Soon-to-be House budget chair Paul Ryan said Tuesday that some of the shots that fellow conservatives are taking at the bipartisan tax deal are motivated by politics, not policy. “A lot of people are making these political arguments, which are, ‘What is the proper political chess move against Obama?’ And that is not the way we should be thinking right now when it comes to jobs and economy,” Ryan said in an interview Tuesday.
Ryan, the Janesville congressman, supports the tax deal, saying that without it, the Bush tax cuts would lapse, taxes would go up, and “that’s going to harm the people I represent.”
The package has come under fire from the left for including GOP priorities such as an extension of the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy and favorable treatment of the tax on large estates.
But it has also come under fire from the right for generating more borrowing and for extending unemployment benefits without paying for them. Some Republicans have complained that the plan is a re-election aid for Obama because it borrows money to provide short-term stimulus to the economy.
Likely GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney came out against the tax deal in an op-ed for USA Today.
Asked about Romney’s opposition, Ryan said:
“I think presidential aspirants will try to out-conservative each other for their own purposes.”
As for complaints by some conservatives that Republicans should have gotten more concessions from Obama, Ryan said he doesn’t like some parts of the deal, but:
“What are you going to get in a divided-government situation?”
Ryan said he disputed the argument that conservative columnist Charles Krauthammer recently made that Obama took Republicans to the cleaners. Krauthammer called the package the “swindle of the year.”
Said Ryan:
“I would argue we won the exchange. The president caved on his signature objection (to extending Bush tax cuts for the highest earners) and we got all the tax rates extended, which was our primary objective … All in all, it’s better than not doing anything. It’s better than 50-50. The majority of these policies are good policies.”
