don t want to have a culture in this country that encouraging more dependency that saps and drains people of their ability to make the most of
he s not really for that. he says so, but he has yet to put out a vision or agreement to make good on these promises. we hear the rhetoric but never see the results. and more importantly, businesses know we have to close this deficit. businesses know we can t keep spending money we just don t have. businesses budget. washington hasn t had a budget for four years. the president and his party have been in charge of washington during this time. they have not budgeted for four years. and businesses know that you can t operate an enterprise, let alone the federal government, without budgeting. let me have you respond to this other argument about entitlements, about the role of government. and the president really launched it as part of his inaugural address when he said this. we recognize that no matter how responsibly we live our lives, any one of us, at any time, may face a job loss or a sudden illness or a home swept away in a terrible storm. the commitments we make to each other
all of the comments lead me to believe that he s thinking more of a political conquest than political compromise. and that s my concern. and this is why we re going to have to have a big debate this spring on how to balance the budget. about how to save us from a debt crisis. about how to grow the economy. and i think there are issues, like immigration reform, where there are democrats and republicans who want to come together to fix the problem. the question is will the president frustrate that or facilitate that. and i don t know the answer to that question. it was interesting on the day of the inauguration, brian williams and others and i were talking, and we noticed some video during the luncheon, and one of the things that caught our eye was a great moment here. you have your back to us. but there you are with secretary clinton and president clinton. and that s just one of those moments where you say, gosh, what were they talking about? any advice there? talking about personal
here for his first live interview since the election. chairman, welcome back to meat meet. great to be back with you. let s talk about this top priority of the budget battle. it will really mark the beginning of the president s second term. the debt ceiling has been raised, at least temporarily, but there are still big decisions to be made. you specifically said in the last few days that your priority is to make a big down payment on the debt. a debt crisis that you see in this country. that s right. what do you specifically require? what s the priority? what has the president got to do in your point of view? i ll just explain what the speaker said when we passed that bill. our goal is to get cuts and reforms that put us on a path to balancing the budget in a decade. we think the senate ought to offer a budget. they haven t passed a budget in four years, even though we have a law that says we need a budget every year. we haven t seen any solutions offered by the president on
no, we are not. even if it s from tax reform? if you keep raising revenues, you re not going to get different tax reform. i know you didn t want a chart, but i m kind of a chart guy. this dream line shows you the historic taxes. the red line is tax increases. the red line, where spending is going. spending is the problem. revenues aren t the problem. if you keep chasing higher spending with higher revenues as they re calling for, you re going to hurt economic growth. you ll never catch up. you ll shut down the economy and you won t get the budget down. when you were campaigning in virginia, a state you wanted to carry but didn t, you said, look, these sequestration cuts, these automatic spending cuts that are put in place because republicans and democrats can t agree, so you have to have this sword that comes down, you said we re not going to let those happen. those will not happen, those automatic spending cuts. well, now we have a new deadline coming up in a couple of months th