Romney seeks distance from Ryan’s budget plans

Repub­li­can pres­i­den­tial can­di­date Mitt Rom­ney, left, and his vice pres­i­den­tial run­ning mate Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis., arrive at a cam­paign rally Sun­day, in Mooresville, N.C. at the NASCAR Tech­ni­cal Insti­tute. (AP Photo/Jason E. Miczek)

KASIE HUNT, KEN THOMAS

Asso­ci­ated Press

HIGH POINT, N.C. — In Paul Ryan’s high-energy debut as Repub­li­can vice pres­i­den­tial can­di­date, Mitt Rom­ney made one thing clear: His ideas rule, not his run­ning mate’s. “I have my bud­get plan,” he said, “And that’s the bud­get plan we’re going to run on.”

Rom­ney put gen­tle but unmis­tak­able dis­tance between his agenda and Ryan’s hot-potato bud­get pro­pos­als on Sun­day as the new team soaked up excite­ment from par­ti­sans in North Car­olina and Ryan’s home state of Wisconsin.

He walked a care­ful line as he cam­paigned with Ryan by his side in North Car­olina, sin­gling out his run­ning mate’s work “to make sure we can save Medicare.” But the pres­i­den­tial can­di­date never said whether he embraced Ryan’s aus­tere plan him­self, and he addressed the mat­ter more directly in a “60 Min­utes” inter­view, with Ryan still with him, Sun­day night.

Democ­rats weren’t about to let them off that hook.

Pres­i­dent Barack Obama, attend­ing cam­paign fundrais­ers Sun­day in Chicago, tagged Ryan as the “ide­o­log­i­cal leader” of the Repub­li­can Party.

“He is a decent man, he is a fam­ily man, he is an artic­u­late spokesman for Gov. Romney’s vision but it is a vision that I fun­da­men­tally dis­agree with,” Obama said in his first pub­lic com­ments about Ryan’s selection.

Senior Obama adviser David Axel­rod and other aides spent Sun­day try­ing to brand Ryan’s bud­get “the Ryan-Romney plan.”

Dur­ing the Repub­li­can pri­mary, Rom­ney had called Ryan’s bud­get a “bold and excit­ing effort” that was “very much needed.”

Ryan pro­posed to reshape the long-standing enti­tle­ment by set­ting up a voucher-like sys­tem to let future retirees shop for pri­vate health cov­er­age or choose the tra­di­tional pro­gram — a plan that inde­pen­dent bud­get ana­lysts say would prob­a­bly mean smaller increases in ben­e­fits than cur­rent law would provide.

Rom­ney and Ryan, in their first joint tele­vi­sion inter­view Sun­day, were clearly mind­ful that some of Ryan’s pro­pos­als don’t sit well with key con­stituen­cies, among them seniors in crit­i­cal states like Florida and Ohio. Each man sought to reas­sure older vot­ers they wouldn’t take away their ben­e­fits, with Ryan say­ing his mother is “a Medicare senior in Florida” and Rom­ney vow­ing there would be “no changes” for seniors cur­rently count­ing on the pop­u­lar fed­eral program.

“In Amer­ica, the nature of this coun­try has been giv­ing peo­ple more free­dom, more choices,” Rom­ney said. “That’s how we make Medicare work down the road.”

Rom­ney praised his run­ning mate for his pol­icy depth and ana­lyt­i­cal skills and said if they should win the elec­tion, Ryan will surely be con­sulted in big deci­sions — “along with other indi­vid­u­als.” He added: “Obvi­ously I have to make the final call in impor­tant decisions.”

The pre­sump­tive pres­i­den­tial nom­i­nee said Ryan, “if it were nec­es­sary, could become pres­i­dent.” And Rom­ney extolled his run­ning mate’s Wash­ing­ton expe­ri­ence, despite hav­ing crit­i­cized pri­mary rivals Newt Gin­grich and Rick San­to­rum for their years in the nation’s capital.

Ryan said he planned to release two years of per­sonal tax returns to the pub­lic. The wealthy Rom­ney is also releas­ing two years of returns, despite pres­sure from Democ­rats and some Repub­li­cans to pro­vide more infor­ma­tion about how he man­ages his millions.

Romney’s selec­tion of Ryan has jolted the pres­i­den­tial con­test, until now one that had done lit­tle to draw the public’s atten­tion, and set the con­tours for the fall cam­paign: Rom­ney as a pro­po­nent of a friend­lier busi­ness cli­mate seek­ing to revi­tal­ize the econ­omy and rein in fed­eral spend­ing and Obama cast­ing him­self as a defender of middle-class fam­i­lies and fed­eral spend­ing on health care, retire­ment pen­sions and education.

The run­ning mate pick also shifted the cam­paign debate, at least tem­porar­ily, to the press­ing eco­nomic chal­lenges fac­ing the coun­try — a debate both Rom­ney and Obama have said they wanted to have even as the dia­logue had spi­raled into nasty, per­sonal attacks. Sun­day was a marked depar­ture from the pre­vi­ous week, when the race for the White House devolved into name-calling and accu­sa­tions of lying from both campaigns.

Three months from Elec­tion Day, polls find Obama with a nar­row lead over Rom­ney, though the race remains tight in key bat­tle­ground states. And while Ryan’s selec­tion raised the role of gov­ern­ment spend­ing and Medicare in the elec­tion, the fun­da­men­tals of the cam­paign remained unchanged: a race defined by a weak econ­omy and high unem­ploy­ment, mea­sured most recently at 8.3 per­cent in July.

Rom­ney, seek­ing to pull his cam­paign out of a sum­mer slump, appeared to rel­ish in cam­paign­ing along­side the youth­ful and ener­getic Ryan.

“This is Day Two for me,” a glee­ful Rom­ney told a cam­paign rally in Moor­se­ville, N.C. “This is Day Two on our come­back tour to get Amer­ica strong again, to rebuild the promise of Amer­ica.” He meant a come­back for the coun­try, but that could apply as well to his campaign.

The duo blitzed through North Car­olina — a com­pet­i­tive bat­tle­ground state in the Novem­ber elec­tion — as part of a mul­ti­state bus tour. The pair ended the day in Wauke­sha, Wis., with a homecoming-themed event for Ryan, who was in tears as he took the stage.

Rom­ney, embold­ened by the enthu­si­as­tic crowds that greeted the pair Sun­day, wrapped up a day of cam­paign­ing with a sharp shot at the tone of Obama’s cam­paign. “Mr. Pres­i­dent, take your cam­paign out of the gut­ter,” he said.

Rom­ney then planned to head to Florida and Ohio as the week begins, while Ryan was sched­uled to travel to Iowa on Mon­day as the ticket looked to cover as much ground as possible.

For Ryan, the week­end of cam­paign­ing was a chance to make a first impres­sion on many vot­ers. A recent CNN/ORC inter­na­tional poll found a major­ity of vot­ers had no opin­ion of the con­gress­man, an up and comer in Wash­ing­ton but far from a house­hold name. Nearly 40 per­cent had never heard of him and 16 per­cent weren’t sure what they thought of him.

The 42-year-old con­gress­man embraced the attack dog role tra­di­tion­ally assumed by the No. 2 on the ticket. He said Obama had turned his 2008 cam­paign slo­gan of “hope and change” into “attack and blame.”

“We’re not going to fall for it,” Ryan told a crowd of 5,000 in High Point, N.C.

Obama’s cam­paign had already been try­ing to tie Rom­ney to Ryan’s tough bud­get blue­print even before the Wis­con­sin con­gress­man emerged as a con­tender for the GOP ticket. Democ­rats believe seniors, those near­ing retire­ment and middle-income vot­ers will view Ryan’s long-term bud­get plan remak­ing Medicare and cut­ting tril­lions in fed­eral spend­ing as a threat to their finan­cial security.

Cam­paign offi­cials were ready­ing state-specific strate­gies aimed at seniors in Florida and Ohio, and also planned to court young peo­ple and mil­i­tary ser­vice mem­bers who they believe will be turned off by other ele­ments of Ryan’s pro­posed bud­get cuts.

As chair­man of the House Bud­get Com­mit­tee, Ryan is the pri­mary author of con­ser­v­a­tive tax and spend­ing pro­pos­als that the tea party-infused Repub­li­can major­ity approved over vig­or­ous Demo­c­ra­tic oppo­si­tion in 2011 and again in 2012.

They envi­sion trans­form­ing Medicare into a pro­gram in which future seniors would receive gov­ern­ment checks that they could use to pur­chase health insur­ance. Under the cur­rent pro­gram, the gov­ern­ment directly pays doc­tors, hos­pi­tals and other health care providers.

Ryan and other sup­port­ers say the change is needed to pre­vent the pro­gram from finan­cial calamity. Crit­ics argue it would impose ever-increasing costs on seniors.

Other ele­ments of the bud­get plan would cut pro­jected spend­ing for Med­ic­aid, which pro­vides health care for the poor, as well as food stamps, stu­dent loans and other social pro­grams that Obama and Democ­rats have pledged to defend.

In all, it projects spend­ing cuts of $5.3 tril­lion over a decade and would cut future pro­jected deficits sub­stan­tially. Rom­ney, too, has pro­posed ambi­tious cuts in fed­eral spend­ing, but with­out the specifics that make Ryan’s plan so attrac­tive to fis­cal con­ser­v­a­tives and such a tar­get for Democrats.

Repub­li­cans say Ryan could help put Wis­con­sin, which tra­di­tion­ally has voted Demo­c­ra­tic in pres­i­den­tial cam­paigns, in play and that the Catholic Mid­west­erner also could appeal to blue-collar vot­ers whom Rom­ney, a Mor­mon and mul­ti­mil­lion­aire, has strug­gled to reach in Iowa and elsewhere.

Obama’s cam­paign had no plans to start run­ning new tele­vi­sion ads in Wis­con­sin fol­low­ing Ryan’s pick. Offi­cials said they didn’t think Ryan was pop­u­lar enough statewide to swing Wis­con­sin toward the Repub­li­can ticket.

Obama’s cam­paign argues Ryan’s bud­get could be a pow­er­ful cam­paign tool for the pres­i­dent in states like Penn­syl­va­nia and Iowa, in addi­tion to Florida and Ohio.

Down bal­lot, party lead­ers hoped to work in tan­dem with Obama to turn the Ryan bud­get into a lit­mus test in con­gres­sional races, forc­ing Repub­li­can oppo­nents to take own­er­ship of the plan. The cam­paign arm of the House Democ­rats, for exam­ple, was urg­ing its law­mak­ers to call Ryan’s bud­get plan — not the man him­self — Romney’s new “run­ning mate.”

Posted by AP News on Aug 12 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.