Paul Ryan: Obama Doesn’t Think ‘We Actually have a Fiscal Crisis’

Sunday, 27 Jan 2013 11:19 AM

By Amy Woods






Former Republican vice-presidential candidate Paul Ryan said Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press” the country is headed for a debt crisis unless President Barack Obama reins in spending.

The House Budget Committee chairman, displaying a green, blue and red chart titled “Spending is the Problem,” said Obama will damage the economy if a path to balance the budget isn’t followed.

“They want Americans to pay more so Washington can spend more,” Ryan said. “That’s not going to help the economy, and that is not going to close the gap and balance the budget.”

Appearing in his first live television interview since the election, Ryan said the president appears to be on a political conquest.

“My concern is the president may be more focused on political ends . . . versus actually moving to the middle,” he said. “He’s not looking to moderate. He’s not looking to move to the middle. He’s looking to go farther to the left, and he wants to fight us every step of the way politically.”

“I don’t think that the president thinks we actually have a fiscal crisis,” Ryan continued. “If we keep going down this path, we will have a debt crisis. It’s not an ‘if’ question, it’s a ‘when’ question. This isn’t a Republican or Democrat thing, it’s a math thing.”

He chided the president for asking for more tax increases on top of the ones granted under Obamacare and others that kicked in at the beginning of the year.

“We’ve already done the revenue bit, and if you keep raising revenues, you’re not going to get decent tax reform,” Ryan said. “If you keep chasing higher spending with higher revenues, as they're calling for, you’re going to actually hurt economic growth. You’ll never catch up. You’ll shut down the economy, and you won’t actually get the budget balanced.”

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