Paul Ryan is starting to sound like a broken record.
The House Budget Committee chairman will unveil his new spending plan on Tuesday, which claims to save $5 trillion over the next decade—about the same amount his last two plans had proposed. He’s also working under the assumption that Obamacare will be repealed.
“Yes, our budget does promote repealing Obamacare and replacing it with a better system,” the Wisconsin Republican said on Fox News Sunday.
Last year the House unsuccessfully voted to repeal Obama’s Affordable Care Act more than 30 times. But with Mitt Romney losing and the Supreme Court upholding the Affordable Care Act, it appears the law is here to stay. Even House Speaker John Boehner has gone as far as to say “Obamacare is the law of the land.”
During the interview with Ryan, host Chris Wallace insisted repealing Obamacare “isn’t going to happen.”
Ryan didn’t seem deterred. “We believe it should,” the failed vice presidential candidate said. “That’s the point. This is what budgeting is all about. It’s about making tough choices to fix our country’s problems. We believe Obamacare is a program that will not work.”
Interestingly, Ryan is keeping part of Obama’s plan—the cuts to Medicare providers that he vehemently railed against when he ran on Mitt Romney’s ticket. Those are the same cuts he had in his budget last year, however. Democrats, of course, are pouncing on Ryan’s continued vacillation on that issue.
Ryan’s plan seeks to balance the budget over the next 10 years, in large part by implementing a voucher system in which seniors don’t receive a guaranteed Medicare benefit. Instead, they’d enter the private marketplace with a government subsidy, and be forced to purchase their own plan.
Despite American voters rejecting the underlying premise of Ryan’s proposal in the 2012 election, he continues to push forward.
“I would argue against your premise that we lost this issue during the campaign,” Ryan told Wallace. “We won the senior vote.”
But as NBC’s First Read notes, Ryan’s budget makes him look “unserious,” especially because it’s operating under the assumption Obamacare will be repealed. And it would never pass in the Democratic-controlled Senate.
Jim Nussle, the former director of the Office of Management and Budget under George W. Bush, told CNBC on Monday morning that Ryan’s plan is not based in reality.
“Chairman Ryan coming out saying one of the marquee issues in the budget is going to be the repeal of Obamacare,” Nussle said. “I think we fought that battle. I think it’s over and it’s been over for some time. Good luck with that one—that doesn’t make it any more realistic.”
