Ryan Plans To Update Roadmap
Robert Costa reports:
“I spend a lot of my time looking at these baselines, ” Ryan says. “Most people don’t know this stuff. Most people in Congress don’t understand just how quickly our fiscal situation has deteriorated. And now the Left thinks that you can keep raising taxes, as if there were no consequences to that.” To fight back, Ryan says Republicans need to focus on two things: “economic growth and reforming the structure of spending.” The debt, he warns, will continue to spiral out of control unless Congress “literally restructures the programs that are growing so fast.”
The way forward, Ryan continues, must include a robust platform founded upon “pro-growth tax policies, sound money, clear and transparent regulation, and government restraint.” Republicans, he says, “are unanimous on not raising tax rates and in getting our tax code more competitive internationally so that we can grow.”
Repealing Obamacare is another important, and popular, measure. “We should look at every option we have available to us to try to repeal and replace this law,” Ryan says. “This law cannot stand. It is a policy disaster and a fiscal explosion.” His plan of attack: “We will go at the funding angle from many different directions.”
An earmark moratorium — also left out of the pledge — is another area where Ryan promises to tangle. “Of course we are for an earmark moratorium,” he says. “That just goes without saying. You think, if we get the majority next year, that we are going to start turning earmarks on? Some people might think that, but they’re in for a rude awakening.”
In coming months, winning over new GOP members, and providing them with reams of economic data and an idea of the federal government’s long-term fiscal outlook, is high on Ryan’s to-do list. To help the cause, Ryan intends to pen version 3.0 of the “Roadmap” early next year. “What we need to do is quickly bring them up to speed,” he says. Some, of course, are already well-versed on the “Roadmap” and its principles. “Dozens” of House candidates, Ryan confides, have reached out to him to offer their support for his budget plan, which, for the moment, has only 13 co-sponsors. “Reinforcements are coming,” he assures us.
Still, such conversations, Ryan sighs, are often private, since Democrats have eagerly targeted the “Roadmap” and Ryan himself. Many Republicans are wary of backing Ryan’s ideas publicly. “Look, I get that,” he says. “I’ve experienced their demagoguery on entitlements. It’s like being hit by a two-by-four across the head.”
“Scaring seniors is apparently the past, present, and future of the Democratic party,” Ryan continues. “But they have created political paralysis. I’m fed up with it, and I’m not going to let it intimidate me. I’m going to go forward, put ideas out there, and get this debate moving one way or the other.” It’s a fight, he says, that he does “not intend to lose.”
Click here to read more.
