U.S. Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Janesville) did not embrace a plan floated this week by Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), which would essentially allow President Barack Obama to raise the nation’s debt ceiling, while reserving the right for Congress to express its disapproval of the act.
"I’m still kind of scratching my head over that plan. It is a political strategy, it’s a fairly convoluted process he (McConnell) is talking about. It’s getting a fairly cool reception over here in the House. You know, we want to get some spending cuts. It’s not because we just want to cut spending for the sake of cutting spending, it’s because you have to cut spending if you want to avert a debt crisis,” Ryan said during an interview on WLS-AM 890 in Chicago.
In another interview on the CBS Early Show, Ryan said, “We need to get spending under control. Our position has been really simple – for every dollar of debt limit increase that the President is asking for, we should cut more than a dollars worth of spending, the whole goal being to get this debt under control. We have a debt crisis coming. It’s hitting not just our country, but other countries around the world. We want to get ahead of it. We don’t want to be raising taxes in this kind of economy. It’s a really ugly economy. We have a huge tax increase scheduled to start hitting this economy in a year and a half. We don’t want to add to that burden… More to the point though, we need to get spending under control because the debt right now is not just a threat to our children and grandchildren, but it is a current threat to our economy today. It’s putting a huge shadow over our economy today making it harder for businesses to create jobs.”
– BizTimes Milwaukee
