Paul Ryan: Need to Lift Debt Burden To Get Economy Back on Track

Congressman, good morning. Thanks for your time today. What will you tell the president today at the White House? Congressman Ryan: Well we want to tell him how serious we are about getting this debt and deficit under control and getting this economy growing. These things are related. Big deficits mean more tax increases tomorrow. We have a debt crisis coming, we want to preempt the debt crisis and we want to get serious about our fiscal situation. In order to do that - if you want to create jobs you've got to get the fiscal situation under control. So it's really about cutting spending, balancing the budget, getting the debt on the right path, and getting job creation, and those are the things that we are talking about. Bill Hemmer: That whole idea about cutting spending, it appears to me that everybody has a number, and the numbers are in the trillions. When it comes to cutting spending, what is your number? Congressman Ryan: Well what we say is that for every dollar that the President wants to raise the debt limit we need to cut more than a dollar in spending. It's really simple. So if he wants $2 trillion in debt limit increase then we've got to cut more than 2 trillion in spending. We've already offered a budget to cut $6.2 trillion in spending so we've shown the President plenty of areas in the government where we can cut spending. Bill Hemmer: Alright so this debt ceiling now went up in flames last night. I mean the vote was overwhelming. It was 97 yes, 319 no, 82 Democrats voted with Republicans on a no vote. The critics are saying that it was just political theater, was it? Congressman Ryan: The President and the Treasury Secretary had asked us for a clean debt limit increases and we kept telling them you don't have the votes for that, that's not going to happen. But they kept asking us so we said 'okay fine,' and we'll bring it to the floor, and we'll show you that you don't have the votes for this even among people in your own party for a clean level debt limit increase. Bill Hemmer: So if you take that vote to the White House today. How do work that into your argument then? Congressman Ryan: We say look, your policy wont fly, we just proved this, lets get back and go after spending, spending is the cause of our problems, spending is threatening our economy. Let's deal with real spending. So for every dollar you want to raise the debt, we've got to cut more than a dollar worth of spending to get this debt on a sound trajectory because the debt is the biggest threat to our economy and we need to get it under control. You've got to cut spending to get the situation under control, its hurting our economy, its propping up interest rates in the future and taxes rates and that puts a chilling effect on job creation and we want to get this situation under control. Bill Hemmer: Okay I want to talk about Medicare right now. Your plan has been hammered by the other side even though your plan is set up in a way where anyone age 55 and older is not affected. Why are points like that being lost in this public debate? Congressman Ryan: Points like this are being lost because millions of dollars of negative ads are being run to try to scare seniors and try to confuse seniors. You know the irony of this bill is with all of this "mediscare" Democrats are running - its Obama Care itself that ends Medicare as we know it. Obama Care takes a half trillion dollars from Medicare not to try to make it more solvent, but to spend on its other government program, Obama Care, and then it creates a new 15 panel board of unelected, unaccountable bureaucrats starting next year to price control and ration Medicare for current seniors. We stop the raid, we stop the rationing, and we preserve the benefit for anyone above 55. But in order to do that and make its promise that has been made for the retirees you have to reform it for our generation, your generation, my generation so that we can have a program when we retire. And the way in which we propose to reform it is to have a system that works like the one I have as a Congressmen, as federal employees. Bill Hemmer: Are your colleagues still with you on this? Congressman Ryan: Yes, absolutely. I'm very confident of that. Bill Hemmer: Or are some of them getting cold feet? Congressman Ryan: No that is a media narrative. Not only are members confident in moving forward, we know that this is essential to saving Medicare, getting the debt under control, keeping the promise to current seniors, and stopping the damage Obama Care does to Medicare, and getting jobs created. We have to get this debt under control to get jobs. We don't think that we should be messing with current seniors' Medicare. So we don't do this. Why we are so confident is because we believe that the truth will eventually get out. The facts are clear.